Any cooks here?

I'm not a cook at a restaurant but I love cooking as a hobby and am a wine enthusiast

 

I too am a hobbyist cook I've been really digging Indian cuisine as of late, and have had a total blast messing around with all the spices.

As for the wine part of this thread: I'm not terribly knowledgeable about wine (perhaps a bit more than the average person), but I do love trying out different pairings with meals.

I'm a still very young and new to the cooking game, so I'd love to hear any of you guys' tips or favourite recipes.

 

Very into cooking, and I love good wine. Where should we start?

 

I'm in the process of (trying) to convert to vegetarianism. Asian cuisine has loads of great delicious vegetarian options so I've been cooking quite a lot recently.

Some stuff I've cooked in the last two weeks, bearing in mind none of this is 'fancy' food because it's all new to me:

Onigiri (rice balls made from sushi rice, sweet potato, avocado and teriyaki sauce)

Vegetable curry (coconut milk, Thai green curry paste, leftover vegetables)

Vegetable stir fry with home-made sauce (soy sauce, vinegar, corn flour, ginger, vegetables, udon noodles)

Mediterranean couscous (chickpeas, carrots, peppers, onions, raisins, couscous, cumin and coriander)

All extremely delicious with a big glass of Cabernet Sauvignon If anyone wants the full recipes for any of these, let me know and I'll post the links.

 

Hobbyist vegan chef-pixie here I love cooking when I have the energy and, well, the will ^^

I whip up my own lemoned-up spinach soup, it is simply to die for! My cinnamon buns rock too.
I made muesli energy bars the other day, they were yum (and dead healthy).

No one declines second servings of my mushroom stew on the side of some potatoes prepared in some way, fried asparagus, and beans in some form e.g. made into 'steaks'.

I once cooked for me, my friend, his girlfriend, a roommate and his friend.
I made the dish in a wook with satay (peanut) sauce, tofu, beans, veggies, coconut milk, additional spices and rice noodles. They loved it We had pears baked in the oven with a 'frosting' of sugar, margarine, and hazel nuts, with vanilla ice cream (which they said were "better than normal ice cream" ). The dessert was served with specially-brewed tea and home-made red wine

Feeeel the powah of the veggie side of the force ^.^

 

I can cook quite well when I want to.

 

Tonight I made a chicken marinade out of bourbon, peach jam, jalapenos, honey, and some seasonings, then put it into a saucepan, let it reduce, and whisked in some corn starch to make a sauce. Omg it was incredible!

 

Let's just say I go out to eat a lot and my refrigerator and freezer are more empty than they are full at any given time.

 

I just moved out of my home about a year ago. The kitchen in my apartment is a joke. It's a pre-war building with lovely moldings, original hardware...should have thought more about the practicalities. I'm a big foodie. I cried when Gourmet folded. Love the Countess and Miss Dean. I have a terrific grocer, Wegman's, so I buy a lot of their prepared dinners. I hate cooking for one, but I need to learn. I would love to discuss how to master this craft. Am will to take on all suggestions.

 

I can make the best black roux in the South. I love a good gumbo, and I make several a year. They taste best warmed back up out the deep freeze. It's an important step in culinary perfection.

Chicken bog, I do the same with it. Make it up outdoors in a big pot, and don't eat a bite. Warm it up later out the deep freeze.

I get creative in dispensing with leftover veggies. For instance, just the other day, I made up a roux, and all I tossed in that sucker was a hell of a lot of chopped celery and a clove of garlic.

I made up a really damn fine salmon fillet by adding in a couple of fennels...bulbs, greens and all. The part that went over the fence last? I like that. I also added some home-grown sage and thyme. Take that!

Do you know how to make walnut flour? Damn, if you're wanting to be an instinct-driven cave-man of a chef, you have GOT to learn to make a good walnut flour. Roll some nice, fatty walnuts with a rolling pin. Now, if you try to just roll them, you'll find them flying everywhere. Don't do that. Crush them with the rolling pin. As you find the walnuts sticking to the rolling pin, add flour until they stop sticking so bad to the rolling pin. Roll those babies until they're pulverized to as close as you can get to the point where you can't distinguish between the walnut and the flour...which you aren't going to do without being there all day and don't have to try to do, but you can get close enough without wasting too much time. Going any farther won't improve the usefulness of the stuff to you, I guarantee.

