Grilled cheese.
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.
Lemon curd cookie bars. 2 layers of butter sugar cookie with a thick layer of homemade lemon curd in the middle. Lemon curd is weirdly expensive for something so easy to make. I normally do a huge batch in a 10x15 glass dish (think one size up from a standard 9x13).
Depends, if I’m cooking Texmex a can of chipotles in adobo sauce.
Sweets? A little bit of vanilla goes a LONG way. And I make my own with everclear and ordered pods split in half.
Butter cihicken or Green curry. I make and sell DIY Butter Chicken kit and I make frozen green curry paste.
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.
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.
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
Chilli. I make it ask fancy and indulgent with beer and ghost pepper and sometimes corn.
But would you be interested to know I made my ex pancakes after our first hookup?
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 imi dries it out a bit
I didn’t have someone to impress for years now, so I can’t add much. I just wanted to say that I’d be down for some test-impressing for most of the recipes shared so far, in case you want to try it first. It’s a free service I offer.
I buy something, put it in a Tupperware, and act like I made it.
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
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.
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
