Today we bring you Inma Rodríguez, heart and soul of the recipes blog cooking PlisPlas. She loves cooking, high quality cuisine and a fine presentation of the dishes. You may think this requires spending a lot of time in the kitchen, and as she told us, when she was a student or when she entered the job market “I was always in a hurry and didn’t have much time for cooking” However she never gave up eating well or having a nicely presented dish.

The knowledge she’s got in her executive business trips, her professional experience in several restaurants, her culinary vocation and the extensive market range of products ready to consume have allowed me to develop an extraordinary skill to create and customize delicious meals in THE BLINK OF AN EYE (PLISPLAS) And she’s telling us her secrets here:

There are many food blogs, recipes, chefs and wiz in the kitchen all over the internet. However Cooking PlisPlas has something different which makes it special: the resolution to save time in the kitchen without giving up health. How did you come up with the idea of your blog?

Cooking Plis Plas is NOT a recipes blog to show off in search of  the ooohh!!  what a wonderful recipe!. Cooking Plis Plas aims to get the ¡¡ooohh!! what a convenient blog!, because it was born 3 years ago in response to the very real and difficult question ¿What shall I cook today for lunch and for dinner, to make it different to what I usually prepare, also make it healthy, something I can prepare with the little time I have and getting few things dirty to avoid cleaning and tidying up. As you can see, PEANUTS.

Having this idea in mind I started working, doing research and making new versions of recipes so they would be more practical and adapted to the daily routine of most of our homes, later those recipes were transformed into quick menus, nutritionally balanced, fit for your everyday life, with which anyone with little experience in the kitchen could easily solve the question ¿What shall I prepare today for lunch and dinner without spending hours in the kitchen?

You see that is the goal and the vocation of Cooking Plis Plas, offering a real and above all useful service to that question, or that group of questions that anyone who ever cooks asks himself or herself several times every day (at least at lunch time and dinner time) and even with a stronger reason and responsibility if you have to cook for the family

What’s your inspiration to create these recipes Plis Plas?

Using few ingredients, that are common and easy to find anywhere in the country. Trying to use few utensils, only one if possible. And above all wearing the shoes of my followers so I can offer them menus that are well examined so that they can prepare meals that are easy, tasty, cheap, nutritionally balanced, varied and even funny.

What’s your secret to save time in the kitchen?

Organizing and planning. Having a perfectly organized kitchen with everything in its place and having a pantry, it doesn’t matter if it’s not big. Any kitchen cupboard, well organized, with the products properly placed so they are visible. That facilitates doing the shopping list to refill, storing only the ingredients you consume the most at home, and something very important, expired products.

And after planning the main meals of the day for at least one week I won’t have to improvise, and I’ll be able to anticipate what ingredients I’m going to need. This way when I enter the kitchen I know what I’m going to prepare, I know that I have all the ingredients I need to do it and I know the time it will take me. You have to bear in mind that most of the time you waste in the kitchen is because you have to think about what to prepare, or looking for the tools and ingredients you need.

And now a question that is mandatory, how important is garlic in your recipes?

Absolute importance.  I can’t conceive my recipes without garlic.  Garlic gives that tasty and scented touch to every recipe, so it’s essential in all kind of sautés, rice, stews, vinaigrettes, sauces, gazpachos, salmorejos, etc. Besides, needless to mention its multiple healthy properties: it has antioxidants that help prevent cellular harm, ageing, Alzheimer and dementia, it improves the cholesterol levels, reduces blood pressure, prevents colds, and improves physical performance… To sum up, garlic contributes to lengthening your life.

We love garlic at home, in salads, sauces like aioli (I have andalusian origin but I live in Catalonia since many years ago), rubbed over toasted bread with anchovies, chopped finely with other veggies and/or with chopped parsley in every recipe you can imagine: sardines, liver and grilled cuttlefish…

Curiously my husband likes garlic so much that he eats it raw, biting the cloves as if they were chocolate bars.

In conclusion, from my point of view, garlic is the King of the kitchen!

