Official Cooking Thread

[Kilkenne]

Here's where I'm going to be posting some recipes and stuff, and we'll likely be posting pictures (per an MSN conversation between all of the old folks).

Posting guidelines:

Your post must have real content. Posting "That looks so good!" is great and all, but you should be adding something to the conversation, not just fawning over something that someone else has posted.

Questions are 100% okay.

Please give feedback if you ran into a problem with someone's recipe.

I am re-iterating right now that you are not to be posting bad posts in my thread. Don't do it. You know who I mean. Yes, you.

Also, legit post some recipes. Don't just go copy paste something from somewhere else.

[Genevieve]

This is my signature dessert. And it's French. It's very easy and very delicous, everyone must try.

Apple Tarte Tatin

Note: you need a fry pan that is oven-proof, i.e. no plastic handles.

Ingredients:

4-6 apples (depending on size of apples and size of pan, whichever kind of apples you like - I use Granny Smith)
2 tbs lemon juice
200 g sugar
30 g butter
One sheet of frozen puff pastry (or you could make your own, shortcrust would work fine too)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190C (375 F). Peel, core and quarter apples. Toss with lemon juice and 100 g sugar in a bowl.

2. Heat remaining sugar and 2 tablespoons of water in fry pan over low heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium and cook for about 5 minutes until sugar turns a light golden brown colour.

3. Add apple to pan, cut-side up and scatter dots of the butter over them. Lower heat and cook for a further 5 minutes to partially cook the apples. Remove from heat.

4.  Place pastry over top of pan, tucking the edges in. Put the pan on a baking tray to catch any liquid that might bubble over and bake in the oven for 35 minutes until the pastry is cooked and golden.

5. Remove from oven and leave to rest in the pan for 10 minutes. Carefully turn the pan upside down onto a large plate. ENJOY.

This would work well with other fruits too - pears, peaches, apricots etc.

And please be serving with cream or ice cream. And post pics. Seriously, everyone make this.

[Kilkenne]

Beef Wellington, per Genevieve request

Ingredients

2 sticks cold unsalted Butter (cut these into 1/2-inch bits)
3 1/3 cup Flour (3 might be better for you, use my thing first, see how you like it, I like it a bit more savory/bland in the pastry, I'm weird)
1 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Vegetable Shortening (the solid kind)
5  tbsp Cold Water
1/2 cup Red Wine (Can increase this if you want a more rich sauce)
3 6ish oz Beef Tenderloin Steaks
safflower oil (this is literally the hardest thing to get, if you don't have this)
1 1/2 lbs White Mushrooms
1/2 cup Heavy Cream
1 Shallot
1 Egg
1 tbsp Water

1. Alright, we're gonna start off by makin' some dough. You combine the flour and salt in a food processor. You mix that up really good, it's just powder, alright. Then what you're gonna do is slowly add in the fat while you mix it. After you've added your delicious fat, you're going to add your cold water. But be sure that the dough remains solid. It should crumble, but be largely solid.

2. PRO-TIP: You're going to want to absorb all the moisture out of the dough, or your dough is gonna suck. What I do is mash it flat with a rolling pin, put it in a huge freezer bag, and put it in the refrigerator. Eventually, it'll hydrate the thing a little. Don't ask questions, this isn't your science class, nerd. If it doesn't fit into your bag whilst flat, just make a disc.

3. Clean your blender or food processor. I hope you have a food processor and not a blender, otherwise you probably really struggled with your dough. You're gonna clean that and then throw the mushrooms in there. You want to chop them really finely. But don't puree them. That would ruin them, so don't do it. Or you'll need new mushrooms that you won't ruin. Jerk.

4. Now you're going to go ahead and ruin your mushrooms. You are going to put them in a skillet and sautee them. You can add a little olive oil to this to help them not stick and that's pretty okay. Presonally, I add extra butter (not in recipe) to the skillet to give them a nice buttery aftertaste in the steak. You don't have to do this, but I'm a culinary hero, so why wouldn't you follow my instructions?

5. Now your'e going to gaze upon the glory that is your steaks. Look at dem steaks. You can now season them with lawrys or salt/pepper if you want. Put a skillet on the back burner to get it really, really hot for dem steaks.

5a. Add the cream to your mushrooms and simmer them down until it gets pretty thick. But not burnt-on, because that would be awful. Just don't do that. Put it aside when it's done, low heat, whatever you gotta do. I leave mine on low heat because I'm cool.

