Myself I am an international cooker,French, Spanish, Asian and Chinese food, I am happy when i have fresh food in front of me. Cooking a Paella is dream, also to realise a Chicken and lamb Couscous.
For the dessert i enjoy a Baklava, a créme brulée, omelette norvegienne, and jelly, lovely wobbly english home made strawberry jelly.
What are your favorite recipes? I should have chosen the thread home cooking, but i decided to publish this on general discussions.
Bon Appetit, Enjoy!!
culinary update no.1
thanks for all the suggestions - greatly appreciated
first serious cooking exploit was a vegetable soup as requested by no.1 son - everything went in with a dash of tikka paste and the result was amazingly deeelicious (over two days) !
my latest adventure was a kind of beef stew/bouguignon melange in the slow cooker - again, everything went in after I had browned the meat cubes plus chopped onions & garlic in the pan - a friend suggested I add a small tin of tomato purée - I added about two thirds of a bottle of cheapish red and the whole thing was left on 'low' for about 9 hours - next morning I gave it a further two hours before serving - I have to say the result was brilliant !
I found myself actually ENJOYING this cooking lark !
next venture this evening is an endive/ham/bechamel sauce meal - any suggestions on how to make it edible ?
Thanks! I should add that the soup was excellent while the bread was just okay.
Yum! That sounds good - just thinking that there are 365 types of cheese in France and I still miss a good sharp Wisconsin Cheddar
Chicken soup with vegtables and egg noodles. Boule of crusty bread, cheddar cheese and dry sausage. Glass of cider. Baked apple.
Carol-for the pea soup I used this recipe and it was better then what I usually make. There's no meat if you replace the chicken stock with a vegetable cube which pleases my vegan daughter. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/parkers-split-pea-sou...
The onion bread recipe is:
450g farine
15g levure fraiche
3 C a Soupe huile d'olive
1 oignon
1 gousse d'ail
18 cl d'eau tiède
2C a café de sel
poivre de moulin
1)Melt the yeast in the warm water. Put the flour in a mixing bowl. add yeast water mix,salt and flour.
knead for 10 min. let rise for 1 hour in a warm place.
2)chop the onion and garlic and brown in 1 soup spoon of olive oil, let cool and add pepper.
3)work the dough some while adding the onion and garlic. Form a long oval and place on a lightly flour baking pan. Let rise for 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 240°c
4)Put a bowl of water in the bottom of the oven. Mark the dough 3 times with a knife and bake for 35 min. Lower the temp. to 210° for the last 10 min. cool on a wire rack.
Enjoy!
My youngest wanted to learn house to make pasta, so to make it simple we made a really tasty wholegrain one and just rolled it into lasagne strips. She also got to help make the Bolognesi and Béchamel but put it all together under a watchful eye. A good first attempt because her sister gave the thumbs up which is a high compliment!
I don't do much cooking these days having discovered that I have an allergy to wheat but my daughter cooks beautiful food and my grandson is learning to cook. I do make wonderful chinese gooseberry jam however and chutneys when I have the time.
I'm more of a baker then a cook and I keep things simple. Today I made some onion bread and a big pot of pea soup with carrots, onions and potatoes -stick to your ribs food for a cold gray day.
I'd second that. BBC has an excellent food site
Probably fine. BBC's website is pretty good too. I know an English speaking professional who has used that.
i've heard from friends Delia did a good series for beginners made into a compilation
any thoughts ?
Most food is simple to make, that is the secret. Experiment and learn from errors and you'll get there.
being a hapless male and sadly losing my wife very recently I find myself in the position of cheif cook ! this poses a slight problem as I have NEVER cooked anything in my life always having the security of a wife/mother/girlfriends etc to cook for me
as a REAL beginner, can anyone suggest EASY recipes to start me off ?
or maybe a good book for beginners/idiots already exists ?
yours hungrily...
I guess it would be a new post in the group and ever expandable, in principle I think it is a good idea.
My wife and I cook for pleasure and also cross a lot of boundaries and tastes. We make a lot of Italian, Portuguese and food Spanish to begin with, then various Indian, Chinese, SE Asian, a hotch-potch of African dishes, particularly Berber and other N African, Latin American, particularly Mexican and Peruvian then most recently we have found very good Scandinavian dishes. More conventionally we also eat a great deal of French, German(ic), English and Scots dishes.
Because we have children who are still learning different foods, we have particular simple favourites such as calamares and crevettes prepared in a home made tagliatelli with Japanese fish sauce and parsley. Another is gnocchi di patati with a very rich venison ragout. For desserts we tend to stick to crumbles, cheesecake or chocolate fondants when we eat them. We eat a lot of salads, mostly small leaf types like mache, cress and the ones one picks and grow again with very light dressings that neither swamp to taste of the salad nor destroy its texture, also tomato, cucumber carrot, celery, celeriac and such salads. Cheeses tend to be sheep types, good blue cheese (Stilton and Gorgonzola can be excellent), raw milk cheeses, fromage frais and hard cheeses such as parmigiano and pecorino romano. We eat a lot of oily fish such as sardines, haddock, herrings for the omegas and monkfish tail and when we can get non-farmed salmon fresh these are out 'expensive treats'. We generally avoid too much red meat.
Many different curries, Thai Duck (substituting white port for the fish sauce), proper omelettes. Wife does the rest!!
Shrimps and crayfish with green lemon, a hint of sugar and salt, served on filo-pastry with cumin and pepper baked inside, served with a reduction of lemon juice, lemon peals, sauternes and kumquat fruit. Topped with aniseed leaves
Slow-cooked filet mignons with a confit of red and orange pepper, scallions, black "Noyon olives, sundried tomatoes and lots of parsley. Homemade linguini with the the best olive oil you can get and dry roasted garlic.
An assortiment of raw milk cheeses
Tiramisu version "caramelized pears and apples"
A "noisette"; a strong, double espresso topped with slightly whipped cream