If you can’t tell, I’m pretty crazy about food. After coming home for the summer from college (one of the top ranked engineering schools, but alas, one of the bottom ranked for campus food), I’ve had a low key job and no real desire to recontact high school friends, which has left me with bundles of free time. What better opportunity to cook like crazy?
So I’ve been spending a solid few hours each day recipe searching, cooking, and eating; yum! But I think my dinner last night might have been my best yet. I started by marinating baby octopus in olive oil, sherry vinegar, sea salt, crushed garlic, and jalapeno pepper. In the mean time I made a spicy tomato sauce with sauteed onions and garlic, crushed tomatoes, basil, rosemary, garlic paste, tomato paste, salt, pepper, and chili flakes, reduced on the stove for an hour or so. I sliced fresh ciabatta, drizzled with olive oil, and tossed on the grill, at the same time as the octopus. When everything was ready, I spread the tomato sauce on the crostini and topped with the octopus. It was so crunchy and olive oily and fishy and yummy! I finished off with a nice chocolate mousse, with whipped (by yours truly) cream, raspberries, and mint.
I wanted to eat the crostini when it was still hot, so I didn’t take any pics, but I took one of the mousse (yes I am a bit strange, why do you ask?)
Do I have to pick just one? I’ve got way too many favourite home-cooked meals to narrow it down to a single perfect meal.
I’d say tonight’s meal ranks somewhere in the Top 10, though.
I made veal meatballs flavoured with toasted pine nuts, fresh thyme and porcini mushrooms, and cooked them up in a sauce made from dry red wine, some of the water leftover from rehydrating the porcinis, minced garlic and shallots, and a little heavy cream stirred in just at the end.
I also made a batch of homemade linguine to sop up all the lovely sauce, and a fresh green salad with a garlicky balsamic dressing. Dessert was a cornmeal-crusted apricot custard tart, still slightly warm from the oven.
Do you go to Georgia Tech?
On topic, I don’t know if I can identify the best meal I’ve ever cooked, but my top three are (I make these with some regularity - a couple times a month)
Mini Turkey meatloafs with red and sweet onions, green pepper, and a homemade tomato meat sauce.
Chicken Cacciatore, with homemade marinara, a red wine reduction, and sun-dried tomatoes.
Italian Stuffed chicken breast - Chicken breast stuffed with peperoni, mozzarella, and provolone, then breaded and baked. Served with marinara and pasta.
I think it was the time I cooked a full Indian meal for a dinner over at a friend’s apartment. The menu was
Gobi Ka soup (a Kashmiri ginger cauliflower soup - it’s fantastic!)
Murgh ke matezar tukray (little grilled chicken bits - ‘Chicken the Tasty Way’)
Raita, Lachumbar, Chutney
Naans
Vegetable Biryani
Chicken Korma
Saag Paneer
Aloo Gobi
Lamb Vindaloo
Someone else did dessert - I think it was a couple of pies…
The hardest part was getting the whole thing over to their place - they had the condo with the squash court, and the other two guys were playing a wee tournament that afternoon. So there I was with everything in 4 milk crates ready to haul across town for the actual meal. It went very well - for a couple of folks, that was their first introduction to Indian cuisine.
I did a one-day cookery course at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, one of the best restaurants in the UK, run by Raymond Blanc. Then I invited my friends over to try out the things I learned how to cook. The meal was as follows:
Cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup
and
Spinach and lemon soup
(Swirled into a yin-yang design)
followed by
Truffle, gruyere and wilted Swiss chard tarte
with
Roquefort, pear, pecan and celery salad in a sour cream and roquefort vinaigrette
then
Confit leg of guinea fowl on a fondant potato with a fricasee of wild mushrooms in a madeira sauce
and for dessert
Tarte au citron made with brioche dough instead of pastry, with crème fraiche
It was utterly bleedin’ lovely though I say it myself. I had to buy the butcher out of goose fat and then was awake for pretty much the entire night before, doing the confit. I haven’t repeated the exercise for reasons of expense and time, but I do the savory tarte a lot - it takes a few hours to make but the results are spectactular.
