I don't cook much myself, but both of my parents love to cook and I love to eat what they cook...does that count for anything? :P I did make spaghetti sauce by myself tonight, though. Without a recipe. It actually came out pretty damn tasty! I'm using it in a spaghetti pie. :D
ohhh that' impressive! I am super anxious about even a bit deviation from recipes with cooking, since new-foods scare me a bit. I couldn't even imagine doing anythign without a recipe at this point. I hoard recipe books and blog posts because I am afraid of being unprepared.
I follow recipes for stuff I haven't made before, usually. Plus I don't really bake because that's chemistry and you can't really fake that as much. Like, I do not touch anything with rising agents. I tend to sort of look at recipes and then figure out what I want to use from them, which started sort of out of necessity because my roommate won't eat onions or peppers, so I needed to modify stuff. And I end up looking up substitutions online a lot. Like, I recently stumbled on this neat recipe for cauliflower rice, which looks delicious except for how I'm allergic to oranges and my roommate hates goat cheese and radishes. So for the liquid + tang + dairy that would've come from the olive oil, orange juice, and goat cheese? I'm gonna toss the cauliflower in yogurt before I roast it. And I'm still debating on what I'm doing for actual flavor, because the hazelnut would be nice, but I think cumin and coriander would go well with it, except my roommate's never had coriander and might hate it, so I might just do almond and cranberry but I think that might taste too much like Christmas. Usually I'm not that adventurous, but I know what things I like, and a lot of them (pasta, butter, cheese, meat, pesto, parsley, capers, white sauce) can just be shoved vaguely together in different combinations and turn out well.
I just used a can and a half of tomato sauce and mixed in garlic, parmesan, basil, oregano, and a splash of red wine. All eyeballed, because I can't be bothered with measuring shit when I'm flying by the seat of my pants anyway. The spaghetti pie came out delish, for the record.
I'm going to make gourmet burgers tonight starting with ground meat and herbs and spices (bit of garlic, some thyme, Worcestershire sauce, Colman's mustard powder, and black pepper) topped with Point Reyes blue cheese, butter-sautéed mushrooms, and Jamaican rum BBQ sauce. Optional lettuce, tomatoes and pickles available for those as like 'em.
You can apparently bullshit it pretty effectively if you have the basic ratios down. Will report back whenever I've gotten a chance to experiment a bit. (which will probably be quite a while from now haha)
I had this really delicious thing at a restaurant once that I've adopted and made my own. It was a chicken breast stuffed with mashed potatoes and surrounded with cooked veggies(zucchini, bell peppers(sometimes I add these), onions, and yellow squash. And then there is a light drizzle of barbecue sauce on top of it all. I've had to play with it a lot because it was based on my memory of eating it once. My family likes it a lot and they call it "that one chicken thing you make". Making it for a large group is a pain though @_@
@Morven here's the baked oatmeal recipe. the base recipe is at the top, and then a whole bunch of variations at the bottom. if i recall correctly i used plain shredded coconut rather than sweetened and it tasted just fine. just to warn you, it does make a pretty big batch, so you might want to cut it in half or something and use a smaller tray.
xD I'm not one for food aesthetics, so I skip the stuffing part. I've got the veggie part down pretty well, but I'm still having trouble getting the chicken to taste quite right. It probably doesn't help that I only cook it a couple times a year! My mom had a hankering for it, so I may cook it again soon. I kinda destroyed my spoons last year and I'm having a hard time doing much of anything these days, so who knows :c
that sounds so delicious I'd probably just about kill for even just a picture tbh. I like so many things that are kind of conflicting. Or really really weird combinations of food that aren't exactly doable if I'm cooking for company. I still have to figure out a dish that has both cheddar AND dark chocolate in it, now that I found somethings which combine salmon and avocado. Chocolate and Cheese need to have all the holy food-matrimony ever. I'm thinking maybe a boar casserole with a chocolate sauce? I am scared to try and figure out a recipe on my own for that though. Boar is super expensive. Also wow you like capers. That's. I know almost no one who tolerates them. That's literally the one kind of ingredient I don't even attempt to substitute if I see it in a recipe I just ignore it and pretend it's not even there.
Salmon and avocado sounds like such a good idea, honestly. What did you make with them? (and do you have a recipe?)
I haven't tried it yet it's grilled salmon with avocado salsa! I have the recipe around here somewhere I'd need to scan it and translate it. But! I'll try it first just so I will not expose you to horrible recipes that don't quite work lmao (Though that particular magazine usually has gr9 recipes)
I wonder if avocado salsa would work with the thing I'm making today (spicy salmon and bell pepper mush, served with salad and pita bread). It has the right kind of spices, I think. I'm gonna try, we have avocado
this salsa recipe (4 portions) calls for 2 ripe avocados, four tablespoons of lime juice, a red onion, cilantro, salt, pepper and a teaspoon sugar. basically cube the onion and avocado finely, then mix everything else in there. and it should fit! The salmon filet they want made with the avocado salsa for this recipe is in a sweet chilli sauce, so spicy definitly works with it!
I will straight-up eat capers out of the jar if I have some excuse to have them out to add to other things. I love them. Like, the classic thing of a bagel with smoked salmon, red onion and capers is delicious, but I live in Wisconsin now and have a sort of hatred and despair relationship with the smoked salmon I can get locally (I grew up in BC: I have had salmon that was started smoking with a custom seasoning setup within a couple hours of getting caught and dropped off at my house within a day or two of being done, just because my cousins wanted to go fishing for a weekend. I am ridiculously spoiled about salmon.). My favorite caper recipe right now, though, is lemon caper cream sauce for over asparagus. Boar casserole sounds really good. I think I've also seen recipes for chocolate cheddar fudge, though, if you'd ever want to try a dessert route.
