Cooking who here like to cook? FTM only please.

[mistunderstood]

I love to cook. Cooking is kind of a hobby and it is relaxing for me to. I use to cook for about 35 people on the holidays but now I cook for just 3.
Right now I am slow cooking ribs in a crock pot with pineapple juice then when they reach the last hour of cooking I will put the BBQ sauce and more spices on the ribs and cook till done.
I like to cook on Sunday then eat left overs rest of the week.
If any one has recipes they want to share post them here.
Do not be shy. Post them. I am always looking for good recipes.

[metalguy639]

I used to be a chef at a really high end Italian restaurant. I always cook as well. :)

[DanielMacBride]

I used to have to cook on a daily basis for my family of 8 lol, now it's just me and 2 boys, sometimes 3. I love cooking Italian (learned from an Italian neighbour as a kid), Ukrainian (from my grandmother), Thai (Rowan and I are both addicted to Thai flavours), French, and pretty much any kind of food ;) But most of what I cook at home is vegan (when I actually cook, given that I'm a raw food vegan lol) - my boys are vegetarian so they eat whatever I make and then if they want something like dairy, they get it themselves. I'm currently having a lot of fun learning to make raw food cakes and sweet things - they are SO good :D My favourite raw food quick and easy meal though is still a smoothie, because on a bad fibro day I can throw whatever I want into it and have a meal in a glass that doesn't take too much energy to prepare, and it helps to pick me up a bit . The best smoothies I have made recently were both mango based - one was mango, nectarine, almond milk and orange juice, and the other one was mango, rockmelon, banana, strawberry, blueberry and almond milk :) The only non-raw thing I consume regularly now is coffee, I just can't give up my caffeine lol (but I drink it with almond milk that I make myself, rather than dairy or soy). My current favourite raw meals are raw pizza (yes, it is entirely possible and not a processed pizza base, cheese, or meat in sight lol!) and salad, or raw laksa (I had raw laksa for dinner tonight and it was roll-your-eyes-back-in-your-head good :D )

[Areyan]

that almond milk sounds tasty, Dan... would so do lunch at yours!

i love to cook as well, have never worked in the industry but i was blessed with parents who are both excellent cooks, my mother a classic baker, whose recipes always come out perfect and so edible you want to live at her place just for the food she puts up in front of you. my dad, a bit of a gourmet-style chef who really missed his true calling i reckon. every meal i've ever eaten of his was fabulously cooked to perfection and spicy, tangy, delectable. some meals i could not stomach well because dad knows how to pack a meal full of flavour but cooking is something that my father treats as an art form as much as a delight to eat.

hehe, this food talk is making me so hungry! i just had my wisdom tooth out a few days ago and still having trouble eating solid foods so i'm craving a bit, lol. ahhh well, next week will be a good one for my taste buds.

[DanielMacBride]

I love almond milk - sometimes I do cashew milk as a change, but you can pretty much make any kind of nut milk as a substitute for dairy (and it's a great source of protein and minerals) :) It's really easy, too - I just buy the ground up nuts or grind them in a spice grinder, then put them in a blender with filtered water (and sometimes a tiny bit of vanilla and some stevia as a sweetener, depending on what I'm using it for). If I'm making a smoothie, I just throw the ground nuts into the whole thing and add extra water - if I'm making nut milk to go onto my muesli I just leave the nut meal in there too because it's extra nutrients :) I only ever really filter it through a nut milk bag if I want to use it for coffee or something where it needs to be free of any grainy bits :) I make almond milk fresh every day, it's really good (and almonds are a MEGA source of magnesium, which is one of the things that has been linked to fibromyalgia, a magnesium deficiency).

[AnonyMouse]

I usually like to cook the less I have to do it. Dinner? Meh. Experimental food in the middle of the afternoon? AWESOME.

[DanielMacBride]

LOL I can relate to that - if I *have* to cook, I enjoy it a whole lot less than if I *choose* to cook.

[Deimos]

I'm new around here, but I couldn't help but want to post here first because I absolutely LOVE cooking. I'm terrible at pastries, though. I'm best with pasta and soups, and if there's a recipe with lemons involved I will more than likely try to make it. I love lemons a lot. I learned how to cook and how not to cook thanks to my mom and dad, ironically my mother being the terrible cook while my father was the amazing cook.
If anyone wants to try, my roomates and I have all worked hard to put together a recipe that we all absolutely love. We call it Solstace Soup, it's supposed to have a nice nostolgic holiday taste:

Ingredients:

Serves: 6-8


1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
8 tablespoons butter
5 cups diced peeled potatoes
2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans chicken broth
12 ounces shredded smoked cheddar cheese
1 pint whipping cream
2 cups water
3 ounces Summer Sausage
4 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon dried parsley



