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What Do You Like To Cook?

 
 
bio k9
06:47 / 14.12.02
12:30 Friday night and I'm sitting at home cooking some jambalaya and andoville sausages. Can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be either. Its not my favorite thing to cook (that would be homefried potatos, goddamn I love potatos) but its pretty easy and cleans up quick. Funny, the same recipies I used as a bachelor (no prep, quick cleanup) work great with a little one in the house.

I have no idea how my mom found the time to create the dinners she made every night.
 
 
that
10:18 / 14.12.02
I like to bake cakes...I write my own recipes. I also like to make cookies sometimes. I'm much better with sweet things - savoury stuff is generally mediocre, and occasionally disastrous.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
11:28 / 14.12.02
Just about anything. I like to take on new dishes, but I don't so often now that I'm living by myself. I don't know if that's because I like to show off or just because I don't want to invest all that energy just for myself. It's probably a combination.

I love to cook savory dishes, but I'm can be timid in working with meats that aren't fish or chicken.

My favorites, though, my absolute favorites are just about anything sweet: cakes, pies, candy, cookies. Wait, bread! Can't forget bread. So I guess that's really all baking, except for the candy.

I went through a long phase a few years ago where I was making peanut butter fudge about once or twice a week. As I type, the dough for some sugar cookies is freezing for easy rolling. I haven't invented any cake recipes; I just modify all the ones I've made. But pies (and tarts)---ohhhh, pies and tarts---are my spesheality. I have invented a few pie recipes, which, to most people might seem like a nightmare of oversweetness (a particular example would have been the white choclate praline pie).

But bread is an entirely different experience. It's my therapy.
 
 
bio k9
11:48 / 14.12.02
OOoooh bread. My great-grandmother used to bake bread. Tiny little woman with little bitty (even to me as a child) hands that she used to measure everything. I swear, I don't remember ever seeing a cookbook or measuring utensil in their home.

My favorite thing to do is barbeque but that doesn't really count does it? Because its not cooking...its BARBEQUE!
 
 
Mourne Kransky
12:06 / 14.12.02
I like things which are cheap, the ingredients of which can be easily obtained, and it all happens in one pot. On these grounds, the most enjoyable thing to cook that I can think of is Potatoes Dauphinoise. It takes forever, shaving the potatoes with exquisite fineness and layering them in the dish. There are endless inventive twists you can incorporate into the sauce. Myself, I like onions in there, maybe some good mushrooms (chestnut, porcini, portobello) and a good blend of cheeses in the thick, creamy sauce.
Then it sits in the oven for hours going brown and crispy on top. Perfection with crispy bacon strewn over.

The thing I'd really like to master is a proper Italian risotto. The method is so different from kedgeree or fried rice but the pay off is wonderful. In good restaurants, I would always choose a mushroom or seafood risotto if it's on the menu just because it's always going to be better than my lame attempts.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:32 / 14.12.02
Risotto isn't really that hard. You need to use the right rice - arborio is ok. Fry up some onion - always use olive oil and perhaps some butter - and some garlic. Maybe start to fry some of your ingredients (or add later) and after a while add the rice (I don't believe in recipes with times or overly specific instructions) and some of your stock. Keep stirring the thing and keep adding stock - don't just add in one go. You should season and add basil, oregano and whatever takes your fancy during this process.

Keep stirring, drinking wine and adding stock until the rice is cooked. To finish off, I definitely recommend adding grated parmesan and stirring it in. You could also add cream or wine - I sometimes throw in some white wine at the start. All this is over a low to medium heat obviously.

One thing worth doing is letting the risotto stand for a couple of minutes after its done and you have turned off the heat. Stir a bit and you won't get a pool of liquid on the bottom.

I think thats it.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
13:18 / 14.12.02
Ooh. You know what I love to make because it's so easy and wonderful tasting? Almond peppers. Oh dear lord. Eat 'em all on their lonesome. Throw a couple of chunkily chopped bell peppers (my favorites are red, orange, and yellow, but green and red are traditional, I think) into a nonstick skillet with a little olive oil, stirring for about five minutes; add some balsamic vinegar, sugar, garlic, salt, pepper, stirring for another three minutes; add a few raisins, stirring for another minute; add some toasted slivered almonds, stirring for one last minute.

