09 Sep Intuitive Greek Vegetable Bake – creative cooking
It may require a steeper learning curve and more mistakes along the way, but cooking intuitively is a lot of fun. It also uses the ‘creative’ right-hand side of your brain. In that way, my Greek Vegetable Bake feels more like learning a language, or improv theatre (perhaps) than following a recipe would.
I felt emboldened by new knowledge of basic templates of different cuisines from around the world. If you stock your pantry with the right ingredients you are free to whip up a Greek vegetable bake (or a stirfry, or a Moroccan tagine) whenever the urge strikes you!
Greek vegetable bake ingredients
The ingredients that are often used in Greek cooking for example are garlic, lemon, oregano, tomato and feta. I also feel like Greek food often uses cinnamon spice and also olives can be used often.
Knowing this, and stocking my pantry this week led me to make a lovely Greek vegetable bake, that contains onion, garlic, cinnamon, oregano, zucchini (courgette), tinned tomatoes, tinned lentils, red wine, potato, feta and plant-based yoghurt.
Experimentation leads to wisdom
I feel like I learned more from this experiment because it allowed me to make mistakes and therefore learn from them. If I was following a recipe, perhaps I would know how to follow instructions, but would it actually be building culinary wisdom? (A little, I think, yes – but not nearly as much as while cooking intuitively!)
There are some basic rules of course. Use olive oil in your cooking, if you can. It is good for your heart (and your brain). Most recipes start by sauteing an onion in a little oil and this gives you the base of your flavour, along with the spices (such as cinnamon and garlic, in this dish), which are added after the onion softens. Dry herbs are added later and fresh herbs at the end.
And then you can add the body to your dish with veggies and protein. A yoghurt and feta topping might be the top or accent level to your dish, but I think for me, it will be a crunchy Greek salad.
The result
It is quite hard to really make your food inedible. And while that sets a very low bar, I would love to taste something absolutely delicious when this Green vegetable bake finally comes out of the oven!
** And it really was yummy. Next time I will turn the oven up to maybe 225 degrees to more effectively cooking the potato. But it really hit the spot. Especially for seconds!
The benefits of a creative Greek vegetable bake
I think if you can cook whatever you are craving on the day it makes for a very happy belly. It doesn’t have to mean more waste either, because when I am creatively cooking, I tend to use up what I have in the fridge, and I must say I actually eat MORE vegetables because I have a tendency to pack them into a dish, where a recipe might hold back again.
I would love to see some of your creative cooking experiments – mention me at @myhealthzest or tag me to show me your creations!
What are you craving right now?
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