Directions:


1. Chop onions and celery, if using a food processor don?t chop these too fine.
2. In a large saucepan, sauté onion and celery in 4 ounces of butter until tender.
3. Add potatoes and broth, bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes till potatoes are tender.
5. In a small skillet, melt remaining 4 ounces of butter, add flour to make roux, cook roux over low heat until yellow blond in color and set aside.
6. To cooked potato and broth mixture, add water, cream and roux stirring continuously until mixture thickens.
7. Stir in the cheese, sausage, parsley, pepper and paprika.
8. Cook over low heat until the cheese is melted, stir continuously and remove from heat when cheese is melted.


Happy eatings!

[Areyan]

hey there, Deimos :D

welcome to the forums and thanks for the recipe! going to try this out soon as it's nearly winter in new zealand and we're all getting a bit cold. will let you know how well it goes down with the kids, lol.

[DanielMacBride]

Awright, recipes! :D I have posted this one a long time ago and it has been lost in the depths lol, so I'll post it again because it's an awesome winter recipe and my favourite ribsticker type meal. It has been made for countless non-vegan/vegetarian friends and they all LOVE it (this is the vegetarian version, to make it vegan you would just have to use non-dairy cheese and sour cream):

Daniel’s Stout and Mushroom Pie with Garlic Mash

Ingredients:

Approx 750g of assorted mushrooms of your choice (I like to use portabella mushrooms as they have a great meaty texture and wonderful flavour and don’t leave a grey colour, and mix them with Swiss browns, but you could use ANY mushrooms you like)
1 sweet red pepper
2 or 3 carrots
1 large red onion
2 cloves garlic
Few sprigs of fresh rosemary and fresh oregano
1 pint of Guinness or other stout (note for vegans, Guinness is not vegan, it's filtered through isinglass)
1 tablespoon flour
1 sheet ready rolled puff pastry (the one I use is “accidentally” vegan LOL, they use non dairy margarine and stuff in it)
5-6 large potatoes
Extra garlic cloves (I use 2 or 3)
Sour cream, about 250ml
About 50g/ 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter or margarine
1 tablespoon prepared wholegrain mustard
(optional) about 250g of mozzarella cheese

Method:

In a deep pan, heat a good slurp of olive oil and crush the 2 cloves of garlic into it. Slice the onion (not too thinly) and add that to the garlic, and fry till the onion starts to caramelise. You might want to cut the vegetables beforehand as they do take a while…when the onion is starting to caramelise, add the carrots (cut into rounds) and let them cook for a few minutes before adding the diced red pepper. Add the mushrooms last, and stir to coat everything with oil. Let the vegetables cook for a couple of minutes, then add the stout to the pan and let them simmer while you start the mash.

Tear the herbs up with your hands and throw them into the pot at this point.Peel and dice the potatoes and cook in boiling water. By the time the potatoes are almost done, the pie filling will be almost ready - add the tablespoon or so of flour to the pan and stir to mix it thoroughly in. Then pour the mixture into a pie dish and put a sheet of puff pastry over the top. Cut a hole in the top of the pastry to allow the steam to escape, and put the pie in the oven for approximately 15 minutes (follow the directions on the pastry packet as to temperature, I do mine at 220C for 15 minutes and this works to perfection).

Drain the potatoes, add the margarine and crush the raw garlic into them and mash them with the sour cream. You can add chopped spring onions and the cheese if you like. Add about a tablespoon or two (depending on your taste, I like more rather than less) of wholegrain seed mustard, mix thoroughly. If you don’t like the bite of raw garlic, throw the cloves into the pot while your potatoes are cooking, you will still get a hint of garlic but not overpowering, and then just mash the cooked cloves into the potatoes ;)

To serve, pile a big dollop of mash onto the plate (and I mean BIG, My dollop usually almost covers the plate), and cut a big slab of pie and put it over the mash…. ENJOY!!

Serves 4-8 depending on the size of the serving ;)

[Deimos]

Thanks for welcoming me, Areyan. Good luck on the recipe, it's worth the work in my opinion!

And wow, that dish looks delicious, Daniel. I'll have to see what my roomates think about mushrooms, this looks like something I'd want to try.

And while it's a rather cliche food to bring to a brunch potluck, I really love me some quiche. Especially mushroom and broccoli, and it's so easy to make too!

