I can’t cook much beyond pasta and scrambled eggs, but I do have one recipe for garlic wine sauce I really enjoy. I got it from one of the local restaurants, and it’s so simple even I can do it.
White wine
Garlic
Butter
Pepper
Salt
Optional:
Water
Grated Parmesian
Pour in however much of each ingrdient you feel like. (I usually use two cubes of crushed frozen garlic, but everything else I don’t bother to measure). Likewise, cook however long you want. I have no idea how long it takes to cook wine and garlic, so I usually just let it boil for a few minutes. Serve with pasta and grated Parmesian.
Finely chop a carrot, an onion and a LARGE bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley. Heat some olive oil and add the vegetables and some salt. Stir for a bit until the onion turns a little soft. Add some chopped tomatoes or tomato passata and heat it up.
Serve on pasta with some more parsley and parmezan.
Some of my favorite preparations of food are the simplest.
Best roast chicken? Preheat oven to 450. Take one roasting chicken. Dry it as much as possible with a paper towel inside and out. If you know how to truss, go ahead and truss it. I usually just tuck the legs into an “X” with some of the flappy skin near the opening. Liberally salt and pepper. Stick in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes. Don’t do anything else. Perfect roast chicken, with fantastic crispy skin, and moist juicy interior–really, I’m not one for breast meat, usually, but this makes a perfectly juicy breast. If it’s good enough for Thomas Keller, it’s good enough for me. I’ve stopped looking for roast chicken recipes after this one. I don’t think it can be improved. One word of warning: this has a tendency to smoke up the kitchen a little bit.
Steak? Buy a decent thick cut of steak. Preheat oven to 250. Liberally salt and pepper the steak. Once the oven is preheated, stick the steak in, set timer for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, and let rest for about 5-10 minutes while you get a lightly oiled or cooking-sprayed pan heated to the smoking point. I use cast iron, and I get it unholy hot. Throw steaks on, about a minute or two per side, to create a beautiful crust. Let rest a couple of minutes and serve. It may take you a few tries to get the exact times down, depending on how accurate your oven thermometer is and the doneness level you like, but in my kitchen, that creates a perfect medium rare.
The usual method for steak is the other way around: start on pan, sear, finish in oven, but this method produces a much more evenly cooked product. As with the chicken recipe, I will never make steak in the kitchen using any other method.
Fish! It’s by far the easiest thing in the world to cook.
Fish Tacos:
Get a few fish fillets, cut them into small peices (2"x2" give or take). Spray on some garlic juice, splash on some Tapatio, add a bit of salt, black pepper, red pepper, paprika (all of which is to taste, I have no exact proportions). Toss them in a pan and let them cook. Takes a whole 5-10 minutes. Put it on a tortilla and add some canned salsa, cheese, lettuce. You’ve got yourself fish tacos or tortillas.
If you can get tuna, cut them into cubes, add a bit of any random herby seafood seasoning (make sure it’s not too strong) then drizzle with a VERY light bit of olive oil. Toss them in a pan until the outsides are white. Got yourself seered tuna.
Mahi Mahi (also called Dorado) fillets marinated in some prepackaged Caribbean Jerk flavored marinade and tossed in a pan to grill are amazing. Get some Caribbean themed instarice type thing and you have yourself a little tropical meal. The one I get has peas, chicken, pinapple and a packet of seasoning already inside the rice.
Asian supermarkets have prepackaged and precooked unagi. Which is eel fillets. Microwave them and toss them on a bowl of rice.
Striped Bass fillets or whole trout (10-14" works the best) are good in the oven too. Spread open some alluminum foil, place the fish on it (if it’s a trout you’ll have to gill and gut). Season it with salt, pepper, papriqua, and garlic juice. I like them heavily seasoned for this recipe. put in some chopped onioins and some greens like taragon, mint, parsley, etc then put some butter or oil on top. Wrap the foil and stick the package into a oven that’s been preheated to 450. Cooks in about 15 minutes.
Heat a skillet to rocket hot. Put a little butter and olive oil in the pan until they start to smoke. Drop in some raw shrimp. After 60 seconds, flip them over, kill the heat, and put a lid on it. After 30 seconds, remove the lid, and sprinkle with salt and fresh lemon juice.
Salmon fillet. Microwave or pan sauté. Season to taste with salt, butter, garlic, lemon, or whatever. Optional: before cooking, marinate fillet for 1 hour in soy sauce.
My best way to cook squid (the little ones, not octopus or cuttlefish):
Get raw squids, cut of the heads, remove the cartilage from the bodies and the tentacles from the heads. Cut the bodies in rings about an inch thick. Wash the rings and tentacles.
