Yes, you’ve read it right: More time for you, more food on your table!

Meals tailored for your loved ones taste!

Bonus: why is important to ask when you don’t understand something?

This Agile Cooking means that once every three days I spend a bit more in the kitchen. Allow me to start with an example: our beloved chicken! From one whole chicken I make 6 different delicious dishes for my sweets: we’re 2 adults and a four and a half toddler. If my father happens to be visiting us, we call him Opa and he’s a big meat eater, than I chose a stock carcass + a pack of breasts + one pack of tights (instead of the whole chicken). I also get 6 different dishes, but the portions are more generous.

To cut it short, I’m showing you now exclusive pictures with my last 6 dishes, that turned out to be 7. I’ve got as bonus a ramen style dinner!

As any ex corporate stay-at-home mom would do, I took inspiration from all those trainings and team buildings and came up with a name for everything: I’m the Agile Cook! You can become TheAgileCook too, I’ll help you! Start with this agile chicken and let it all come to you!

Inspiration for your next 3 days menu or How to turn a chicken into 6 quick dishes:

Of course, you can use your imagination and pantry supplies and come up with alternative dishes based on your loved ones taste and needs. What I would like you to remember is that here, at TheAgileCook.com, you can always find tips and tricks, easy to follow recipes and inspiration for any season. You’ll also stumble upon other stories, thoughts, food technicalities and curiosities. Don’t worry, I’ll bold and highlight the essential so you can follow easily!

Stop! Especially for you, TheAgileCook shows you step by step how to turn a chicken into your next 3 days menu:

Must have: chicken, onion, carrot, celery, a moment of gratitude you can do all this.

Optional: herbs and spices. I use bay leaves, cloves, dill, parsley, thyme

I will not insist anymore on the whole chicken, it just sounded better. After the small testing I did among my friends, no one will ever consider butchering its own chicken! Everyone (10 out of 10 respondents) will go the easy way and choose a stock carcass, aka the bones + its favorite parts…

Please let me know if any of you is masochistic enough to want to find out more about chicken butchering. Just ping me, leave a comment, send a message and I will prioritise the post on how to cut a whole chicken.

If you’re cooking on gas, that’s an easy one. If you’re the happy owner of an induction plate, like me, you’ll struggle. I now use tweezers or a bigger lighter. I’m planning to buy a professional torch, just didn’t chose one yet. If you’re happy with your torch, I could use a recommendation, remember sharing is caring…

Too bad the chemical cleaning currently used in the industrial process is not that precise… You’ll still need to remove small feathers. There’s quite some work to clean the bird. Still, if we compare it to the old way, it’s a piece of cake. I’m one of the few that still remembers how grandma used to take off by hand all the bird’s feathers. The trick was to throw the sacrificed bird into hot water to ease the process. I still have that smell imprinted in my nostrils, wet hot chicken feathers, smells like childhood.

Although difficult, pretty please, don’t skip this step! I’m still traumatised after some friends served chicken with feathers, at a dinner party. It was horrible: I didn’t know how to avoid eating and everyone was chewing cheerfully and inviting me to take a bite! Yak!

Same thing for raw eggs! Never eat rare chicken, that’s a big Salmonella danger! Last year, my friend’s little daughters got Salmonella from some uncooked eggs. It was like a horror movie: they lost sphincter control and were dropping faeces on their way to the toilet. Yes, they were literally shitting their pants! It all started when the little one, who was 4, woke up in the middle of the night crying: „Mummy, mummy, I need to poo!” My friend took her into her arms and ran to the bathroom… They were still on the hallway when diareea was springing out through her pyjamas! The oldest came after, the same. The poor children were crying, my friend’s heart was breaking, but she couldn’t do anything! They ended up in the hospital and all was fixed after one night of IVF hydration.

I’m super careful whenever I’m handling eggs and chicken ever since! I wash well and never let raw chicken touch other ingredients. I also have a separate cutting board that I use only for chicken. In professional kitchens, the board designed for chicken is normally yellow.

