I make some pretty damn good Tamil-style goat curry, or green Thai curry. If they're afraid of flavor, I make boef bourguingon and fondant potatoes made with duck schmaltz.
If I really care about em, I make Peking or Canton-style duck, a true labor of love, and if they want something sweet, I make one hell of a pumpkin cheesecake with candied pecan topping and Graham cracker crust. Or creme brulee, especially if I have fresh fruit. That always impresses, despite being one of the easier things to make.
My go-to is probably a dijon-marsala pork tenderloin.
Coat a tenderloin in Dijon mustard and brown it. Toss it in the oven for 20ish minutes. Use a meat thermometer. Meat production safety is getting iffy these days.
In the same pan, sautée a shitload of finely-diced shallots in butter. Pour in equal parts cream and marsala wine. Reduce it by about half and add more Dijon until it tastes good.
Hi hello, yes it’s me, your long-lost aunt, and I was wandering by and it smelled like you needed help with the way too much tenderloin you made, can I come in?
Sounds fancy, very tasty, and super simple. Literally just boil them bitches in some white wine, and then chop up some onion and cube some potato and cook those in a pan with some oil, salt, and pepper and that's a full meal
Saw a neat tip today for poached salmon that had you place the salmon in the poaching liquid skin up, but only use enough liquid to cover the flesh, leaving the skin exposed, and place it under a low broiler to poach, so you get tender poached salmon with crisp skin.
Not a dish I make often and my partner abhors the skin (Monstrous, I know) but it seemed like a good tip!
Lasagna and garlic bread. But not just a can of sauce and ricotta. You have to do the full bolognese slowly cooked for hours, hand made noodles, bechamel instead of ricotta, and just a sprinkling of pecorino in each layer with the bechamel.
Pasta with olive oil and garlic (aglio e olio). It’s much more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s quick to make and the simplicity is impressive. Also I always have the ingredients at hand.
i sometimes add some chili flakes (toasted chiles de arbol are my favorite for this dish) or chopped fresh oregano.
You don't want to overwhelm the simple flavors but sometimes one extra note can be nice. Also the quality of the olive oil really matters for this dish: i have a specific brand i go to because i prefer the subtle flavor even over the more expensive brands
Not only did I hate cheesecake before I started making it myself, but a close friend is very anti-sweets but will always save room for this specific dessert.
Pressure cookers can be a cheat code. I've been using it for ribs for a few years now. Dry rub, pressure cook, sauce and broil. Purists would scoff, but I'd say it's 90% as good as the recipes that take 12 hours.
Right? Like nobody I tell believes that I can put a mostly-raw (just seared) slab of brisket in and have it tender and delicious in under 2 hours. I actually think it's better than slow cooking, which imo dries it out a bit
Lunch: I'll make you the best hamburger you've ever had, either on the stovetop or the grill. Sides: Corn on the cob, fresh watermelon, homemade salsa and tortilla chips.
Dinner: Fist-sized meatballs with a heavy red sauce of meat and a ton of vegetables. I also use a high-protein pasta that gets cooked, then cooled in the refrigerator. Finished sauce + cold pasta ==> into a baking dish, bake covered; add cheese atop and finish baking. Serve with fresh bread and salad.
Dessert: I find a lot of American desserts are too sweet, so I make a chocolate and raspberry cake that turns down the sugar saturation and highlights the chocolate and the fruit.
I'm a pretty damn good cook for an American man my age who doesn't work in a kitchen or similar.
Green chili from a family recipe. You basically simmer pork shoulder or tenderloin all day smothered in onions and jalapeños and spices until it falls apart and turns into a savory spicy soup. It's easy, it just takes forever and tastes amazing so they assume you put in a lot more effort.
Chocolate covered strawberries. The dirty secret is they are so fucking easy to make. You can get fancy and drizzle some white chocolate lines if you really want to impress. It takes like 15 minutes.
I didn't have someone to impress for years now, so I can't add much. I just wanted to say that I'd be down for some test-impressing for most of the recipes shared so far, in case you want to try it first. It's a free service I offer.
If you are an omnivore foodie, gumbo. It impresses me, the depth and complexity of flavor in gumbo is delicious and very "me" if that makes sense, so it is something of myself I am giving to you.
