Pasta’s old hat and nobody's surprised any more if you bake a cake at home. Swap out some of those done-to-death dishes with these new favourite from the world of haute cuisine.
Swap out: Pasta
For: Mexican chilli and cornbread
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Everyone's doing pasta! If you want to be different, go Hispanic with a hearty Mexican chilli with cornbread. Mexican chilli scores over pasta on many counts.
The fiery taste appeals to people who might find pasta bland, it is much more filling, thanks to the beans, and it is much more of a novelty than pasta.
You can make Mexican chilli vegetarian or non-vegetarian. You have the option of adding or omitting ground meat at will. Go on and add as many chillies as you like (Mexicans like their food hot!).
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You can tweak the recipe by adding a little red wine or a teaspoonful of unsweetened cocoa powder to give it a more complex flavour profile, which makes this an exciting dish even for the seasoned veteran in the kitchen. Cornbread is where you get to show off your baking chops. The slight sweetness of the cornbread goes great with the warm, hearty casserole with a hit of chilli.
Top the cornbread with a generous helping of cheese, and you have a wonderfully unusual meal for a cold, rainy day.
Scratch it: Vegetable biryanis
Subsitute: Malaysian, Thai or Indonesian curry
Biryani purists often see vegetarian biryani as a corruption of the original recipe, since a true biryani is primarily meant to be a lamb dish. Oriental curries, however, are often originally vegetarian, featuring fresh tropical herbs (lemongrass, anyone?), vegetables and tofu; and served with plain, long-grained steamed rice.
Plus, with ready-made Thai red curry paste or Thai green curry paste, a Thai red or green curry is easy to rustle up. Get recipes in which you can play with exotic veggies like bamboo shoots, mushrooms (shiitake is an option here), baby corn and bak choy to really give your dish some va-va-voom.
Ditch 'em: Chocolate brownies with ice-cream
Switch to: Dark chocolate mousse with berry coulis
Every college girl and her best friend can bake brownies now! For the more experienced player in the kitchen, however, a chocolate mousse presents a sufficient challenge. Use antioxidant-rich dark chocolate to up the ante. Chocolate with a cocoa content of 70 per cent is ideal from the health standpoint, but if you've got children in the house, or if super-dark chocolate isn’t to your taste, 50 per cent cocoa chocolate is an acceptable compromise. A side of fresh berry coulis is a culinary trend that is easily adapted to home-cooking. Fresh strawberries or canned berries in a coulis make a beautiful addition to a mousse – definitely better than a splodge of generic vanilla ice-cream!
In the kitchen, as in life, variety and freshness can bring a new spurt of enthusiasm and joy to your everyday routine. So, are you ready to try something.