I put my cooking plate on level 8 out 9 and I give it a bit of attention until all foam is out. It is quite gross, but imagine you eating all the toxins and impurities released… So, there are 2 options:

a) boil the meat with water only, at high temperature, and skim off until all foam is gone.

b) boil the meat with water, when it’s full of foam throw away all the liquid, and give a quick wash to the meat and pan. Refill with fresh water, add the other veggies and start cooking at slow temperature.

If I’m not in a hurry I let it simmer for 2 hours on level 4 out of 9 (induction).

Now I know my pans well, but in the beginning I was adding water with the soup bowl used for serving. 6 soup bowls and a quarter for 6 portions.

Poaching is a french technique that guarantees the perfect texture! We take out the meat (tights and breast only), put it in a separate bowl, cover it with hot liquid and let the hot liquid to its alchemy for 20-30 minutes. We can cut a piece of chicken to and taste it, to make sure it’s fully done. If done, we pour the liquid back into the big soup pot.

Of course, there’s always an easier way, you can give up poaching and just let all the meat cook in the broth. I do this sometimes, the only risk is that the meat will over boil and tear apart from the bone. You loose texture and aspect but you still have the taste.

Congratulations! First part is ready, you know have pre-cooked your next 6 dishes! You can customise it in an agile way, based on your client’s aka family’s needs. Chose from How can you serve TheAgileChicken? and adapt to your family’s taste! Until the broth is done I normally start preparing the dinner for the next day.

This time I chose Romanian garlic stew: I cut and fry 2 onions, a sprig of thyme, 2 bay leaves, garlic as you wish (I use 6 cloves), 2 of the chicken tights and one breast, I than add tomato juice and let it simmer for 10- 15 minutes until all the tastes blend in. It will be just perfect tomorrow as the flavours will rest and mix well.

PS: I always listen to what my cute monsters want, so I ask them: „Guys, we’re having garlic stew. Would you like pasta or polenta with it? None of these? Ok, what about mashed potatoes?” Always let your loved ones chose and keep the options under your control. Remember, the Agile Manifesto: involving them is the key!

Escoffier (1846 – 1935, chef, restaurateur, writer, responsible with making french cuisine that popular), gave us a golden rule, a formula that looks like this:

a). onion/ carrot/ celery = 2/ 1/ 1, this should be the approximate proportions in between the 3 primordial veggies. Some nations use the celery sticks some other, like us, Romanians, the roots.

b). bones/ veggies = 5/1, meaning the volume of bones should be 5 times bigger than the volume of the above veggies. The French also add some herbs, tied with some cotton string (bouquet garni): thyme, parsley, basil, rosemary, tarragon, what you can find around. They also use 1-2 bay leaves and some needles. If you use needles, stick them into the bay leaves or into an onion, to prevent losing them into the depths of the broth.

We play with the child, clean, call a friend, write, read, or you can listen to my last book review, Zero to One. Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters.

We now take out the chicken carcass and collect all the extra meat that we find and put it in the fridge. Zero food waste and they’ll be perfect to accompany your soup from tomorrow. I filter the soup and use muslin for a clear broth and to feed my OCD. I store it in the fridge, this will be my base for 3 very quick and healthy soups. I also use it to add depth to sauces.

My cooking beginnings were difficult, I didn't know where to start from. The recipes were long, difficult to follow. They claimed the dish would be ready in 30 minutes, but it took me 1 hour! After doing them again several times, guess what: 1 hour became 30 minutes, practice is the key!

Yap, keep on trying and you’ll get better soon! After several tries, asking around, my food became tastier and easier to make. All my effort was worth it! Now I can pay it forward;)

My goal is to make TheAgileCook a tool that could ease a bit your life in the kitchen and give you as many possible answers to the eternal question: What do I eat today?