If you are vegan foodie, a cream of mushroom soup made with cashew cream and fancy mushrooms, and some fresh sourdough bread (THE bread, as my kids put it) with a small salad of something fresh from the garden.
If you are my penultimate child and her girlfriend, apparently kimchi grilled cheese, I made them that once and they kept making it forever after, it is a ridiculously delightful sandwich.
Always something I personally like, for sure. I am a pretty experienced home cook at this point though. If you are not, I recommend the menu "Foods of Michochuan are Forever" on NPR, it has something for the meat eaters and the vegans, is outrageously good, uses ingredients that are available, and can be staged ahead of time and just reheated and make rice day of, so that you can enjoy yourself not be cooking all day. The soup I cheat with canned beans and canned tomatoes it's great.
Boil your choice of pasta. I usually prefer penne for this. While that's happening, dice a pear or two, pan fry them in olive oil. Take some of the pasta water, mix it into some pecorino romano cheese to make a paste. Add pepper. Drain noodles, add them to pan, along with cheese paste. Mix it all together. Done.
i do a mean picatta. The classic (in the US where i'm located) is chicken but if i'm trying to impress i make it with fish (rockfish ideally since i'm on the West Coast) or chicken of the woods mushroom (in the right season). For anyone unaware, you flatten your chicken (or mushroom, skip this step for fish), season and dredge with flour, brown it a bit in oil, then simmer in a butter/lemon/caper sauce with a little white wine to help deglaze the pan. Top with chopped parsley.
If you are making the COTW mushroom version you need to slice and simmer in broth for an hour before you begin. Any broth works
serve with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. An American classic (by way of Italy like many others).
Lemon curd cookie bars. 2 layers of butter sugar cookie with a thick layer of homemade lemon curd in the middle. Lemon curd is weirdly expensive for something so easy to make. I normally do a huge batch in a 10x15 glass dish (think one size up from a standard 9x13).
One of my kids had a pretty big birthday party once, they were at a very nearby elementary and lots of kids and parents showed up, I had made a cake with lemon curd, and one of the dads looked at me suspiciously while eating it then said "you make this lemon curd? " I said "Yessir" and he nodded like I had passed some sort of test, it was funny. Turned out he really liked to bake, was a good cake-maker himself.
Im not much of a cook and don't have one but my wife had a thing when she wanted to impress at like a work thing or potluck or such. greek salad. super easy to make but people love it. Not me I hate anchovies.
It's technique that impresses, not the food. Starting with good ingredients goes a long way toward making tasty food. With that said, if you have a two bunches of fresh asparagus that looks wonderful and one cook saute it and the other boils it... Guess which bunch will be more appealing...
My Mother-in-law (MIL) is not my biggest fan and never has been. I, a mid-west redneck, had the audacity to marry her east coast highly educated (multiple dotorates) daughter 21 years ago.
Fast forward to one of their many visits. My wife and I's two boys are early teens, early double digits and it's dinner time. My FIL and wife decide they want the BBQ Shrimp Cocktail out of the "Grill to Perfection" cook book. FIL, Wife and oldest son and I will eat that. My MIL hates shrimp and wants cedar planked salmon and my youngest wants a hamburger.
All of the dishes can be cooked on the grill, but all of them take very different techniques and time to cook... So I just did it. I managed to get all 4 dishes onto the table, as well as a side veggie which was brocolini, hot perfectly cooked and on time.
My MIL now always looks forward to visiting and having me cook for her and FIL. They usually host Christmas or Thanksgiving, but the last several years I've actually been the one doing the bulk of the cooking.
61 replies
I make some pretty damn good Tamil-style goat curry, or green Thai curry. If they're afraid of flavor, I make boef bourguingon and fondant potatoes made with duck schmaltz.
If I really care about em, I make Peking or Canton-style duck, a true labor of love, and if they want something sweet, I make one hell of a pumpkin cheesecake with candied pecan topping and Graham cracker crust. Or creme brulee, especially if I have fresh fruit. That always impresses, despite being one of the easier things to make.
I'll be right over
sounds incredible. I've only had vegetarian/pescatarian Tamil cooking, would love to try goat curry
As you can see, I do this meal a lot. It also costs me about $300 every time I do it.
I'm glad you can afford it and have loved ones you can share it with.
My go-to is probably a dijon-marsala pork tenderloin.
