Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cooking and dinner

Cooking Novice Attemps Salmon Dish in Quest for Love!

lemonfridge — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:00:32 -0800

I'm a complete novice cook, but I'm cooking salmon tagliatelle for my girlfriend on her birthday. I've made it twice for myself but I think it could be better... Ok, so far I'm frying the salmon fillets with a drop of oil till they are almost done, then adding some chopped spring onions to the pan during the final few min.

Then I'm adding cream and chives to the pan and mixing it all together, breaking up the salmon.

Add the salmon to the cooked tagliatelle, mix mix mix, serve. Serving with some nice bread and some wine.

It tastes fine, and my sister and dad have both enjoyed it. I just want to make it tastes a little bit more special. Any suggestions?

please note: I have never ever ever cooked anything before in my life. I don't enjoy it at all and I get extremely stressed during. Please keep it simple! :)

Making dinner for a girlfriend and I need your help!

OuttaHere — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:28:44 -0800

Making dinner tonight for a lady friend - Need suggestions! We'll be drinking lots of wine and I was thinking maybe something we could both do together.

She doesn't eat red meat, it's pretty hot outside and we may be grilling although it's not necessary.

I was thinking of something along the lines of chicken kabobs w/ veggies and a good summer salad. I'm pretty decent in the kitchen but don't want something I can screw up.

Thanks mefi!

25 and TRYING to COOK

designbyme — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:48:54 -0800

I'm 25 and starting to cook - What? Where do I get it? Why? I'm 25 and me and my roommate are just starting to cook on our own. Our add water and microwave days of college are over. Plus we like to have friends over sometimes, and ordering a pizza makes for a lame dinner party.

Basically this just feels like something we should be doing, it's fun to try new things and in general, it saves money!

Some things I always liked growing up:

• Big Mac 'N Cheese fan
• Anything with Cool Whip...
• Mom makes this breaded chicken that got baked...
• Love salads, been trying to broaden my horizon in terms of dressing

I also always struggle with whether to buy the brand names or the store labels. Does it make a difference?!?! What do you guys buy and why?

Anyway.... I'd love to hear your ideas. I'd love some new easy recipes, but I'm really curious about the art of grocery shopping too. Discount store? Upscale store?

Thanks in advance!! If your ideas are really good, I'll have you all over for dinner. ;)

What shall I feed the playful masses?

itesser — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:45:32 -0800

I need more ideas for "game night" food! I've done curry and chili in the past, and am tossing around lasagna and gumbo as possibilities in the future, but want more options. Since every cooking question is special, there is Every so often there happens to be a gathering of 5-7 people in the house I'm living in. Not every one shows up at the same time, or eats at the same time, so it's not quite a dinner where I can expect every one to sit down and focus 20 or 30 minutes on "meal time".

Curry and chili were smashing successes because I could spend an hour hanging around the kitchen, adding more ingredients, tasting and spicing. I stuck the bread in the oven (naan and corn, respectively), and when it was done whoever was hungry grabbed a bowl and served themselves.

I experiment and improvise a lot when I cook. The curry was based on several recipes and vague memories of how my husband does it. The chili was based on several recipes and what sounded good.

basic criteria:
- flexible, forgiving, scalable.
- reheats well/makes good leftovers
- doesn't rely on meat* or exotic ingredients (the spice selection is limited)
- doesn't need side dishes (bread/rice/basic pasta are fine)
- don't need food-processor/blender or electric mixer/kitchenaid

* sometimes a vegetarian shows up, sometimes not. I can use TVP in place of ground beef, and chicken when she's not around, but want to avoid recipes where each person gets their own steak/chicken breast/piece of fish

Bonus points:
- doesn't need constant attention
- includes garlic

Help me cook teh pigmeetz.

dirtynumbangelboy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:24:53 -0800

PorkFilter: give me your recipes for our tasty piggy friends. I'm working with some of my fellow students on a dinner party, in which we are going to try and use a pig from snout to tail. So far we've already got deep-fried ears as a crunchy pre-meal snack, and a few other recipes.

So I'm looking for two things:

1) I'm doing the cold app, which will involve a hunk o pigmeat cooked sous vide, then sliced carpaccio thin, and wrapped around a takeoff of Ferran Adria's liquid olives. The dish will be four (bite-sized) pieces, and I want to make the four kinds of 'caviar' to be four classic flavour profiles that go with pork, before we launch into the rest of the meal which will be (hopefully) a bit more inventive. I've already figured one needs to be a classic barbecue (the vinegary sort, not the thick molasses/tomato), one will be oregano/lemon/garlic (think pork souvlaki), and one apple/mustard. I'm a bit stuck on the fourth, and I'm well open to changing any of the others. So I'd love to hear your classic pork recipes from around the world, to look at the flavour profiles.

