Warning: The following post does not meet international food snob standards. Proceed at your own risk.
Does this sound familiar?
You’re hosting a dinner for about 50 people, and although you cooked everything else on your elegant menu by yourself, you buy some packaged schnitzel for the kids.
After all, you tell yourself, they’ll never notice the difference.
But then, as you’re mingling graciously among your guests, one of the adults says to you, “What’s your secret?! The schnitzel is absolutely delicious! You MUST tell me how you made it…”
Or how about this?
You spend hours icing and decorating a cake, and the result is spectacular. Everyone is suitably impressed, and you’re showered with well-deserved accolades.
Admittedly, you still feel kind of guilty about using a cake mix, but you remind yourself that no one cares what the cake tastes like underneath all those expertly-piped ribbons and those exquisite fondant flowers.
But, sure enough, the very next day, you get a phone call, asking for “your [sic] yummy chocolate cake recipe”…
A similar thing happened to me at a sheva brachot we made together with some friends about a year ago.
I had prepared rice with mushrooms, and to my surprise, no less than six – count 'em! six! – people subsequently asked me for the recipe.
Which meant that six – count ‘em! six! – times, I had to confess that the recipe calls for (horrors!) onion soup mix and (gasp!) canned mushrooms…
Of course, I could’ve – and, in retrospect, probably should’ve - used “real” ingredients instead.
However, the beauty of this recipe is that not only is it a surefire crowd pleaser, but it’s incredibly fast and easy to make as well.
Easy Mushroom Rice
Note: Since the mushrooms are lighter than the rice, they float to the top in the oven.
Ingredients
- 2 cups uncooked rice (white or brown)
- 1 can mushrooms
- 5 cups water
- ¼ cup oil
- 2 tablespoons onion soup mix
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
Directions
Drain the mushrooms, and use the liquid towards the five cups of water. Place all the ingredients in a baking pan and mix. Bake covered at 350 degrees for about an hour (or longer, for brown rice).
!בתאבון
Please share your own experiences in the comment section.
