Help a cooking novice!

Cafe Society
1

About 45 years ago, I boiled an egg. (It was part of a wolf cub badge on ‘home help’, or something like that.)

Since then I have relied on parents, restaurants, works canteens, take-aways and microwaves for all my nourishment.

Recently (I have no idea why) I decided to learn to cook. :cool:
I actually have a cooker (+grill), saucepans, frying pans, spatulas, tongs, kitchen foil and even a wok*.

My sister showed me how to grill sausages and I enjoyed it. She said bacon medallions would be even easier - and she was right!
Since then a mate has introduced me to the mystery of omelettes and I have now made a couple of ham, cheese and chive ones. :slight_smile:

OK, now I’m looking to expand my repetoire. :eek:
Please bear in mind that I am a chess playing computer programmer, i.e. I like to have everything organised in advance and avoid the unexpected.
I also want to succeed as much as possible, plus not spend too much time on this (because I’m busy mastering Colonisation!).

So here’s the deal.
I would like the recipe for anything that takes less than 5 minutes to prepare (salads are refreshing, but I’m not chopping all those vegetables :p) **and less than 20 minutes to cook **(if things go well I may increase this, but not yet).

I have heard about ‘scrambled eggs’, although Rex Stout says in one Nero Wolfe book that it takes 40 minutes to do these properly.

Over to you Dopers…

P.S. I have a decent supermarket near me, so ingredients shouldn’t be a problem.
P.P.S. Any recipe including Marmite is excellent - I love the stuff!

*This stuff has all been bought for me by well-meaning folk who thought I ought to cook for myself…

2

Get yourself a Delia book. You’ll get loads of recipes, some of which will fit your current requirements, but you’ll also learn some techniques and have a ready selection of recipes for when you decide to progress a little more.

Also the BBC Food site is excellent (www.bbc.co.uk/food), go there and explore. I think you can search recipes by prep and cook time too.

3

Missed the window.

Scrambled eggs can be done very easily.

Crack 3 eggs into a bowl and add salt and pepper, whisk with a fork until frothy. Heat a frying pan and drop a knob of butter in. Pour the eggs into the hot pan and start stirring (you don’t want the eggs to stick to the pan). When the eggs have set you’re done. Serve on buttered toast with some grilled or fried bacon.

4

Quick and easy lasagne (and easily modified as you learn what you’re doing!) - it does take a few more than 5+20 minutes, but you’ll see it’s really not so bad.

  1. Boil water and cook lasagne noodles until they are just soft. Alternatively, buy oven-ready lasagne noodles.

  2. Open a can of tomato-based pasta sauce (we like Hunt’s 4-cheese, but I don’t know what you have in your stores!). Pour into a saucepan and heat. If using oven-ready noodles, add about 1/2 cup of water to the sauce.

  3. Shred cheese, or buy pre-shredded cheese. We actually use “old” cheddar (cracker barrel or black diamond brand).

  4. Into a lasagne dish (or disposable aluminum lasagne pan, or whatever), layer noodles, sauce and cheese. Make as many layers as you want, or until you run out of one or the other ingredients! Finish with cheese on top!

  5. Stick in oven for about 20-30 minutes depending on your oven/instructions on your lasagne noodle box.

  6. remove from oven and eat!

We add different cheeses, and sometimes layers of spinach, or even leftover taco beef to ours, as well as extra spices to the sauce. It’s surprisingly good, for such a cheap recipe! Served with a green salad or garlic bread or whatever else you have handy.

5

This is the easiest recipe ever, and yet it yields a dish worthy of a snooty dinner party. OK, it takes 25 minutes, but trust me, it’s worth it!

This works best if you have an ovenproof (ie. all metal) pan, then you can do the whole thing in one pan. If your pan is a cheap one with a plastic handle, you’ll need both a pan for the stovetop and a baking dish for the oven. It will also give you practice peeling garlic, which is a valuable cooking skill, or you can cheat and buy jarred pre-peeled garlic in oil or water.

This is going to look like a lot of work, because I’m going to spell everything out for you. But it’s really easy, it was one of my son’s first cook-by-himself meals.

Pan-Seared Chicken with Garlic Sauce

Preheat your oven to…uh…230? (450F)

Put the following in a small bowl: 1 teaspoon (tsp.) of paprika, 1 tsp dried thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp. black pepper. (If you don’t have a teaspoon measure, it really doesn’t matter. Just keep the ratio the same in whatever smallish spoon measurement you have.) Mix them up with your finger to combine. Get yourself 1 pound (.5 kg) of boneless, skinless chicken breasts - 4 if they’re tiny, 2 if they’re large - and sprinkle the herb mixture on both sides of the chicken. Set the chicken on a plate.

