There are a lot of candidates, but if I have the time, probably my single favorite meal is etli hummus: this is a ring of delicious homemade hummus filled with tender lamb that I’ve slow-roasted with spices, tamarind and yogurt until it is fall-apart tender.
Homemade pita bread and vegetables (carrots, onions, and sweet potatoes are good) that were cooked along with the lamb make wonderful sides.
@solost - I make rendang occasionally (everyone in Indonesia loves it) and have used numerous recipes. The one you have seems pretty good; the only quibbles I have with it are that first, a “touch of heat” is nonsense for authenticity; rendang is supposed to be pretty spicy, so don’t hesitate to add as much heat as your palate enjoys. Second, I recently discovered that fresh turmeric takes rendang to the next level. Try using the rhizome (maybe equal parts to the ginger, or a bit more - the recipe I am using these days uses a ton of turmeric) instead of powdered.
But no worries if you don’t want extra heat and/or can’t get fresh turmeric - the recipe you are using looks just fine.
Hummus topped with lamb is one of my favorite things too, scooped into a warm wedge of pita bread. Yum.
Using fresh turmeric is a great tip, thanks! I’ve only used powdered turmeric up to now, but I think I’ve actually seen fresh turmeric next to the ginger root at the local western grocery store. Still need an Asian market to get fresh lemongrass, though.
As for the heat, I go higher with heat for spicy food than the recipe calls for all the time, and Rendang is no exception
Probably my fave recipe to make and eat is French onion soup of the gods. It takes all afternoon, and it’s been too long since I’ve made it, but OMG do I and my family love it.
Back in my bachelor days I started by using packaged Sloppy Joe mix, until I realized that I could simply get fresh vegetables and spices and chop them up instead of using woefully small portions of dehydrated stuff. Then I read up in my Joy of Cooking about how to make them. I didn’t care for their recipe, so I started trying variations on it myself. I’ve done several variations – the latest uses ground turkey in place of round beef, in deference to Pepper Mill’s wish to avoid red meat – including variations on the spices. But I always add tomato paste, peppers, onions, and celery.
And my preferred dessert – Grape Pie, which I’ve never seen on sale in any store.
It’s interesting, as around my neighborhood in Chicago, at least, which is predominantly Mexican with a sprinkling of old-neighborhood Poles and some newcomer Chinese, there’s been fresh turmeric at the local grocery for at least a decade. I remember it being an exotic ingredient I had to trek all the way up to the Southeast Asian groceries in Uptown to find, and now, it’s there and at many other local supermarkets. The same with lemongrass. Easy to find. Makrut (formerly kaffir) lime leaves, those I have to hunt down.
I think the availability of fresh turmeric coincided with all this turmeric superfood marketing (though I feel it slightly predates that–looking it up it seems fresh turmeric is common in markets in Mexico). And it looks like lemongrass is used to make tea in Mexico, so I guess it’s the Mexican population that is keeping these in stock.
It’s just me and my husband at home, but I made an Instant Pot full of it on Sunday. We’ve had it for 3 dinners so far. We eat it until it’s gone! So maybe one more night and my husband will have a lunch of it. As you can tell, we love it. I warm up some French or Italian bread to have with it.
Several favorites, none of them fancy, all Midwest classics.
The other day I made cabbage rolls. Every recipe tells you to v-cut the base of the cabbage leaf’s rib and toss it, so the leaf rolls flat. Instead I save that best part of the cabbage by slicing across it several times so it rolls up.
(ETA: cabbage rolls may be an adaptation of the stuffed grape leaves eaten by Sweden’s Charles XII while he was an unwelcome guest of the Sultan after losing the Battle of Poltava)
Second this one, I made French onion soup for the first time ever a few months ago, and it was so good, the wife and I ate on it for a week. We’ve done it once a month since then. I use sweet onions instead of yellow, and all the caramelization is done on the stove, making it a one-dish meal. I toast the bread/cheese in the oven (my broiler is disconnected, got that way after the valve developed a leak and it blew back in my face one day ) But dang good stuff!
For people who love French onion soup, but like one-pot dishes and/or other minimal cleanup options, I’ve done the entire thing in my slow cooker (takes a loooong time to caramelize the onions but almost no chance to burn them, and they’re extra good) to very good results, and there’s always Alton Brown’s option to do them in an electric skillet.
It has to be lasagne for me; I like to experiment with different meat and vegetable fillings. The best thing about it is that even if the experimental filling isn’t fantastic (the turkey mince one was quite feeble), overall every lasagne is 40% delicious as I never fail on the white sauce/pasta layers.
Lox and eggs on fresh bread. I make a fresh multi-grain bread about once a week. We always have an omelet on that day. But my favorite is lox and eggs. Saute a small onion, add the cut-up lox and saute some more, then add the eggs and stir lightly to mix the onion and lox, then let it set. Enjoy with the fresh buttered bread That’s my best; my wife does many better things.
One thing I like to cook because it’s so easy is fish baked with kosher salt, fresh rosemary sprigs, and lemon slices. The fish can be salmon, branzino, tilapia, snapper, or something else.
I love fish Florentine. Unfortunately, while my wife likes it, bell peppers don’t like her.
I don’t know if I have an absolute favorite, as my tastes vary by season and even the day of the week. But certainly one dish I make that gets very good reviews from the family is breaded and fried pork schnitzel with jaeger sauce (essentially an onion, mushroom, and bacon gravy type sauce). Paired with some homemade spaetzle and a crisp gewurztraminer, and you have a very nice dinner indeed!
) But dang good stuff!