[DanielMacBride]

That pie is the most awesome non-meat pie EVER - all of my hardcore carnivore friends absolutely LOVE it (even those who are not so keen on mushrooms!) The beauty of it is that you can use all different kinds of mushrooms if you don't like the standard boring common ones - portabella and Swiss brown are my favourites, but sometimes I might throw in some enoki or shiitake or oyster mushrooms as part of the mix, all depends on what I can get that's good and what I feel like at the time :D If you put the cheese and sour cream in, it's pretty much a heart attack on a plate LOL, but it's SO worth it ;)

I'll have a dig through some of my recipes and see if I can find some other good ones for people who are not necessarily used to eating vegan or vegetarian meals, I have quite a few ;) One of my boys' favourites is my kickass vegan chocolate cupcake recipe - I make this and seriously, it gives me about 18 decent sized cupcakes but they never last more than a day or so once they are made :D

[Deimos]

I look forward to seeing what else you could bring up, new recipes always have a place in my bookmarks of things to make!

My favorite place to go for food inspiration ideas is definitely seriouseats.com
I've gotten some of my favorite recipes from there, and revised a few to my own tastes. They've got a nice sorting system for specifics, like low fat, vegan, vegetarian, eating on a budget, etc. etc.
All this talk about food makes me want to cook something up...

[Deimos]

Oh yeah, speaking of seriouseats, if you're ever up for a challenge and have a fondness for artichoke this is my all time favorite recipe to make: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/03/tagliatelle-with-artichokes-leeks-and-lemon-pasta-recipe.html
It takes a really long time to prepare but I personally LOVE this recipe as a special reward to myself if something goes really well.
Not sure if anyone else in here is a big lemon fan, but I wont stress how much I love lemons!

[DanielMacBride]

I LOVE lemons :D Here's a recipe from way back before my vegan days, I still make it now but I use TVP instead of meat and it's just as good. This one was a firm favourite of all my kids when they were growing up, I made it so many times when we had a crowd for dinner, too. It's my super-secret recipe that has never been shared in the 20-something years since I first learned it from a friend who was a gourmet cook, so you guys are privileged - literally dozens of people have asked me for this recipe and never been given it, but I'm posting it here for all to share:

Daniel's Bolognese

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1kg (about 2.2lb) minced (ground) beef - get the best quality you can with as little fat as possible
1 large onion
1 clove fresh garlic
2 chopped fresh tomatoes (if they are not in season, they can be left out)
1 large tin (about 800g) of crushed tomatoes
1 tin (400g) whole peeled Roma tomatoes
1 lemon, cut into 8 small wedges
1 large carrot, shredded
Fresh basil leaves to taste
1 package spaghetti (also good over any kind of pasta that holds sauces well, like large shells)

Optional (depending on whether you like them or have them handy, pretty much):

Fresh mushrooms
Celery


Method

In a deep saucepan, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Once the oil is hot, turn the heat down a bit, dice the onion and crush the garlic and throw them into the oil. You want to sweat them, not burn them, so keep the temperature down fairly low.

Once the onion is translucent, if you are adding celery do it now and cook till it's a bit soft. Then turn the heat up and add all your meat, and cook it till all the meat is browned. Drain off all the excess fat at this point and return the meat to the pan.

Add the chopped fresh tomato and the carrot, mix thoroughly. Then add the tins of tomatoes (either squash the whole tomatoes in your hand or break them up a bit with a fork) - at this point the bolognese should be fairly liquid (if it's not, add some bottled passata/tomato puree to give it some more liquid). Bring it to the boil briefly, then turn it down, add the lemon wedges and leave it uncovered on the stove to simmer and reduce. Depending how much liquid you have, this could take anywhere from about 30 minutes to a few hours (I have done batches of this bolognese that have taken nearly 8hrs to reduce to where I want them to). You want the consistency to be thick but not lumpy, kind of like a thick pureed soup or something like that. A bit of liquid is fine, but you don't want it to still be overly runny.

Once you have the right consistency, add the mushrooms if you're putting them in, and tear up the basil leaves and throw them in. Cook for another 10 minutes or so until the mushrooms are soft, then pour big ladlefuls of this sauce over spaghetti or other pasta (you can take the lemon wedges out first, eat them, or leave them in the pot to add more flavour for the next day). Enjoy!

This sauce is freaking AWESOME the next day, keeps well for a day or two in the fridge and can be frozen.

[Poltergeist]

I think I would enjoy cooking if I didn't have to clean up after myself afterwards :heehee:

I can't really cook anything fancy... I know a few recipes, but after I became a vegetarian I can't use them anymore. I really do need to learn some good vegetarian recipes.

[Leo Lane]

I really do need to learn some good vegetarian recipes.

I'm a vegetarian too...you know Rose Elliot? Her vegetarian cookbooks are oldies but goodies. Mind you, my advice might not be worth much, as I've never liked cooking, though when I was a kid I went through a cookbook-reading phase