2) We're also looking for recipes that use uncommon cuts or parts of the animal. There will probably be some variation on collard greens (though not collard; whatever bitter greens are fresh at the time) using a ham hock, but we're looking at how to use some other bits. We're largely staying away from most offal, though we might do something with tongue.

Note: we will be staying away from bacon for the most part, because bacon in a meal is kind of a gimme. We're open to using lardo if we can find someone making it locally from organic free range pigs.

Thoughts?

What the hell is a Round Roast?

DarlingBri — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:11:07 -0800

I have in my possession a large cut of beef called a round roast. What is it (pot roast, maybe?) and how do I cook it - tomorrow? I completely failed to pull it together in time to get the turkey required for a traditional Irish Christmas dinner. I will no doubt survive, as will the other holiday diners. Instead, we are apparently having beef, which is absolutely fine by me.

However, I am not at all familiar with this cut of meat. It is a round roast; it says so on the package. While I have cooked all manner of roast beef in my time, I do not know what a round roast is.

What I have to hand:

1) A 2.2kg (4.85 lb) round roast, almost entirely devoid of fat - as in, no fat rind at all bar one sad little 1 inch by 8 inch strip which I can only assume indicates "this side up."

2) A shitload of fatty bacon, which my mother suggested as a method for dealing with said lack of fat should it be an issue;

3) Potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and no other roasting vegetables;

4) Truckloads of wine, garlic, mustard, fresh rosemary and other seasonings;

5) A turkey bag.

What I do not have is access to any store, since it's now 1 am on Christmas day. (Happy Christmas, by the way.)

This is apparently a tougher cut of beef, which is rather disappointing considering it was nearly €10 per kilo, but here we are. I have read suggestions to boil it for an hour and then roast it; to smother it in bacon and roast it; and to put it in the turkey bag and roast it.

I trust Mefi's epicures more than random internet strangers. (Shut up, you're not strangers...) Can anyone equate this cut to something with which I might be more familiar and/or suggest a method and cooking time for this makeshift holiday dinner?

From our table to yours, thanks.

Cooking party menus & ideas?

CaptApollo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:23:51 -0800

Menu/recipes for a cooking party? Many of my friends are great cooks, and I am pretty darn good in the kitchen myself--we all find great pleasure in the act of cooking. I would like to plan a dinner party where we all cook together in my kitchen, then share the fruits of our labor. Please help me create a multi-course menu that several people (4 or 5) can work on at once.

kitchen is well outfitted with pretty much all the doodads and appliances you could need, but only four eyes on the stove and one oven (non convection)

there's a nice island we can all work around comfortably, but not enough counter space for anything that takes up gobs and gobs of room

no outdoor grill and circulation is kind of crap (I frequently set the alarm off using my grill pan - OK for me, but not a lot of fun for parties)

Obviously, the cooking is the entertainment here, so hands-on food is preferable to delicious but non-interactive food like marinate-and-fire recipes. Proverbial bonus points for autumnal seasonality, wine pairings. Adventuresome recipes are not a problem.

Other hints for making such an event a success, like how to enhance a groovy 'food sensuous' instead of 'worky' mood?

What the duck?

timeistight — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:48:56 -0800

How to cook a duck? We're having a young, free-range duck for dinner tonight – it's thawing in the sink right now – but we haven't a clue what to do with it. Help us avoid a Fawlty-ish disaster.

What can a non-cook bring for a Thankgiving treat?

sian — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:19:39 -0800

My partner and I are hilariously bad cooks. What's something easy that we can make tonight or tomorrow morning and bring to his parents' house for Thanksgiving? We'd like to bring a dessert or something they're not already making, which I'm going to assume is your typical Thankgiving fare--turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes.

And although I'd really just like to get a can of cheap cranberry sauce and dump it in a bowl, I'd like to make a nice gesture to his family.

Can you help me determine a ballpark calorie figure for grandma's stew?

Chorus — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:56:50 -0800

Can you help me determine a ballpark calorie figure for grandma's stew? So my grandmother makes this stew/concoction everyday and whoever passes through her house [a family hub central] usually grabs a bowl. The school year means I'm passing through every weekday, and before I chow down I'd really like to know what sort of calories/nutritional values I'm dealing with.

Receipe:
-500g steak mince/ground beef [the kind with hardly "white" in the meat]
- Carrots
- Parsnips
- Mushrooms
- Onion
- Packet o' oxtail soup.

According to my investigations, grandmother boils the mince, leaves it stand overnight and then skims off the layer of fat the next morning [I've never heard of that before, but whatever]. Then the raw, chopped veg are added, then the soup. It's brought to the boil again and then left simmer in a veritable cauldron [oh you think I'm joking] all day and people just take what they want from there.

So far, I've been grabbing a cereal bowl for dinner - any idea of the calorific value of that?

Everyone else grabs say a pasta bowl of the stew, and then they add in boiled potatoes, sprinkle cheddar on top and a few cuts of buttered bread - surely that must be calorie overload?