Put the pan on the stove and turn the heat to medium high. Let it sit there for about 3 minutes before you do anything else. Then put 1 Tablespoon of olive oil into the pan and swirl it around so it covers the bottom. Put the pan back flat on the burner and put the chicken breasts in it, making sure you don’t overlap them. Cook the chicken for 2 minutes without touching it. Then flip it and cook 2 minutes more on the other side. Don’t worry if some bits stick - that’s called “fond” and the French chefs go nuts for it.

Next, throw in 12 cloves of garlic, peeled. (You don’t have to mince them or anything, whole is fine.) Then add 3/4 cup (mmm…800 mL) of chicken broth. From a can is fine. Now take the pan off the stove and put it in the oven. If your pan’s not ovenproof, then move the contents of the pan into a baking dish and put that in the oven. Leave it alone for 20 minutes.

Go wash that plate you had the raw chicken on, if you haven’t already. Get a clean plate out.

After 20 minutes are up, take the pan out of the oven - using potholders! Put the chicken on the clean plate and cover it with a little foil to keep it warm. Mash up the garlic in the pan with a fork. If you need a little more liquid, add about 1/4 cup more chicken broth. You want a pourable sauce, not a paste.

Pour sauce over chicken and you’re done!

6

If I may offer a couple of suggestions: the eggs only have to be mixed, unlike for omelettes. Secondly, make sure the pan is only heated to medium temperature: if the pan is too hot, your eggs will come out watery. Thirdly, stir them infrequently and only until just cooked through. For a richer final product, add a bit of cream cheese near the end of cooking.

7

Why does that happen?

8

Easy carbonara:

Pasta
Bacon
Onion, chopped
Olive oil or butter
Grated parmesan cheese

Boil up a pot of water and add your pasta with some salt. While the pasta cooks, fry up the bacon and set aside on paper towels to drain. When cool, crumble or chop. Add the onion to the bacon fat and saute until it’s tender. Remove from the fat.

Drain the pasta when it’s done (10-12 minutes). Toss with butter or olive oil or both. Add the bacon, onion and cheese and toss.

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Take some meat that will cook fairly quickly (e.g., thin-cut pork chops, chicken tenders).

Spray a baking pan with veg oil.

Put meat in pan.

Pour tinned condensed cream soup over the top (cream of mushroom is good, cream of celery or cream of chicken works, whatever sounds good). Add a half-can of liquid (water, wine, beer, whatever you’d like).

If you’re feeling really fancy, add a package of dry onion soup mix.

Cover pan with foil.

Bake until meat is done (this may be longer than 20 minutes, depending on what size your cut of meat is, but come on, it’s not like you have to stand over it :)).

Serve with rice or noodles (get the pre-cooked microwave kind if you don’t want to mess with cooking them separately).

You can also make this in a frying pan, just cover the pan and turn the heat down fairly low. I used to make it all the time in an electric skillet, which worked great. The meat will cook faster this way, but you do have to keep an eye on it.

As you progress in cooking, you can fancy this up with fresh mushrooms, herbs and spices, whatever takes your fancy.

This is a really easy way to start cooking that allows you to expand from your base recipe.

I’d give more exact instructions, but I’m not sure what the Brit version would be. You should be able to find this recipe online, or ask your cooking friends. If you want more details, let me know and I’ll try to figure it out.

10

My version of spatzle:

Combine 1 egg and 1 cup of flour

Boil some water with enough salt to make the water taste salty.

Put the dough in a plastic bag and cut a little less than 1/2 cm off one of the bottom corners and use this like a piping bag. Squeeze the dough into the water and when it floats it is done (pretty quickly, IIRC).

Transfer to a plate and toss with olive oil and/or butter and herbs such as oregano or marjoram or whatever along with salt and pepper to taste.
Another thing that is really quick and simple is steak. Just sprinkle the outside with a bit of kosher salt and black pepper, oil the meat (I use PAM which is a spray-on cooking oil - don’t know if they have that in the UK) and put in a really hot , heavy pan. Turn after 30 seconds or the meat stops sticking to the pan. If it is thin (under 1/2" thick), it will be done in another 30 seconds. If it is thicker, turn it and put it in a 500 degree F oven for about two minutes a side. Take the steak out an put it on a plate out of the center so it isn’t floating in juice and loosely cover it with foil for about 5 minute. In the meantime, throw a chopped shallot in the pan and cook it. Add 1/2 a cup of red wine and 1/2 a cup of water to the pan and scrape up the browned bits. This is called deglazing, BTW, and be sure to do this off the burner to avoid a flame-up. When the liquid has reduced by half, remove it from the heat and add a pat of butter and stir it in until it melts… Spoon some over your steak.