My own personal speciality is homemade spaghetti sauce, but the best meal I’ve made lately was Spiedino de Mare (dish served at Carrabba’s Italian Grill). I tossed fresh shrimp and sea scallops in seasoned bread crumbs, sauteed them until just done in olive oil, and then drizzled them with a sauce made from butter, white wine, garlic, and lemon juice. It was divine!
hobscrk777: Nope, Carnegie Mellon. Do you guys have the same problem?
Le Ministre: I should meet your friend, my two favorite things are squash and cooking!
jjimm: I’ve never done a cooking course, but that meal sounds very baroque and ornate, not something I would think up myself. I should consider one.
I’ll throw in one more meal I made. Lobster ravioli with a champagne sauce with instructions from this site. It wasn’t one of the best meals I’ve made, but certainly one of the most filling. I had it at 12 in the afternoon, and I didn’t need to take another bite until 3pm the next day. And I’m a big eater.
In December 1981, I was working in Miami. A friend from Maryland called to say he was driving to Key West for New Year’s Eve, and he asked me to join him on Big Pine Key for some camping and scuba diving. I stopped in Homestead and bought some fresh-picked tomatoes and sweet corn, then drove to Big Pine Key. We set up camp, went diving and caught some spiny lobsters. I cooked the tails and the corn on our camp fire. Sweet corn and tomatoes picked that day, lobsters caught that hour; it was not only the best meal I’ve ever prepared, I think it may have been the best meal I’ve ever had.
Not the best food I’ve ever made (I have made some absolutely amazing braised things in my time) but the most impressive to pull off, I think - for my mom’s last Christmas party I did all the cooking for 40 people. I made beautiful glazed pork tenderloins, a potato gratin, a roasted beet salad with a gorgeous walnut vinaigrette, and I forget what else, plus a bunch of appetizers, and four cakes. Everybody said it was amazing.
I suppose I could post some long complicated thing that took me hours to prepare, but instead I’ll… Actually, it took me hours to prepare.
My mother recently turned 70, so we converged on her house to celebrate. We decided that while we were all there, she was not allowed in the kitchen. She’s cooked nearly every day for the past 52 years, and that weekend she was getting a break. It nearly drove her nuts!
The first thing I made was the salad. I found some excellent olive bread at a farmers market. I tore it up into little chunks, drizzled it with olive oil, and toasted it to GB&D. Then to some romaine lettuce I added olive oil, coddled egg yolks, lemon juice, and worcestershire sauce. I topped it with the croutons and some freshly grated parm. Anchovies were served on the side.
I put some corn (still on the husk) on the grill, then boiled up a big pot of lobster claws and snow crab legs. Drawn butter, sliced up lemons, and beer rounded out the meal.
Everyone made great meals but mine won the award for Mack Daddy of food.
Absolutely. We sound like we could be comrades in spatulas. My immense dissatisfaction with the GT dining facilities is what led me to learn how to cook flavorful, healthful meals, much like yourself and CM.
But I think…
a sage and garlic pork tenderloin with an apple sauce (fresh fall farmer’s market apples) over a bed of creamed leeks, side dish of green beans vinegrette
or possibly
veal saltimbocca made with fresh ingredients from the Campo di Fiori market in Rome
I am a fairly good cook and can make a really spectacular Moussaka, but it takes forever to make (almost a full day of effort) and I only make it about once or twice a year - tops.
That is the problem with really good food - not always, but often it takes quite a bit of effort, time and money to prepare it correctly.
I made a frisee salad that I tossed with a truffled vinaigrette, and then took some natural sea scallops seasoned with sea salt and pepper, seared them until about medium, placed them over the bed of frisee, garnished with a mixture of brown butter and truffle oil and banyuls vinegar, then shaved some parmigiano reggiano cheese over it.
And then I ate it. That dish was fucking fantastic.