Oh goodness. I wish I had some bell peppers right now.

I typically serve them with chicken in a Parmisan breading.

Oh golly. I need some of that right now. I'll have to make due with something completely unlike it, though: tuna noodle casserole with some cumin, curry, and coriander.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
13:21 / 14.12.02
Or even Parmesan. Yeah. 'Cause that's better than Parmisan.

And I maintain that barbequeing is cooking.
 
 
Busigoth
14:13 / 14.12.02
Split-pea soup with whole peas & tarragon added. In cold weather. Or as cold as it gets here in the Big Easy.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
14:40 / 14.12.02
Oooh. Peas are wonderful. And split-pea soup is wonderful.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
15:23 / 14.12.02
Oops--the almond peppers are on medium to medium-high heat.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:31 / 14.12.02
Things that I am very good at making (from scratch):

lasagne
meatballs + sausage ragu ("Sunday gravy")
baked ziti, manicotti
marinara sauce
bruschetta
Italian sausage and peppers
roasts
mashed potatoes
coleslaw
baked macaroni and cheese
hash browns/home fries
omelettes
salsa
quesadillas
general bbq stuff - steak, chicken, ribs, burgers, etc.

I cook a lot, I think I'm best with Italian-American cuisine. I made a meatball-sausage ragu this week that I was really proud of, it came out great. I'm glad that I keep getting better, and I'm getting more brave and ambitious all the time.
 
 
grant
15:32 / 14.12.02
Babies. Christian, Jewish, Pagan - doesn't matter.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
17:37 / 14.12.02
Presume you trim them first, Grant. (barbaric new world cuisine. tchah.)

At the moment, really piss-easy *cheap* pleasing things are my forte.

At approx 2.30 this morning, I was luxuriating in toasted onion bagels, topped with microwaved scrambled egg and (veggie) bacon. Slathered in brown sauce.

Um-um.

Buuutt, am obssessing over bangers and mash - cooked an especially delish mash the other day - potato and pumpkin, and made veggie gravy in a new and unusual way:

fry finely chopped onions/garlic for ages until they=mush. turn heat up and add red wine/a little water. cook till boiling and slowly add the gravy granules to the pan. mix until smooth.

Pour over the pot/pum mash. scoff.

But otherwise, cheap lazy food -

spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, pepper, cheese.
jacket spuds with anything left in the fridge - but especially blue cheese and garlicky mushrooms.
dahl and rice


(actually, I can cook, but you'd never know from this )

And Zo - risotto is dead easy, you just have to keep an eye on it, and add the water *slowly*. Try splashing out on a small bag of porcini mushrooms, that way you can use the mushroom water for the risotto - aboslutely delicious. And I can't eat parmesan, and substitute very mature cheddar - which works well and is mundo cheaper.

A thing I like to do to finish it is crisp up some bacon/garlic/finely chopped onion and scatter it over the finished risotto.
 
 
videodrome
18:38 / 14.12.02
I'd picked up a rotisserie duck last week, which was mighty tasty. Threw the carcass in a pot with some celery, red onion and bay leaf to make really tasty stock. The added that to squash and sweet potato pureed with some shallot, cinnamon, coriander and allspice and had a fabbo winter soup. Have just discovered the wonders of soup making, though I'm not much for the 'bunch of stuff in a watery pot' approach.

Anything I can do with tofu and seasame oil is fine by me. And I just made crepes for the first time. They were good, sweet with honey and some with nutella...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:42 / 15.12.02
I love to make polish food, unfortunately I can't spell any of the words, I can only pronounce them so I'll give you a physical description instead. Potato and mushroom mixed up in a pasta casing and rice and mincemeat with cabbage wrapped around so that it makes a parcel. Potato pancakes, peeling and grating the potatoes so that they just look like mush and then frying them so that they're crispy on the outside but very soft when you bite in to them. I like to make the food that my granny made and my mum makes when she feels like cooking.
 
 
gravitybitch
04:47 / 15.12.02
I like to make food I can play with. Fresh pasta... great toy, never fails to impress my guests.

Soups - wicked minestroni (of the "kitchen sink" variety - never turns out the same way twice)

Anything with chocolate in it. I think my contribution to the lab lunch next week is going to be a cheesecake with a chocolate cookie crust instead of the traditional graham cracker shell...
 