Here is one of many things you ought to do with your walnut flour. You ought to have always a lot of walnut flour. Once you have learned to make it, which goes very quickly once you know how, you use a lot of your walnut flour. You take the walnut flour and some regular all-purpose flour or spelt flour. You take some tender chicken breasts. Take some good Mediterranean olive oil. You get your baking pan ready to do some baking, which means coating your baking pan with coconut oil; I find coconut oil to be a remarkable substance, and eccentric old ladies give the stuff away, which makes it all the more remarkable. I like things I can get for free. Take a little bit of buttermilk. What you do is put the chicken breasts in the buttermilk, in a container, for a really really long time, like from when you get home from work until it's time to cook. Then, what you do is dunk the chicken breasts into the regular flour or spelt flour. Then, you let them sit for a while, and let them rest for about fifteen minutes while you smoke on your tobacco pipe or whatever it is you do, or you can take your chances and not let it sit. I have better luck letting it sit because I concentrate better after some tobacco. You very carefully dunk the chicken breasts into the olive oil, trying not to upset your previous dredge, and then you drop it into the walnut flour, trying to reduce as much as possible how much you handle the thing. You pack more walnut flour onto the top. Don't mess with it too much! The more you try to rub it around, the more you will ruin it! Just pack on as much as you can, but don't try to force it on there. And then, after you let it set up for however long you like if at all, you take a large spatula, and you put it in your greased baking pan. Bake at your favorite temperature. This is one of many possible uses of walnut flour, and I like to mix it up with some parsley, sage, rosemary or thyme. Also great on fish.

I like creole shrimp. I like anything with shrimp in it. Shrimp is a very very good food. Many people try to turn you to more expensive shellfish, but a very few good shrimp will go a hella long way in making good food. Creole shrimp, that said, is expensive as hell because it uses a king's ransom in shrimp, but if you know a good fisherman who really likes you, if he calls you up one day and offers you a little extra shrimp he's got, you say "Hell, yeah!" and you make yourself some creole shrimp. It warms up really well out of the deep freeze.

But back to gumbo, please try Justin Wilson's gumbo. Try to learn how to make that tar-black roux. It's hard to learn to make the tar-black roux like he makes, but it has such a wonderful flavor. The roux has a wonderful, sweet, spicy sort of flavor. It could stand on its own. You could take that stuff and spread it on sandwiches with a little deli meat. But no, use Justin Wilson's recipe for the gumbo, and the only modification that I would recommend was recommended to me by my mother, use a light, sweet, flavorful vermouth instead of the white wine he suggests.

Anyone tried chocolate-covered bacon? Yeah, that's good. I recommend adding a little Hungarian paprika to mix up the flavor a bit. That's always good.

I love chicken paprikash. You find a good gourmet recipe for chicken paprikash, and your grandma better take cover because you're going to be hurling rocks toward her quicker than you can throw up your kilt, mmm, mm.

I like to cook with gizzards. Oh, I know this wonderful recipe for chicken gizzards and rice in a crockpot on Livestrong, and it is so good. I also know another good recipe involving off-brand cola, which you boil the gizzards in...and go ahead and throw in some hearts, too. They're good.

I make a very good pate. Yummy! Pate taste soooooo good if you do it just right.

The only thing you have to do in order to be a good home-cook is not be afraid to have things go wrong or to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to serve dinner and have to explain that you partially burnt your first roux. Keep trying new things, and the more you try new things, the more you learn about the way your ingredients behave. It makes it possible for you to do better at cooking the old things if you learn more about how to make your ingredients do what they are supposed to do.

---------- Post added 10th Jun 2015 at 02:57 PM ----------

Oh, and if you get hooked on using gumbo file on things, gumbo file will thicken up a spaghetti sauce very nicely while also rendering a much nicer flavor. Gumbo file is the most valuable spice in your cabinet.

---------- Post added 10th Jun 2015 at 02:59 PM ----------

Oh, and as far as wines to try, my favorite wines are the ones that the wine merchants describe as "dirty." The ones that I like, when you buy them, they say, "You might find a little mud in that one." You take that and serve that to me, and I'll do anything for you.

 

I'm more of a baker than a cook, which goes against everything most people casually know about me. I make great birthday cake - and I recently made some Oreo cupcakes for a friend. They were pretty good if I do say so myself.

I enjoy cooking as well though - but I haven't a clue about what wines go with what. I just like white wine mostly - and will drink it with anything, or add red wine to some recipes like spag bol.

 

Well, the one trick to wine-selection is to not be a slave to orthodoxy. Train your instincts, and learn to trust your feelings. For instance, orthodox belief is that you ought to never put red wine with chicken. If you have really trained your instincts, one of these days, you'll cook one really good chicken dish and decide you want to pull a Gamay off the shelf, and you'll hear glass break as the rule-book flies out the window. It will be awesome if your instincts really know their way around. There is no substitute for training, honing and polishing your instincts through simple experience, patience, and taking time to understand how your choices affect the result.

 

Chicken Marsala is awesome though. It seems silly to limit your options when cooking.

 

I love to cook when I have time and energy and a more appreciative audience. My kids have gotten picky, and since I only make one dinner I usually have to deal with complaints.

At least my husband likes my cooking!

 

I can cook, but i'm too lazy to wash the dishes so i usually don't