Please remember one thing: you didn’t understand something, i was not clear enough for you? Some recipe went wrong? Please write and ask me, don’t do like the ladies that I’ve accidentally heard recently, while having a quiet coffee…

TheAgileCook

I had just finished the „How to turn a chicken into 6 tasty meals” post, when a strong floral scent mixed with mosc, vanilla and sea side diverted me from the screen. I look around and notice 2 stylish ladies entering the coffee place and taking a seat at the table next to me. A blonde and a brunette, both in their mid 40s. The brunette doesn’t even have time to take off her fine wool Bordeaux coat, as her phone went out loud: Michael Bolton, „When a Man Loves a Woman”.

– Hello dear! All good, I’m out with my colleague. No need to hang up, I wanted to ask you something: What did you understand from our last training? What do we have to do with the new project? How many projects did they actually talk about?

(….)

-Ok, so it’s our old project but they’ve changed its name! Ok…The sound was quite bad, so I couldn’t hear well. I’ve called to ask what did you understand?

(…)

-Really?! You dint’t understand a thing?! No way! Nor me, nor Julie, nor Mary from Oradea! I even called Michael in Cluj, he didn’t hear anything either! He only understood we have to get involved in all the projects and that there will be many new projects. But how many? One or more?

(…)

-We’ll see, no worries! I’ll call back or chat you if I find out more!

She hangs up sighting and gets back to her blonde friend. I took a quick glimpse at the blonde lady. She was very pretty, big blue eyes, big eyelashes, short blonde hair, all dressed in blue. She was waiting peacefully for her colleague to finish the phone conversation, while taking pictures of her big glass of coffee with cream and chocolate sprinkles on it.

-Sorry, it was my colleague from Brasov, she dint’t understand anything from yesterday’s training. I really don’t know what to do, I have to go back to my team and give them a training on the project, you know I’m a supervisor, I have my team! Pfff. We’ll see! But enough about this, tell me, how was your trip to Sibiu?

-Don’t remind me of Sibiu! We went there for nothing! The mall was still closed because of the pandemics! We just took a short walk, but it was cold, how long could you walk? We had a daily menu in a restaurant, jumped back in the car and returned home.

I’m also pissed I didn’t get what they want with their new project! Honestly I’m done with all these nonsense! I’m sick of working for an employer! I wanna do a career shift! I wanna finish my studies and get back to teaching! I’m tired of working for companies, I just wanna be a teacher! I wanna learn something, do something with my life! I would buy a car, continue my studies and become a teacher in one of the villages around. This would be easier, as I have no chance to teach in the city!

-This is awesome! Being in the school system is really worth it, confirmed the brunette. A teacher makes good money now, and they have all sorts of bonuses… You have to do what’s best for you, dear!

I actually understood the principles of the new project, continues the brunette with the same important tone of voice. They said they were able to finish the evaluations and now they’re handling complaints, you know, their formalities…. After they said they’ve changed the project’s name, and I couldn’t hear anything after. It was in English and the connection was bad. And nobody said they weren’t able to hear, not even the big boss! So we have to take new projects, that’s how we can reach bonuses. Oh dear, look at your hands! Why is your skin so dry?

– True, I’ve forgotten to use the cream today! But I have it with me, look, it’s the new one they advertise now in TV! The blonde is taking out the cream from her blue bag, rolls up her indigo dress’s sleeves and gently massages her hands with it. Look, this cream is really good, it was worth all the money! Have you also finished your coffee? Where do you go after?

-Finished, yes! I have to go to the dentist, my root or the nerve died, look, here! And the brunette literally opens wide her mouth and points to her friend the faulty tooth. The blonde bends over the table to get a closer look into the brunette’s mouth. You could also use a whitening like me, she says with a proud voice!

No way! Such nice ladies, in the pursuit of meaning, to switch it to dry skin and bad teeth? I’ve closed my laptop with disappointment and left to the market in search for spinach!