A part of me says the stew is fine and to stop being so anal - but I've worked really dilligently to lose a stone in weight this past month through exercise and good diet, so I dont want my dinner everyday to be a possible blind spot.

And we're Irish, in case you couldn't tell [not that it impacts anything, but yeah. Suspecions confirmed.]

What gesture is equivalent to a week of free meals?

scarylarry — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 03:00:06 -0800

How do I show my appreciation for housemates who've cooked me several nice meals in a row, when I can't cook and I'm too poor to take them to dinner? I'm living in a houseshare with two guys I'd never met until a couple of weeks ago. This past week was terribly hectic for me, and my housemates generously made dinner for me every night (some of them quite involved and fancy). I want to show my appreciation, but I'm not sure how. I am a lousy cook, and I am really living on pocket change at this time. Normally I'd buy them dinner out or a couple of nice bottles of wine, but I simply can't afford it.

I've offered to do the washing up after each meal, but these gentlemen insist that I relax in my few hours off. For people I don't know at all, they've been incredibly kind, and I want to do something for them. Any ideas?

What should I cook in France?

I Love Tacos — Mon, 08 May 2006 22:20:48 -0800

What should I make for dinner? I'm in France, have a kitchen, some foie gras and no clue. Goal: cook a delicious dinner for four.

Challenge: I'm in the French countryside. I need help getting the ingredient names in French as well as English. I'm not a particularly amazing chef, but I know what things are supposed to taste like and can follow directions.

Prep time: I have about five hours to purchase ingredients (including finding the stores), and about 2-3 hours between the start of cooking, and the start of the meal.

(and please don't suggest foie gras and/or truffle tacos. I'd love them, but our guests would not.)

Mmmmm...veggie everything...

jennyjenny — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:15:26 -0800

Cooking for a LOT of people. Vegan people, and nonvegan people. And I don't want to make chili. So I'm having an informal dinner party for about 15-20 people. And the food needs to be vegan. I'd rather not make a big pot of stew or soup, I think I'd prefer four or five different dishes. And I'd like for the food to be palatable to nonvegans as well.

Anyone have any good vegan dishes that will feed that many people, that aren't too crazy hard to prepare?

Duck, duck, frozen chicken

hamster — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:55:09 -0800

I have three pounds of frozen chicken stew meat. What should I do with it? It's great stuff, from what I can tell: organic, free-range and from a local farm. Problem is, it's just me and sometimes a friend, and it all has to be thawed at once. I'll definitely make a simple chicken soup in my small crock pot, and if I do that once or twice, I'll have some to freeze and save. I've never made chicken soup "long-hand," on the stove, but I'm open to trying. Is stew meat good for anything else--can I use it in place of cubed chicken in recipes, or stir-fry it?

Brilliant "dinner hacks" anyone?

zharptitsa — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 23:22:23 -0800

Nutrition filter: I am looking for unique ideas for making quick, easy, heathy, inexpensive dinners (in my case, for two) every night... or at least most nights. "Dinner Hacks" you might say. I feel like I've tried all the standard "solutions" already (for example, cooking a few big meals on the weekend and eating leftovers the rest of the week). There must be something else I can try. Here's the gist... I come home from work somewhere between 7 and 9 PM every night (and generally go to sleep no later than 11 PM). I have an extremely stressful job and I am absolutely zonked when I get home. The idea of cooking anything for dinner at that point makes me want to curl up in the fetal position. But when we don't order pizza or get something prepared from the grocery store, I do manage to muster up the energy to make tuna melts or spaghetti or something equally super-easy. My husband does grill every once in a while, but can barely boil water otherwise. Side dishes and salad only exist at my house on holidays.

This has gone on for a couple of years. I am now at the point where I've been getting really sick and I know a large part of this is due to my bad nutrition and eating habits. I NEED to start *consistently* eating a real, healthy dinner every night or I'm going to fall apart. (Actually, I need to eat a healthy breakfast and lunch too, but one thing at a time...) As I mentioned, I've feel like I've tried all of the standard tricks: crock pot cooking; making dinner in the morning (yeah, right); cooking a bunch of meals and freezing them, you name it. Nothing sticks. I think the biggest problem is that although I actually like to cook, I HATE to plan meals. For a while, my husband and I had a deal where he would (in theory) plan the meals for a week and I would cook them. The problem was that he hates planning meals as much as I do and whenever he would choose recipes, he would choose pretty elaborate ones. (I consider anything with more than five ingredients elaborate.)

Anyway, I know the real answer to my dilemma is to just suck it up and plan and cook dinner every night. But having really, really tried to suck it up on numerous occasions and failed miserably, I am now looking for some brilliant suggestions. Is there a certain way you go about planning/cooking dinner that has changed your life? A favorite cookbook? A website? If I have another grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, I may turn into one. Thank you!