Please do share.
If you do it right the first time, neither is necessary. Besides, I never have any lard sitting around waiting for me to screw up green chile.
Back to the OP, I can’t make rice. With a rice cooker, it’s edible, but never, ever perfect. Ever.
I barely ever cook, so this will be rather mild: I buy frozen crab cakes, put a bit of oil in the pan, cook them till golden brown…but they always fall apart.
Maybe I’m putting too much oil in? I don’t know, but I would like these cakes to hold together better than they do. I want to serve cakes, not bits and pieces of cakes.
Right, my bog standard chicken curry recipe:
For four with some left over.
[ul]
[li] Either a whole chicken, cut into pieces, or 4 large chicken breasts[/li][li] two cloves of garlic[/li][li] 1/2" peeled bit of fresh ginger[/li][li] 8-10 black peppercorns[/li][li] 4 1" long sticks of cinnamon[/li][li] 6 or so green cardamom pods[/li][li] 8-10 whole cloves[/li][li] 1 tomato[/li][li] 2-3 tbsp tomato puree[/li][li] 2-3 medium sized potatoes[/li][li] 1-1.5tbps of roast&ground cumin and corriander seeds (in a half and half mix, you can buy it from Indian shops already prepared, it’ll be called dhaana jeera)[/li][li] 0.5tbsp tumeric[/li][li] chili to taste[/li][li] salt[/li][li] 1 large onion[/li][li] 2-3 tbsp vegetable oil[/li][/ul]
Place the chicken into a saucepan, with a fair amount of water.
Crush the garlic and ginger into the saucepan, and add to the saucepan half of the peppercorns, half the cinnamon, half the cardamoms and half the cloves, a tbsp of salt and the tomato, chopped.
Boil the chicken till cooked, and reserve the stock.
Chop the onions finely, peel the potatoes, and cut into quarters.
In a large saucepan, heat the oil, and sautee the onions over a medium high heat.
When the onions are soft, but not dark brown, add the potatoes, stirring constantly, and let cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the tomato puree, chili, tumeric, cumin and corriander seeds, a ladle or so full of chicken stock, and about half a teaspoon of salt. Mix this thoroughly with everything that’s in the pan, and let it cook for a few minutes.
Add the chicken, and some more stock, so that the potatoes and the chicken are all covered.
Simmer until the potatoes are ready.
Serve with boiled rice, and/or naan.
If you add 300 ml single cream and the same amount of plain yoghurt towards the end of the cooking time, it’ll be more like a balti (add a diced green pepper with the onion in this case too), or if you add coconut milk and flaked almonds at the end, you get a sweeter dopiaza type curry…
Chicken & Dumplings. This time of year I CRAVE chicken & dumplings with the wide, flat types of dumplings (almost like noodles). My chicken & dumplings comes out EVERY TIME with watery, flavorless broth and dumplings that make the entire pot taste like cornstarch. And there’s no place even around here to get decent chicken & dumplings to fulfill the craving.
My lasagne too was horrible until I, just at random, decided to buy the italian mix grated cheese.
I will not make my lasagne without it ever again, it adds so much MORE to the lasagne than just plain mozzarella. What I also do is make my own Italian seasoning mix, which is really simple to do. I grabbed a random recipe off of allrecipes.com and I used the spices I had (no sage or savoury as Mom is allergic, I don’t really miss it). If you like, I’ll send you my recipe, with my variations, that make an awesome lasagne. It’s also really easy, I can have a lasagne on the table in a couple hours with most of the time being baking.
Mine? I’d have to agree with the fish and chips. Maybe one of these years I’ll buy a deep fryer for when I get the urge, or I’ll just keep going to Joey’s Only.
Another is cream soups. Mainly my Nana’s divine cream of zuchinni, which she got out of a recipe book and photocopied for me to try and make on my own. No go.
My mother taught me the secret. Butter the bread with margarine. Use two slices of Kraft American Cheese. Cook very, very slowly in a small frying pan with the cover on. It’s even better if you use Velveeta singles.
Love this recipe. LOVE.
I’ve been pursuing this too. Two ingredients that really give you a leg up: Corn starchand this weird soy saucey flavored chicken stock powder stuff that come with its own little spoon. No idea if there is an official name for this stuff, but it works wonders.
Yeah, why don’t subs/grinders/hoagies/torpedos made at home, out of the same ingredients, ever taste like the deli ones???
Combining some of the suggestions I picked up in this thread, I managed to make a decent pot of green chile. It needs a handful of habanaro’s or a spicier Hatch’s, but heat aside it turned out pretty good.
Lard roux, the right cut of pork, salt, fresh ground black pepper, onion, stewed tomato, chicken stock, a bag of chiles (15 or so), Mexican oregano, cumin. No corn chips, but I did use some tortilla chips to snack on it later that night.
Necros knows the secret to Chinese food. I never would have thought to coat chicken chunks in corn starch, but it makes all the difference in the world! Well, maybe I exaggerate, but it makes a difference.
I quite liked Paula Deen’s Chicken and Dumplings recipe. It uses some condensed soup but it adds some extra body and flavor. I did end up with more broth because I didn’t use as much chicken as the recipe said and I messed up some of my dumplings but it tasted good and my boyfriend ate 3 bowls.
pumpkin fudge, apparently. 
Thanks Angua. I really like this recipe’s potential. It has a completely reasonable spice list and is quite easy for the mediocre chef. I’ll give it a go and see what happens.
My husband and I fancy ourselves to be fairly good though not dedicated cooks. My roast turkey is juicy and tasty, and his chocolate chip cookies are requested for every family and work special occasion.
But we can’t cook a decent roast ham to save our lives.
Havarti on crusty Italian bread, buttered, and cooked slowly in a cast-iron pan.
Bacon: do it in the oven. Impossible to screw up, every part cooks evenly. Alternatively, cook it in a half inch or more of previous bacon fat. Don’t make me explain, just trust me. It works perfectly.
Rice: Alton Brown’s technique of making it pilaf style, sauteing at first, finishing in the oven with a soaked towel wrapped around the lid is remarkable. Makes fantastic rice every time.
Deep fry it in really hot fat, in small pieces. Done right, it should bubble the minute it hits.
I wonder this about all sorts of restaurants. I used to say “there’s a really good Afghan restaurant”…how do I know? I’ve never been to Afghanistan. Now I say “There’s a restaurant I like a whole lot that serves Afghan food”
And I’ve talked about this with friends. We feel justified calling one “the GOOD Indian Buffet” because the service is good, the atmosphere is pleasant, and the place seems clean. The dishes have the same names and basic ingredients as “the sad Indian buffet” where we cannot make the same claims regarding service and cleanliness.
As far as the actual topic of this thread goes I might say rice, but only half the time. I have cooked rice on many occasions and had it come out exactly how I want it and other times it turns out more reminiscent of a building material.
The other thing is scrambled eggs. The scrambled eggs I fix are prefectly passable. I wouldn’t be embarassed to serve them. They just aren’t how I want 'em. How I want 'em is exactly how my mom makes them. I dont even know how to describe the difference. I just like hers better. Now I want some…with her home fried potatoes which are not slices but diced prefectly at 1/2". Now that you mention it she’s pretty good at bacon, too. That, I can replicate. She also starts it in a cold pan and taught me not to lay it out flat in the pan but sort of drop each slice in so it’s curled up.
No problem. I hope it works for you, I’ve been making curries to this recipe (with adaptations) for nigh upon 10 years now and have not had any complaints yet. Even my dad now finds it difficult to distinguish whether its me or my mum that’s cooked. 