Im not much of a cook and don’t have one but my wife had a thing when she wanted to impress at like a work thing or potluck or such. greek salad. super easy to make but people love it. Not me I hate anchovies.
It’s technique that impresses, not the food. Starting with good ingredients goes a long way toward making tasty food. With that said, if you have a two bunches of fresh asparagus that looks wonderful and one cook saute it and the other boils it… Guess which bunch will be more appealing…
My Mother-in-law (MIL) is not my biggest fan and never has been. I, a mid-west redneck, had the audacity to marry her east coast highly educated (multiple dotorates) daughter 21 years ago.
Fast forward to one of their many visits. My wife and I’s two boys are early teens, early double digits and it’s dinner time. My FIL and wife decide they want the BBQ Shrimp Cocktail out of the “Grill to Perfection” cook book. FIL, Wife and oldest son and I will eat that. My MIL hates shrimp and wants cedar planked salmon and my youngest wants a hamburger.
All of the dishes can be cooked on the grill, but all of them take very different techniques and time to cook… So I just did it. I managed to get all 4 dishes onto the table, as well as a side veggie which was brocolini, hot perfectly cooked and on time.
My MIL now always looks forward to visiting and having me cook for her and FIL. They usually host Christmas or Thanksgiving, but the last several years I’ve actually been the one doing the bulk of the cooking.
I make some pretty damn good Tamil-style goat curry, or green Thai curry. If they’re afraid of flavor, I make boef bourguingon and fondant potatoes made with duck schmaltz.
If I really care about em, I make Peking or Canton-style duck, a true labor of love, and if they want something sweet, I make one hell of a pumpkin cheesecake with candied pecan topping and Graham cracker crust. Or creme brulee, especially if I have fresh fruit. That always impresses, despite being one of the easier things to make.
I’ll be right over
sounds incredible. I’ve only had vegetarian/pescatarian Tamil cooking, would love to try goat curry
As you can see, I do this meal a lot. It also costs me about $300 every time I do it.
I’m glad you can afford it and have loved ones you can share it with.
My go-to is probably a dijon-marsala pork tenderloin.
Coat a tenderloin in Dijon mustard and brown it. Toss it in the oven for 20ish minutes. Use a meat thermometer. Meat production safety is getting iffy these days.
In the same pan, sautée a shitload of finely-diced shallots in butter. Pour in equal parts cream and marsala wine. Reduce it by about half and add more Dijon until it tastes good.
Slice the meat and drown it in tasty sauce.
Hi hello, yes it’s me, your long-lost aunt, and I was wandering by and it smelled like you needed help with the way too much tenderloin you made, can I come in?
Bring a better bottle than marsala and you’re in.
Poached salmon
Sounds fancy, very tasty, and super simple. Literally just boil them bitches in some white wine, and then chop up some onion and cube some potato and cook those in a pan with some oil, salt, and pepper and that’s a full meal
Saw a neat tip today for poached salmon that had you place the salmon in the poaching liquid skin up, but only use enough liquid to cover the flesh, leaving the skin exposed, and place it under a low broiler to poach, so you get tender poached salmon with crisp skin.
Not a dish I make often and my partner abhors the skin (Monstrous, I know) but it seemed like a good tip!
That’s sadly impossible for me, I need to remove the skin. My dogs would never forget when I wouldn’t crisp it up for them to feast.
Wow, and I don’t even like fish and that sounds incredible.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to try that some time
Lasagna and garlic bread. But not just a can of sauce and ricotta. You have to do the full bolognese slowly cooked for hours, hand made noodles, bechamel instead of ricotta, and just a sprinkling of pecorino in each layer with the bechamel.
Bechamel is the shit for lasagna.
Once you make it that way, you can never go back.
With just a sprinkling of nutmeg. Oh yeah
Ooh, nutmeg? Ok, gotta try that!
enchiladas
green or red
shredded chicken, cheese, or shredded beefCinnamon buns
Pasta with olive oil and garlic (aglio e olio). It’s much more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s quick to make and the simplicity is impressive. Also I always have the ingredients at hand.
i sometimes add some chili flakes (toasted chiles de arbol are my favorite for this dish) or chopped fresh oregano.
You don’t want to overwhelm the simple flavors but sometimes one extra note can be nice. Also the quality of the olive oil really matters for this dish: i have a specific brand i go to because i prefer the subtle flavor even over the more expensive brands
Ahhh yes chili flakes, I always put them too :)
Bread
Biscoffeetoffee cheesecake.
Biscoff crust, coffee base, chocolate toffee crust. Beloved even by cheesecake haters.
What is this “Cheescake haters” of which you speak?
I hate cheesecake when I have none.
Not only did I hate cheesecake before I started making it myself, but a close friend is very anti-sweets but will always save room for this specific dessert.
Cacio e pere - just cheese and pears, with pasta.
Boil your choice of pasta. I usually prefer penne for this. While that’s happening, dice a pear or two, pan fry them in olive oil. Take some of the pasta water, mix it into some pecorino romano cheese to make a paste. Add pepper. Drain noodles, add them to pan, along with cheese paste. Mix it all together. Done.
Lunch: I’ll make you the best hamburger you’ve ever had, either on the stovetop or the grill. Sides: Corn on the cob, fresh watermelon, homemade salsa and tortilla chips.
Dinner: Fist-sized meatballs with a heavy red sauce of meat and a ton of vegetables. I also use a high-protein pasta that gets cooked, then cooled in the refrigerator. Finished sauce + cold pasta ==> into a baking dish, bake covered; add cheese atop and finish baking. Serve with fresh bread and salad.
Dessert: I find a lot of American desserts are too sweet, so I make a chocolate and raspberry cake that turns down the sugar saturation and highlights the chocolate and the fruit.
I’m a pretty damn good cook for an American man my age who doesn’t work in a kitchen or similar.
I make a pretty mean brisket in my pressure cooker.
Ideally, I’d smoke some salmon or steelhead, but I haven’t had a smoker for a few years.
Pressure cookers can be a cheat code. I’ve been using it for ribs for a few years now. Dry rub, pressure cook, sauce and broil. Purists would scoff, but I’d say it’s 90% as good as the recipes that take 12 hours.
Ribs on a weekday? Hell yeah.
Right? Like nobody I tell believes that I can put a mostly-raw (just seared) slab of brisket in and have it tender and delicious in under 2 hours. I actually think it’s better than slow cooking, which imo dries it out a bit
