Conjuring RCOM

If you recall from my last post, RCOM is an acronym meaning:

Refrigerator Clean Out Magic

A good example of RCOM during my stint as adventure tour guide:

As an adventure tour guide part of my duties were preparing meals for our guests out of a cooler in the back of our activity trailer. One day, my co-guide forgot to buy a number of items for our proposed lunch menu. On the menu was suppossed to be a salmon and cream cheese pizza with fresh dill and scallions. While it was my turn to prepare lunch as she frolicked with our guests on the trail, I started searching for the ingredients for the main dish. The only ingredients I did actually uncover in the trailer were scallions and pre-made pizza crust. No salmon, no cream chesse, no dill. HMMMM. This was an occasion that called for some major RCOM. I rummaged through the coolers and dry bins for anything I could present to our guests for lunch. Searching through items such as; skittles, granola bars, 1/2 used jars of jelly, dry spices I found the remnants from our asian noodle salad lunch from the day before; tamari sauce, wilty cilantro, and shredded carrots. I was also able to unwedge a lime from the recesses of the soda cooler. When I spotted the 2 cans of chicken and the 1/2 jar of peanut butter it was game on! Now I don’t ever advocate for canned chicken. It’s fairly gross if you ask me, but with enough peanut sauce you can make anything taste good.  This was the plan. Thai Chicken Pizza, served with a salad made from the remnants from our Mexican Fiesta two days prior.  Down and dirty peanut sauce made from tamari, peanut butter, lime, cilantro, sugar and water was mixed into the canned chicken. This mixture was spread onto the pizza crust and topped with chopped cilantro, scallions and the shredded carrots. The guests raved, my co-guides jaw dropped when she saw the spread. It was a major triumph in the RCOM movement.

(I’d love to hear some of your RCOM stories, please send them my way)

I truly believe that with the right guidance, basic cooking skills and understanding of the 6 flavor profiles anyone with the desire to learn can conjure their own RCOM.

Guidance: Well clearly we have that part covered,. You have shown enough sense to become a subscriber on what will  soon be the worlds most comprehensive blog on RCOM. I can assure this not only because I have an over-inflated sense of cooking ego, but also because the term RCOM did not exist until my last blog post on Sparking STK. Therefore I am the premier chef blogger in the RCOM blogosphere space right now!

Basic Cooking Skills: While STK has not really been a blog about teaching basic cooking skills, please let me know if you would like to hear more detail on How To. There are plenty of resources out there that can help a home cook feel more confident in the kitchen. YouTube has a  whole host of basic cooking videos. You can take classes at local culinary schools, beg your mama to teach you your family secrets or you can  set up a private cooking class or cooking party at this great company out of Boulder, Colorado called

The Love Bite (shameless personal plug) The point here is, that the desire to cook is usually a good enough platform to build upon even the most basic skill set and end up with an amazing meal using the principles of RCOM.

Knowledge of Food Flavor Profiles: This is likely the most important principle of RCOM. It is my personal duty from here on out to teach all of you young food jedis how to cook by taste. I’m sure you have asked a chef friend or your grandmother many times for their special recipes only to be told they never wrote one down. I know that my own friends frequently get frustrated when they ask me how much of a certain ingredient to add to a dish. More often than not the response is one of the following three;

1)some

2)a little bit

3)a lot

You see, Chefs, the great ones anyway cook by feel. Would you ask an artist how much paint they used on their canvas?

4Tsp Yellow Ochre

1 1/2 cups Thalo Blue

1 tsp. Raw Umber

Of course not! Try to shift that perspective with your cooking and you will be on your path to conjuring some major RCOM in no time.

In my next posting I will talk more about the 6 flavor profiles and how you can start using your palate to help you become your own food Macgyver.

Follow me on twitter@foodmacgyver for more!