Favourite Meal - Can Do & Wanna Do?

[Deleted User]

My late OH bless him said I made the best shepards pie in the world He would happily have eaten it 7 days a week.Very ordinary but comfort food on a cold wintery day :):)

LandyAndy

moonbabe58 wrote: »

.

The one thing I wish I could cook well at home but always fail on is a perfectly cooked medium/rare steak. Mine always end up more medium to well and never taste as good as you get in a restaurant.

It's very likely that your pan is not hot enough. Don't even try to grill a steak at home if you want it rare. Domestic grills just don't get hot enough to sear the outside and leave the middle rare.


I use a cast iron griddle over my gas rings or a heavy duty skillet. Heat it dry until it is really hot and then season and lightly oil the steaks. Seal the edges of the steaks for a few seconds and then griddle/fry them for less time than you think you need . Let them rest on the warmed plates for 5 minutes. Use the 'finger test' if you want. http://primecutsblog.com/2008/12/01/the-finger-test-to-check-the-doneness-of-steak/


I like my steaks blue but the rest of the family like rare or medium-rare. I don't have any problems doing them all in the same pan.

LandyAndy

I've recreated a couple of things I had in Wagamama's quite successfully.

Ladyluck1

Thai salmon broth is hubs favourite of mine. I don't need recipe just make it up.
I'm still working on an authentic masala and chipattis

sillyvixen

MandM90 wrote: »

I would love you forever if you could supply us with the recipe

sure i used

1 large punnet of button mushrooms (reduced) quartered
2 med red onions (cut into chunks)
pint on stock (hot water and teaspoon marmite)
table spoon of flour
ground pepper
small glass of port (would have used red wine but did not have any open)
mash made the usual way.

fry mushroom and onion till onion browns in veg oil

coat onion and mushroom in flour and stir

slowly add the stock

add pepper to taste and reduce down

add the port and reduce down more until you have a thick sauce

put into a dish and top with mash and add more pepper if desired

bake until mash browns.

yum enjoy.

katylou6180

pablakeman wrote: »

My sig dish would probably be a fish pie, but being a student in a long-distance relationship I am only normally cooking for myself! Can I call it my sig dish? I make a lot of bolognaese too, and love cottage pie/shepherds pie. I also make a pretty good omelette I like to think.

I want to crack paella but have only really tried it once to be honest! My girlfriend loves Spanish food after our visit to Barcelona (to be honest, she loves pretty much any food as long as there isn't a vegetable in sight!!) so I would love to make really great tapas and paella to please her. Apart from this, I just want to improve generally with my cooking and be able to make 1 or 2 tip-top meals!

As I cook mainly for me and am not fussy, I tend to look at how healthy a meal is rather than how good it tastes.

I have a failsafe Paella that's really simple and Patatas Bravas that's much the same, Spanish food really isn't difficult

animal_cmh

One of my favourites. I use all lean pork. :T

Meatballs with white wine, lemon & bay leaves

For 2

250g/9oz minced beef, veal or pork, or a mix of one part pork to two parts veal
50g/2oz grated pecorino
50g/2oz dried breadcrumbs
4 tbsp chopped parsley
Zest and juice ½ lemon
Salt
1 egg
25g/1oz olive oil
1 glass white wine
Hot water
4 bay leaves, torn
Lemon slices and bay leaves, to garnish

Mix the meat, cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, zest, salt and egg in a bowl.
Form the mixture into small, slightly squashed balls the size of a plum. Roll in the flour until lightly coated.
Heat a thin layer of oil in a pan large enough to take all the meatballs. Fry the meatballs over a medium heat for about 10 minutes until browned.
Add the wine, turn up the heat a bit, shake the pan so the wine distributes itself fairly evenly, and let the alcohol burn off for a few minutes.
Pour in enough hot water to just cover the meatballs. Add the bay leaves and bubble over a gentle-to-medium heat until the sauce is reduced and syrupy.
Add the lemon juice and cook a few minutes more.
Remove the meatballs with a slotted spoon and place in a serving dish. Spoon over the sticky juices if wished and decorate with whole bay leaves and wafer-thin slices of lemon.

trolleyrun

My current signature dish I'm working on is risotto. I love it! I avoided making it for years due to being put off by complicated recipes and having to stir constantly. I've now got it down to 30 mins, including prep time and I don't follow any recipes. The basics being onion, garlic, arborio rice and hot stock, I add mushrooms, courgette, bacon, chicken, celery, chillies, whatever is available in the fridge. An Italian person would probably cry watching me cook it, but it tastes good and it's creamy without using cream if that makes sense. I don't stir it constantly, but I'm in the kitchen the whole time.

Currently, I'm making risotto about twice a week, as it's great for when it's towards the end of the shopping week as you can throw anything in it. And arborio rice is really cheap in Aldi (compared to other shops). Win win

Once I've perfected a recipe, I'll post it if anyone is interested

White_Rose_Tight_ThaKnows

While I don't host, my staple go to favourite meal is a big dish of white pasta twirls, dolloped with a good tablespoon or two of mayo, cubes of bog standard 'cheddar' cheese, ham slices cut into 1/2 inch squares all mixed with half a tin of baked beans. Topped with a good squirt of tomato ketchup. Stodgy and delicious. Mastered that.

Proper food I've mastered is a chicken curry, my tip is to marinade the chicken in yoghurt - I use whatever's most plain, vanilla activia usually - with a salt and flavour mix. Then while the sauce (carefully thrown together, bit of this bit of that) is blipping away, get a dry frying pan screaming hot and harshly fry the chicken on one side for a couple of minutes. Keep the chicken in whole pieces if possible.

The best thing I ever made, without fail, was a mouth wateringly rich pig-heart stew a few years ago, I wish I'd written down the ingredients though!

White_Rose_Tight_ThaKnows

trolleyrun wrote: »

My current signature dish I'm working on is risotto. I love it! I avoided making it for years due to being put off by complicated recipes and having to stir constantly. I've now got it down to 30 mins, including prep time and I don't follow any recipes. The basics being onion, garlic, arborio rice and hot stock, I add mushrooms, courgette, bacon, chicken, celery, chillies, whatever is available in the fridge. An Italian person would probably cry watching me cook it, but it tastes good and it's creamy without using cream if that makes sense. I don't stir it constantly, but I'm in the kitchen the whole time.

Currently, I'm making risotto about twice a week, as it's great for when it's towards the end of the shopping week as you can throw anything in it. And arborio rice is really cheap in Aldi (compared to other shops). Win win

Once I've perfected a recipe, I'll post it if anyone is interested

Whenever I've made a risotto, most notably mushroom, I've always done a cheat for extra flavour - and I like it a bit thick and stodgy - and chuck in a sachet of mushroom cuppa soup!

Cuppa soups are a great substitute for stock, and they thicken the sauce too.