Say a famous Chef (or other person you really wanted to impress culinarily {is that a word??}) was coming to your house & wanted you to prepare your best five dishes for them. Representative of your cooking style and skill; desserts, appetizers, a whole menu, 5 main dishes, whatever.
What would you make?
(Inspired by resturant Impossible)
I’m not much of a cook, but here goes. I’ve drafted my wife to help 
I doubt anything I cook would impress a professional chef, but I do enjoy cooking, so my five would be;
Mushroom risotto
Potato Dauphinoise
Moules Mariniere
Courgette bake (I think that’s more commonly known as zucchini in the US)
Chicken pakoras
I like to pretend that I can cook some.
Seafood paella
Meat loaf and mashed potatoes
Biscuits and sausage gravy
Mussels Provençale
My mother’s “perushkes”
I do not aspire to professional chefdom either but I can occasionally cook a meal.
I would make:
Chicken matzo ball soup with fresh herbs
Wild mushroom risotto
Pot roast with new potatoes and port
Pomegranate and frise salad with Bulgarian feta
Toasted walnut and pecan chocolate chip cookies or Pecan sweet potato pie
Hamburger Helper - Tomato Basil
Special K Almond Vanilla Cereal with Milk
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
Marie Calendar’s Frozen Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo
The phone number to Pat’s Pizza
… you see, I’m not a very good cook …
Meatloaf
Cottage pie
Cream of broccoli soup with onion
Lomo saltado
and definitely
Cinnamon Crack Buns (actually peach dumplings, but they’ve been renamed by a former coworker)
My bolognese-style pasta sauce
My chicken enchiladas
My marmite/butter/5 year old cheddar/jalapeno summer sausage/poached egg/sundried tomato/onion/chipotle sauce breakfast sandwiches on a toasted english muffin
My Hot and Sour soup
My Barbeque Pork fried rice
real chefs just want good food, you think ferran adria wants everyone and their mother to serve him their take on molecular gastronomy?
my scratch chili
bechamel mac n cheese
potato leek soup
braised collard greens
chicken piccata
Shrimp piccata
Lasagna
Slow cooked pork with garlic and thyme
Salted caramel Nutella brownies
Apple dumplings
Mine would be:
Meatloaf
Simon & Garfunkel chicken
Baked Chicken
Syrian Chicken
chicken parmesana
What a fowl list!
(lolz at Jack B.)
The one cuisine I feel I do particularly well and have a good handle on is Hungarian. I would do goulash (the soup), chicken paprikas with galuska (spaetzle), fresh Hungarian sausages (perhaps with lecsó, a pepper, tomato, onion dish, kind of like ratatouille), stuffed kohlrabi, and maybe Hortobágyi palacsinta (crepes stuffed with veal paprikash.) The last may be redundant with the chicken paprikash, so I might do something else.
Oh, actually, I’d probably throw in a Polish soup there: either żurek (a soup made with soured rye, sausages, and hard boiled eggs) or chłodnik, a cold beet-and-sour-cream soup
lobster bisque
charred beef slices on a bed of greens
pasta shells stuffed with seafood, with pesto sauce, draped in whole fresh basil leaves
baby spinach with pancetta, parmesan, and herbs
chocolate ameretto mousse cake
Mushroom Turnovers
Twice Baked Potatoes
Rib Eye Steaks
Pan Roasted Asparagus w/ Toasted Garlic, Lemon and Parmesan
Spice Cake
On second thought, I 'd swap out the meat loaf with my meatballs and Sunday gravy on pasta.
I’ll bite. What’s Simon and Garfunkel chicken?
It’s only successful half the time?
Most of what I cook aren’t my own recipes, but here’s my list of favorites to make:
1 Red and black bean chili
2 Latvian Rassols salad (a tangy potato, beet, apple, herring and pickle salad)
3 Slow cooked oxtail stew with rutabaga
4 Baked pork chops with garam masala rice
5 French Onion/Tomato soup
The last is something I did come up with, although it does use Campbell’s condensed soups.
Mix one can of French Onion with one can of Tomato soups with only one can of water. While heating add lemon juice, Worcester Sauce, Nuoc Mam Sauce, and Tabasco to taste. Adding a couple pats of butter also makes it yummier.