6. Sear your steaks on the HOT SKILLET. Not the one that you had the mushrooms in, you dope. That would ruin this whole recipe. Don't be that guy. Sear them on each side for a minute or so. Then take them off. They gotta sit still for a bit, alright? If they don't cool down a bit you will torch them and ruin all your effort. Just chill out. Put them on a plate, or better yet, a wood cutting board to hang out. They'll be fine. Relax.

7. Now you're gonna take your dough outta the fridge, now that your steaks are seared and are chillin', coolin' down a little. Your dough should be hydrated or whatever, I don't know why I wait on this, dorks, you just do. You will roll this into one big flat thing on your counter if it's clean, or a massive cutting board with a rolling pin. Cut it in to as many pieces as you have steaks. Make them even, don't be a jerk.

8. Now, place one steak in the center of each little flat bit of dough that you've rolled out. Alright? Good.
8a. Now what you're gonna do is spoon that mushroom cream sauce you've been hanging out with this whole time that's been warming on the stove quietly (but not bubbling, just keeping warm) on top of your steaks. 1/3rd for each. It'll be pretty solid by now so it should stay.

9. Now, you've got several steaks hangin out with nothin' to do with mushroom cream hats on. You're going to ignore them for a second and beat your eggs in a bowl. Then you're going to mix your teaspoon of water into that bowl of eggs so that it gets all watered down after it's been beaten. Or a tablespoon, I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

10. Now, you're going to close up your little pastries. You just use a spatula or your fingers to get under the little flat bits of dough, right, and then you wrap them over top of the rest of the steak/mushroom mix. You fold it up, and if there are holes, you might have leftover pastry. If not, you're kind of hosed but this'll still work. Note to self to add a caveat to make a bit of extra pastry, or leave some aside.

11. Now you have little beef wellingtons. You're going to brush them with your egg mixture. This is so they brown up in the oven and become awesome, and not rock cakes. Don't forget this. You will regret it.

12.Bake at 400 for ~30 minutes. Start checking at 20 minutes, because when they're golden brown, THEY ARE DONE.

12a. While you bake, get a pot. A big black one will do, that's fine. Throw your shallots in there, give them a little colour. Now you're going to dump your red wine in there. Cook that down until it's almost a syrup-type mixture. This is the sauce you can serve your beef wellingtons on. You can omit this if you're not a wine-sauce person. I happen to be one.

Remove from the oven, and eat your beef wellingtons. I like garlic mashed potatoes with mine. But homemade fries also work. Queuing Neo to post homemade steak fries.

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Ever hear of/have Tarte Flambee?  I can get you the recipe if you want.
It's a quite tasty French pizza-ish meal.  Good as heck, too.

[Kilkenne]

I have not heard of this. Can you post this without copy/pasting from another site? This is important. I can get any recipe from any site, but the idea here is to not do this and speak from experience or knowledge (Go jack your mother's personal recipe book).

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Just went and jacked my mom's recipe book and FOUND IT!
Yeah!

Tarte Flambee

Dough
Mix:
4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Add:
3 Tablespoons olive oil

Make a wet center by slowly adding 1 1/2 cups water (keep bringing flour into the center and start making a ball).
Try to put as much air as possible in as you work the dough (stretch it out)
Final product should be sticky.

Rub oil over ball so that it won't stick to bowl AND to increase elasticity in the final product.
Keep in large glass bowl, place stone, etc. over the top.
Let rise for ~2 hours.

Sauce/Topping

24 oz. Sour Cream
1/3 Cup + 1 Tablespoon heavy whipping cream
1 egg
(Stir this together till you get a pudding consistency)
Add:
3 generous sprinkles of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

Add (one of the following):
Green onions OR
chives OR
parsley OR
cilantro

Topping:
Chop 1 package bacon
chop 2 onion (into thin rings)
shred swiss cheese (optional)

To assemble:
Roll out a handful of dough on a floured surface (roll it out very thin)
Place on oiled & floured cookie sheet
Add thin amount of sauce/topping
Top with bacon, onion, and cheese
Bake at 500 degrees on your oven's lowest rack for 8 minutes

Repeat using up all the dough and enjoy!