 
Saint Keggers
04:49 / 15.12.02
OMG..dont they just serve that kind of stuff in heaven? It sounds absolutly devine.
 
 
gridley
12:54 / 16.12.02
I love to cook tons of things, but nothing gives me as much joy as cooking a really ridiculously large pot of chili on a cold/rainy/snowy day.
 
 
gifted
14:35 / 16.12.02
suprised it hasn't been mentioned before - curry.

Home made curry from scratch, it takes about an hour and a half completley fills the house with the smell but if you get it right is uttelry delicious especially with Garlic and Coriander nan bread.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:05 / 16.12.02
on foods you can play with, fondue is just *the best* for that. chop a load of stuff up, wait for mates to come around... dip, dunk, slurp.
 
 
Jackie Susann
21:27 / 16.12.02
I like cooking with no ingredients - end of the fortnight, no food in the cupboard, McGyver-style cuisine. Throwing together something that tastes great out of next to nothing.

My other favourite kind of cooking is the other extreme - pouring a bunch of money and effort into making something really special for some sort of occasion. On Sunday I got up extra early to go to the market and get ingredients for an elabourate, delish pasta salad for a friend's birthday barbecue - spent the whole morning, from 8:30 til I went to the barbie at 2, working on it. It was so much fun, so satisfying...
 
 
Mazarine
23:57 / 16.12.02
Chicken chowder. Carrots, corn, potatoes, and whatever chicken happens to be around, with as much half and half or cream as you can handle thrown in. I like this one cause I have a good time tweaking it and making variations, and it's such a comfort food, especially when it's thickened up with flour. It's also a great use for leftover chicken, and however the chicken was cooked changes the soup- fried, roasted, rotisseried (I'm fairly certain I spelled that wrong.) It's also nay to messy to make, and it's pretty much a one-pot meal, which is a big thing for me.
 
 
bio k9
06:27 / 17.12.02
McGyver-style cuisine:

I once mixed a box of mexican rice with a can of refried beans and a bag of frozen corn. I was very poor and very hungry. It was all I had in the apartment. I ate it for three days. And it was good.
 
 
Jackie Susann
06:34 / 17.12.02
Am I the only one who finds Barbelith's cooking-related threads the most fascinating?
 
 
wembley can change in 28 days
06:50 / 17.12.02
I make pretty decent sushi, when the ingredients are right. (Rothko's had a couple of bad experiences with the salmon on that deal, though it wasn't proper salmon - i still feel bad about it.)

When I moved here I found the ingredients available at the store (and the expensive v cheap foods) very different from in Canada. So I got some finnish cookbooks and started working on it. I love baking pulla (a sweet bread with lots of cardamom) and making manna puuro (porridge, basically, except there are about ten common types of porridge here so you do have to specify), and there's a super cheap soup i made up a couple of months ago:

1 block frozen saithe (100g or so)
1 package frozen soup veggies (onions, cubed potatoes and the like)
any fresh veggies you want to throw in
a handful of pasta
soy sauce
boil for about 10-15 minutes, simmer for longer to improve the taste. This will feed one person up to three times, although a very hungry person could eat the whole thing. If I'm feeling less omnivore, I'll use tvp instead of fish. It's still dead cheap.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
07:24 / 17.12.02
I made soup last night, and I have to say it was gorgeous:

loads of broccoli (just under a head per person), a couple of small, new potatoes per person, two veggie oxo cubes, salt and pepper. Cook em in just enough water to cover the spuds (the broccoli can steam), then put the lot in a blender. Return to the stove and add fresh thyme and a *big* chunk of blue stilton, cut into little pieces. Heat gently until the cheese melts, then serve with your favourite bread.

And since you've already got the blender out, use it the next day to make fruit smoothies. And add vodka. Wow!
 
 
wembley can change in 28 days
11:22 / 17.12.02
well, i know what I'm cooking tonight! Hot damn, sfd!

I've found that ever since moving in by my lonesome (or rather, since my roommate left for lapland for christmas) I've started to make a hobby out of cooking. The downside is it seems to be replacing my hobby of going to the gym...
 
  
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