I also like to chop up an onion and fry it in a pan with a little olive oil and salt and pepper and eat it with good bread.

Enjoy,
Rob

11

'Cause the proteins denature and coagulate too quickly in a hot pan, squeezing the water out like wringing a sponge. If you denature them more slowly over lower heat, they trap the water in, instead, and you end up with moist fluffy eggs instead of tough ones in a puddle of water.

12

Buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Put them in a pan, cover them in store-bought salsa. Bake/broil in oven until done. While that’s cooking, make rice, and steam a vegetable. Voila, a whole meal, in about 30 minutes–easy, healthy, and cheap-ish.

13

Ahh… I see.

That explains why my chef friend cooks his scrambled eggs using a bain marie.

14

Yep. Real chefs can get a bit odd about their eggs. And whatever you do, don’t get them on the subject of salt! :smiley:

(Incidentally, if you like to know the “whys” behind cooking, Good Eats is the show for you. It’s not 100% correct all the time, but it’s very good, and very why-oriented.)

15

Let’s see if I can get this down to 20 minutes…It’s an old emergency standby around here…

Get around 1 pound of raw chicken tenders (maybe they’re called chicken tenderloins). Line a pan with sides with tin foil. Spray non-stick on he tin foil. Or use that Release tin foil. Put tenders in pan. Cook in preheated oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

While that’s going on, boil up some elbow macaroni according to the box directions. Should be 15 or so minutes.

At the 15-minute mark, taken tenders out, drain off any fat. Cover with 1-2 cans of cream of chicken soup. Return to overn, reduce heat to 350. Bake another 5 minutes.

When done, put macaroni in plate, spoon chicken on top of them, spoon hot cream of chicken soup over all.

Watch this carefully. I usually cook at 350 degrees for around 35 minutes for the tenders, longer if a whole chicken breast. But I think this will work. If the chicken is still underdone, put in a microwave for a minute or two.

Don’t dilute the cream of chicken. It will get thinner as it gets hot. There you are, and only 3 ingredients!

16

Since you’re a Brit, I assume you like Indian food. So you might try some of the spice mixes/pastes/sauces from Pataks or one of the other brands. They can greatly simplify the process, although the quality varies.

And basically, I recommend trying recipes for stuff you already like, from mom or someone else whose food you enjoy.

17

I was once like you, grasshopper. I bought The Joy of Cooking and became filled with wisdom and yumminess.

18

Quick and easy stir fry.

Ingredients:
Stew meat or chicken cut up into bite size pieces
1 can baby corn
1 can water chesnuts
1 can bamboo pieces
2 green peppers
Oil - I like sesame seed oil, but olive or vegetable oil works just as well
Soy sauce

Open up the cans and drain the liquid out

Get your wok heating up

Cut up the green peppers. The easiest way is to cut around the stem in the dip, then yank the stem out. It’ll take most of the seeds too. Then just cut the pepper in half the long way, brush the rest of the seeds out, and cut into strips (about a finger wide, then cut in half is usually how I do it)

Put about a tablespoon of oil in the wok, then dump your meat in. Stir to coat it in the oil, then let cook, stirring occasionally until it’s about half done.

Take out the meat, and put in your vegetables with about a tablespoon and a half of oil. Cook until almost done (the peppers will be bright green and not crispy).

Dump your meat in with soy sauce to taste (about 2 tablespoons usually). Finish cooking the meat (if you’re not sure, carefully slice one piece to check).

Serve with rice, egg noodles, or hard noodles.

You can use all sorts of vegetables like chopped garlic, peapods, broccoli, carrots, etc. If you keep the canned vegetables on hand, you can add leftover meat (just skip the first meat cooking step)

19

Some good spanish style rice.

per cup of rice:
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of coriander
1 teaspoon of onion powder

You can add things like olives, or you can serve with beans seasoned similarly. We make rice, beans and eggs sunny side up like this except we generally spice the beans and not the rice. If you want easy get canned beans. Goya is the best brand, not sure what you have available there. We alternate between blackeyed peas, chickpeas, red beans, black beans, whatever we have available, sometimes mixing them up. Throw these into your pan, boil down the juice while mashing the beans down as they cook. It’ll soak the spices into the beans nicely.

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