(If you have questions on this, post away.  I'm just copying the recipe)

[Kilkenne]

I'll try to make this Sunday and post some pictures, along with Lucy's Tarte Tatin

[Kyrolin Zenyar]

Good luck, and I can't wait to see the pics!

[Shadow]

Honey Rosemary Chicken:

Delicious recipe that has become my Thanksgiving tradition and signature dish.

Ingredients:

Whole raw chicken, cleaned
half cup of crushed rosemary (dry is fine)
three quarter cup of honey
3 tablespoons dijon mustard
salt and pepper
olive oil

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 450F. Wash the chicken inside and out and dry well. Slather it in olive oil. Salt and pepper all over, and massage about half of the rosemary into the chicken. (Yes, massage the raw chicken. Do it). Put the chicken in a roasting pan and roast it for 30 minutes.

While it is roasting, mix a quarter cup of honey, about half of the remaining rosemary, a big tablespoon of dijon mustard, and a quarter cup of hot water. After the 30 minutes at 450F, reduce the heat to 350F, poor the mixture over the chicken and cook it for 20 minutes. Make another batch of the sauce mentioned above, but with only hal as much water, and after the 20 minutes, poor the new batch over the chicken.

Finally, make the same sauce, but without the water. After a further 20 minutes, poor this glaze over the chicken.

Baste it regularly (~20 minute intervals) until it begins to get golden brown and the mere smell of it causes uncontrollable drooling. If it is not crispy enough, cook it on 450 for the last 20 minutes.

Total cooking time including the initial roasting at 450 should be around 2 hours for a 4.5lb chicken.


Added bonus: When you first poor sauce over the chicken, drop a bunch of bell pepper slices, potatoes, squash, whatever your favourite vegetable is aroun the sides of the roasting pan and roast them along with the chicken.



Gravy:

melt two table spoons of butter on medium heat. When it starts bubbling, add one tablespoon of flour and stir it like mad. Immediately start adding drippings from the chicken, about a quarter cup at a time, until the consistency you like is reached.

[The Lady Shael]

This is just what I need, I desperately need to learn to start cooking! I will post my pad Thai and zuppa Toscana recipes when I get back. :)

[Briar]

*I'll replace this with a post with a recipe once there is a reply"

I have a cookbook that Brian Jacques wrote with Redwall recipes. Anyone interested? If yes, if someone wants something specific form the books message me and I'll post it.

[Daryn]

My favorite dish/instant heart attack. This is what I remember from making it

Asian Style Chicken Francaise

4 chicken breasts, thinly sliced into 2 or 3 pieces each
2 sticks of butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 whole lemon
Orange Peels [optional]
vegetable oil
flour
panko bread crumbs [optional]
2 eggs
Pepper
Salt
Grated Parmesan
Flour
White Short Grained Rice [optional]

Serves four

1. Crack the eggs and beat them. After, put the eggs in a plate, the flour in a plate, and finally the panko bread crumbs in a plate

2. Lay out the chicken and flavor them by rubbing them with pepper and salt

3. Dredge the chicken thoroughly in the egg first. Then coat them in flour and egg again after this. If you don't want the egg texture, use the panko for a crunchy finish

4. Heat up the oil in a skillet. When it's hot enough, put as many chicken slices on until it is covered. Cook the chicken until the coat of egg/bread crumbs is a toasty golden color, like this crust of the bread: http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen/images/refimages/bread/types/bread_pumpkin_seed_crumb_500.jpg
Repeat until all the chicken is cooked.

5. Slice the chicken width wise until the pieces are around one inch thick. Besides getting rid of the use of fork, it checks to see if the chicken is cooked. Let it cool.

6. Sautee the garlic cloves and orange peels in a sauce pan at this time with very little oil. Cook until the garlic is browned. After, add some water and put the sticks of butter in.

7. When the butter is half melted, squeeze the lemon into the sauce. Add flour if you want to thicken it. Take the pan off the stove. Feel free to dredge out the garlic and orange peels.

8. Put the chicken over the white rice in a separate dish and then pour the sauce on. Spread grated parmesan cheese over the top.

Voila!

And Briar, post something up!