Any trick to prepare it in a simple and quick way? I mean, how do you peel it, how do you chop it, what’s your trick to avoid the smell, or to avoid the aftertaste… those valuable tricks that you cooks possess.

To peel garlic easily, you just have to put it on the cutting board or on the marble counter and give it a blow with the palm of your hand or the blade of the knife. This will open the garlic making the peel fall off the pulp and then you can peel it in a Plis Plas (in no time at all). It’s also very convenient (when you have to peel a few garlic cloves) to put them in a glass jar, close it and shake it for 10” (as you would shake maracas) and the peel will fall off by itself.

If you don’t want your hands, or knife to smell after you peel and cut garlic you just have to put them under running water from the tap, don’t rub your hands or the knife. There won’t be any smell left

To chop it, I do it many ways, with the knife, with the garlic press, I even grate it sometimes, it depends on what I’m going to use it for.

Regarding the smell and avoiding the aftertaste, there are many tales about it, from drinking water before and after eating it, removing the sprout leaf (centre sprout), chewing coffee beans right after eating it, etc. This is always when talking about eating raw garlic, if garlic is cooked, well cooked, with the right ingredients and it has a good quality it doesn’t have to leave any smell or aftertaste.

What would be your favourite Plis Plas recipe?  And why?

As a matter of fact it would be chicken in garlic sauce. It’s a familiar recipe that my father (who enjoyed cooking very much) prepared very often and it’s one of the first recipes I uploaded simply because I love it. It has only 4 ingredients, chicken, garlic, parsley and white wine and the result is amazing. It has that delicious sauce you can dip bread in and it can make you lose your mind, or your figure if you’re not careful!

Now we would like to know more about your project, Plis Plas Menus. What is it about? How has it been accepted?

As I said before, my project is very clear and simple: saving time and effort in the kitchen with recipes and menus that are common and cheap,  as it is done everyday in most of the Spanish homes, with ingredients you can fetch in the local shop.

The idea consists in helping people with little time for cooking, people who are not very keen on doing it and/or people with little experience in the kitchen. From there one of the distinctive characteristics of my blog is that besides contributing with recipes explained in detail, step by step, I also show how to configure menus which are nutritionally balanced, following the advice of the Food Pyramid, and I explain how to organize yourself to cook simultaneously the recipes of each menu option so that every dish gets to the table in the best conditions, saving time and effort.

You see my main goal is to HELP (in capital letters) with the daily routines in the kitchen. Following this line of support we introduced 3 months ago the Online Kitchen Assistant Service

This service is only available for subscribers and it’s about publishing a weekly Meals Plan for lunch (shortly it will also include dinners), this solves the problem of thinking, what shall I prepare for lunch today? In addition to this Weekly Plan there are other options you can choose such as the 10 minute recipes  gallery which are single course menus conceived for those days you arrive home and you don’t feel like cooking.

 These are simple menus you can prepare in less than 10 minutes but there are also 2 other galleries: a 25 minutes and a 40 minutes galleries, whose menus consist of a starter, main course and dessert.

Last but not least there has to be a gallery of  Quick desserts for those who enjoy finishing their meals with a sweet treat but they can’t spend hours preparing desserts. Coming soon, this offer will be joined by another gallery with Ideas for dinner, so you can enjoy your improvised and calm dinner while you discuss you day or watch TV. At the moment we have more than 100 subscribers to the Online Kitchen Assistant Service and we hope we can consolidate this project by reaching 1.000 subscribers in 2016.
Finally, what would you recommend to those who are going to take their first steps  in the kitchen? Where should they start?

The first thing would be that they have a good appetite, hahaha. Ok, all joking aside, as everything in life you have to start with simple things and evolve from there. Needless to mention but in Plis Plas recipes you can find recipes which are really simple to prepare and the final result is so impressive that it may seem that you have spent all morning or afternoon cooking, when, in fact you’ve prepared it in just 10 or 20 minutes.

However, the best advice would be to keep a well organized kitchen, and that you plan ahead your meals. Honestly, if you follow Plis Plas recipes you can learn a lot, and even better, you can eat well and save a lot of time and effort in the kitchen.