Put the rings and tentacles on an oven-proof plate, add olive oil, some garlic and lemon juice. Put under the grill for about a minute or two, stir/turn and put back under the grill for another minute or two - they should just have turned opaque and bended a bit.
This will give you deliciously soft, tender squid, instead of that ghastly rubbery stuff I seem to get every time I order it in a restaurant.
Crushed frozen garlic? I never heard of that! Jars, squeeze tubes, yeah…nevertheless:
Emergency Wonton Soup
1 frozen box pork or chicken potstickers (I got mine at Aldi’s)
2 cans Campbell chicken with rice soup, and 2 cans of water
2 chopped garlic cloves
2 tsp. grated ginger
2 sliced scallions
I bring everything except the scallions to a boil, turn down and simmer for 6-8 minutes until the potstickers are done, add the scallions. Not at all bad, and you can throw in any bits of vegetables you like.
1/2 large onion
2-3 cloves minced garlic
olive oil
1 lb ground chuck
flour
milk or half & half
salt & pepper
2 TBSP butter, cut up
Heat olive oil in a large skillet on medium. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes. Crumble the meat into the pan and increase the heat to med-hi to brown. When well browned, add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Add enough flour to absorb the fat in the pan (probably a couple of tablespoons), stirring and browning, about one minute. Add the milk slowly, stirring to incorporate the flour. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer. Add some sage, salt and a lot of ground black pepper. When the gravy begins to thicken, add the butter chunks and stir until smooth.
Spoon this over cooked rice, cooked macaroni or hot biscuits.
I just made “The World’s Most Dangerous Cake” ((because we are all now only five minutes away from a chocolate cake any time of the day or night".
5-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake
1 coffee mug (I used a big round mug suitable for soup, can’t say as how it would turn out in a regular tall one)
4 Tb. flour
4 Tb. sugar
2 Tb. cocoa powder
dash of salt
1 egg
3 Tb. milk
3 Tb. oil
small splash of vanilla
optional - 3 Tb. chopped nuts, 3 Tb. chocolate chips
Mix the dry ingredients in the mug. Add egg and mix thoroughly. Add milk and oil, and vanilla, and mix again. Add chocolate chips and nuts if using.
Microwave on high for 3 minutes (1,000 watts). The cake will rise a little over the top of the mug. Allow to cool a bit. Tip out onto a plate, and there ya go.
I have what looks like a small, dense, moist bundt cake. At least, I did…
my favorite comfort foods are soups - especially in the winter when i can pop the pot on the wood stove and ignore it all day=)
1 lb ground beef - saute and crumble, drain and pat off some of the fat with a paper towel. Some people rinse it out with hot water to wash off more fat but that is just absurd.
1 small onion diced [you can actually buy pre-diced raw onion if you must]
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into julienne [you can actually buy premade julienne raw carrots]
3 ribs celery chopped
2 or more cloves garlic minced [i happen to like 5 or 6 but some people dont like it so garlicy]
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes with canning liquid, do not drain!
1 15 oz can great northern beans with liquid, do not drain!
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 12 oz can v8 juice drink - the tomato one, not the splashes … I jad someone ask if v8 splash worked.
1 tbsp italian seasoning blend
1 cup ditali or orzo or acini di pepe pasta [cook it to al dente per directions]
I usually just fry up the beef in a heavy cast iron dutch oven, then drain the fat off, saves washing a second pan.
Chuck it all into a pot except the pasta. Check on how soupy the tomato and bean liquids, v8 and tomato sauce make it. If you want it thinned out a bit more, I tend to keep homemade chicken stock in the freezer, but there are perfectly good premade chicken or beef broths out there. Simmer for about an hour and then chuck in the cooked pasta.
take 4 nice sausages, i prefer brats or sweet italian sausage. Chop.
1 onion chopped
2 ribs celery chopped
1 large carrot copped
3 or 4 medium sized potatoes, washed and chopped skins on
1 quarter cabbage, chopped
1 cup lentils
1 half tsp each basil savory and thyme
chicken broth to cover
simmer until the lentils are all cooked, and the potatoes are tender when stuck with a knife
i like to make a nice boule of sourdough and a salad to go with any soup, and a great way to use up day old bread leftovers is to make bread pudding for dessert.
Man, I love this stuff. It’s comfort food in the extreme. Just add sour cream and mushrooms and you have hamburger stroganoff! My wife thinks I’m sick.
We also made it a lot with dried beef, and sometimes sausage for breakfast.
I forgot how often my mother used to make it with ground beef until you posted that recipe. Something in the back of my brain went FLASH all of a sudden.