For the kicks, I'll post up another one

炸酱面! Otherwise known as Chinese Spaghetti. Served best with chicken or beef broth with tofu

Ingredients:
Garlic [2 cloves, sliced into smaller pieces or minced]
Scallions [sliced into widthwise]
5 teaspoons of cooking wine
1 cup water
Spaghetti or Chinese Rice Noodles/Egg Noodles[whatever amount you desire]
Vegetable oil
8 oz lean ground pork or beef
1 tsp of sugar
5 teaspoons of soy sauce
Some Cornstarch or flour

Serves four

1. Combine soy sauce, cooking wine, water, and sugar together in a bowl

2. Sautee the scallions and garlic first in a wok with oil, if you have one. Otherwise, a skillet or frying pan would be fine.

3. Put in the ground pork, and stir fry until browned.

4. Pour in the wine, soy sauce, water, sugar mixture into the wok and allow it to simmer.

5. Meanwhile, get the noodle ready. Put the noodles into plates.

6. Add flour or corn starch into the pork if you want to thicken the sauce. If you don't want to, add any remaining scallions onto the top of the sauce. Pour it into a big bowl and add a serving spoon to it.

This is done. When you want sauce, you spoon it onto the noodles. For more flavor, you can add black beans or hot peppers. You may also serve it over vegetables with the noodles.

[Neobaron]

Reserved for what I am going to call "~effort~ Fries"

I start the preparations in an hour.

Then, I wait.

Until tomorrow!

And then I will make them. And they will be delicious.

---

I decided to make them with peanut oil. Peanut oil burns much hotter than other oils, and to me just tastes better. Its a lot more fatty, but im from the souf and none of that matters *diabeetus imminent*

Please remember, if you try to make these, that fire is hot, and so is hot oil. I cannot be blamed if you lack the capability to make effective use of a stove or spatula.

Ingredients;
4 potatoes (white ones I guess? To me a potato is a potato is a potato unless its red, and then it goes in soup or stew.)
Peanut Oil (enough to fill the bottom of the pan about halfway.)
Salt (I prefer sea salt)
Some water
Distilled white vinegar

Step 1)
Cut the potatoes to a thickness of your liking. I bought a fry cutter for myself last christmas to save time in making fries, so it helps. I prefer shoestrings. Others prefer the fat things.

Step  2)
Put the taters in a bowl and submerge them completely in water

Step 3)
Add ~4-5 spoons of vinegar and stir a bit to make sure it gets around. You don't want like 4 fries that taste bad and the rest to be flavorless.

Step 4)
Let them sit for about a half hour to 45 minutes. Depending on the type of potato they will be kind of slimy at the end.

Step 5)
Remove from bowl and put into a bag/container and freeze them overnight. I mean you don't have to freeze them over night exactly, but they need to be frozen after being submerged.

Step 6)
Heat oil in a large-ish pan until its hot. I cook them on "high" and call it flash-frying because they get done pretty quick this way. I also like to drop a single sliver of potato in the pan to use as a gauge for the preparedness of the oil.

Step 7)
*dangerous*
Getting the potatos into the oil sounds easy enough, but water has a negative reaction to the oil, and remember your fries are full of frozen water. I prefer to use a spatula and just dip them a pile at a time rather than dumping. Either way, you will need to get all of the potatos in the pan and let them cook.

Step 8)
Another thing to remember about oil is that it will continue to cook even after something is removed from it. So when the fries just start to turn colors from a white/yellow to a more golden brown color, you need to be quick about getting them out or they will get real nasty and brown.

Step 9)
Sprinkle with salt and do your best job to shake them up so that they all get salted equally.

Step 10)
Serve immediately and enjoy. Goes best with something off a grill. I usually make italian sausages with these things.

---

The purpose for the vinegar is to give them a crunch and add a little flavor. It might seem trivial, but if you've ever had soggy fries you know how awful they can be.

Don't burn yourself. Oil is really, really hot. I have been burned all up and down my arms several times and have a couple scars from it (I love to experiment with cooking. I love cooking in general.)

[Neobaron]

bamp

---

Also reserved for boiled peanuts and various flavors of them.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

I'm enjoying all these recipes, this post will serve as a placeholder for me to showcase my terrible cooking (with photos)

Home made chips are amazing and I may have to try your recipe, Neo. :D

I can only make a few things: namely shepherd's pie, regular pie and beef/chicken stew. All pretty basic. I blame it on the fact that it's no fun cooking for one, I like to cook when I have people round. Might try something different for my RWL masterpiece, like a themed cake or something. Maybe a cake in the shape of a boat on top of a tower