So all these hours I've saved not cooking and eating I've had way more time to think about food. Anyway, I've got to thinking, my food has gone stale lately to the typical kinds of chicken, roasts, pastas, etc. I'm looking for the more exotic, I cook damn good wings and going with different techniques and different flavors, like ghost pepper or buffalo blue cheese. I also make lo mein and bad ass General Tso chicken. I've never made orange chicken so that's on the list, but I need other things to make. So what's you're not ordinary dishes you cook?
Didn't even think about Thai street noodles. And my dad lived and Thailand when he wasn't in Afghanistan I need to find a good asian mart around here. I've also added chicken piccata and pasta puttanesca to the list. Anyone know about good desserts? I saw some truffle ice cream and I think I'm missing something in life.
When going”exotic” the difficult part was translating/locating the ingredients. For example I was making some Thai dish and for the life of me couldn’t locate “kaffir leaves”, lime leaves .
There was a local joint with a Thai dude cooking that did it. He closed up last year. OMG.. he could get the noodles just a little bit crisp/seared. Did everything from scratch to order. His chicken pad Thai was unreal. Sad day when he closed his doors. There place that moved in sucks. Went there once a week for years.
What?!? With your six meals a day and world travels you have to have had some amazing dishes to share.
Deep fried wings and fries Baked wings Chuck roast for my salads The salads it goes on First attempt at stuffed pablanos Ribs in the electric smoker. BBQ baked potato Some Asian style noodles I threw together with scraps Lemon and garlic shrimp
Noodles are pretty easy - ramen (don't use their packet of whatever that nastiness is) makes it easy and cheap to find/make the noodle portion. After that just add what you like for veggies and protein. Some chicken stock and spices and life is good. I do a baked fish with marinara, kalamatas, and feta the boss loves. Sadly she doesn't do spicy at all which really limits me, I try to do my portions spicier after cooking with some stuff but it's just not the same. Indian is much easier to do than you'd think. Been having fun working on a verde sauce using tomatillas lately. We watch The Chew most every day and if she sees something she likes I'll bookmark the recipe and try it out. Also I'll tell her to just grab something she thinks is interesting at the store then I'll hit google to figure out what to do with it - works for starting with a protein or even a veggie or spice.
My wife makes a mean orange chicken. This might sound kind of basic, but a meal that the whole family loves is when she sautee's pork chops in a pan and then throws in a couple cans of kraut...cooks it for about an hour. Basic but delicious. A couple of weeks ago she took chicken breast and beat the living shit out of them until they were about 1/2" thick. Coated them with some kind of exotic batter and pan fried. That along with Au Gratin potatoes was just heaven.
I just bought an InstaPot - never used a pressure cooker before and like the programmable aspect - did kielbasa and kraut the other night, holy shit good stuff in 20-30 min total prep and cook.
Butter Chicken, Masalla, Sagg, all good options garlic chili paste is key with these. And the bases freeze well so you can make a massive amount and then just defrost and add protein of choice. Rice noodles are cheap and easy to make anything with. For lighter dishes use parchment paper and make a pouch (light fish like swai, and a butt load of veggies, seasoning, lemon juice, hot peppers) quick no pot meal.
My ex would do some kind of German ribs in sourkraut I need to find a recipe for. I like the idea of using kielbasa too, I wonder how deer sausage would do in that. I don't have a crock pot or pressure cooker so that's now on the list.
I had a ridiculous pad see ew last night. Wasn't even a cheat day but I'm a weak bitch and it was delicious.
I really want to start making sushi/rolls but it seems so labor intensive for it. But i've been known to eat 3-4+ rolls in one sitting so maybe bulk wouldn't be so bad. Rice cooker here I come!!! Living in the outskirts of Houston I'm sure I can go closer in and find awesome markets for any kind of ingredient too.
Part of the instapot reasoning was using it as a rice cooker too, I'll try that out tonight or tomorrow and see how it works. The 20+ year old rice cooker was on it's last legs. And it was cheap after t-day.