Coat a tenderloin in Dijon mustard and brown it. Toss it in the oven for 20ish minutes. Use a meat thermometer. Meat production safety is getting iffy these days.
In the same pan, sautée a shitload of finely-diced shallots in butter. Pour in equal parts cream and marsala wine. Reduce it by about half and add more Dijon until it tastes good.
Slice the meat and drown it in tasty sauce.
Hi hello, yes it’s me, your long-lost aunt, and I was wandering by and it smelled like you needed help with the way too much tenderloin you made, can I come in?
Bring a better bottle than marsala and you're in.
Poached salmon
Sounds fancy, very tasty, and super simple. Literally just boil them bitches in some white wine, and then chop up some onion and cube some potato and cook those in a pan with some oil, salt, and pepper and that's a full meal
Saw a neat tip today for poached salmon that had you place the salmon in the poaching liquid skin up, but only use enough liquid to cover the flesh, leaving the skin exposed, and place it under a low broiler to poach, so you get tender poached salmon with crisp skin.
Not a dish I make often and my partner abhors the skin (Monstrous, I know) but it seemed like a good tip!
Wow, and I don't even like fish and that sounds incredible.
That's sadly impossible for me, I need to remove the skin. My dogs would never forget when I wouldn't crisp it up for them to feast.
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to try that some time
enchiladas
green or red
shredded chicken, cheese, or shredded beef
Lasagna and garlic bread. But not just a can of sauce and ricotta. You have to do the full bolognese slowly cooked for hours, hand made noodles, bechamel instead of ricotta, and just a sprinkling of pecorino in each layer with the bechamel.
Bechamel is the shit for lasagna.
Once you make it that way, you can never go back.
With just a sprinkling of nutmeg. Oh yeah
Ooh, nutmeg? Ok, gotta try that!
Cinnamon buns
Pasta with olive oil and garlic (aglio e olio). It’s much more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s quick to make and the simplicity is impressive. Also I always have the ingredients at hand.
https://youtu.be/RzncsSIRRus
i sometimes add some chili flakes (toasted chiles de arbol are my favorite for this dish) or chopped fresh oregano.
You don't want to overwhelm the simple flavors but sometimes one extra note can be nice. Also the quality of the olive oil really matters for this dish: i have a specific brand i go to because i prefer the subtle flavor even over the more expensive brands
Ahhh yes chili flakes, I always put them too :)
Biscoffeetoffee cheesecake.
Biscoff crust, coffee base, chocolate toffee crust. Beloved even by cheesecake haters.
What is this "Cheescake haters" of which you speak?
I hate cheesecake when I have none.
Not only did I hate cheesecake before I started making it myself, but a close friend is very anti-sweets but will always save room for this specific dessert.
I make a pretty mean brisket in my pressure cooker.
Ideally, I'd smoke some salmon or steelhead, but I haven't had a smoker for a few years.
Pressure cookers can be a cheat code. I've been using it for ribs for a few years now. Dry rub, pressure cook, sauce and broil. Purists would scoff, but I'd say it's 90% as good as the recipes that take 12 hours.
Ribs on a weekday? Hell yeah.
Right? Like nobody I tell believes that I can put a mostly-raw (just seared) slab of brisket in and have it tender and delicious in under 2 hours. I actually think it's better than slow cooking, which imo dries it out a bit
All-day ragù
Lasagne or, if I really want to go all out, home made gnocchi. Not hard, but quite labour intensive and so much better than any bought alternatives
Risotto
My beef stew. It's honestly savage.
I make a mean boeuf bourguignon. Assuming it's not summer and painfully hot out, it might be my go to.
Lunch: I'll make you the best hamburger you've ever had, either on the stovetop or the grill. Sides: Corn on the cob, fresh watermelon, homemade salsa and tortilla chips.
Dinner: Fist-sized meatballs with a heavy red sauce of meat and a ton of vegetables. I also use a high-protein pasta that gets cooked, then cooled in the refrigerator. Finished sauce + cold pasta ==> into a baking dish, bake covered; add cheese atop and finish baking. Serve with fresh bread and salad.
Dessert: I find a lot of American desserts are too sweet, so I make a chocolate and raspberry cake that turns down the sugar saturation and highlights the chocolate and the fruit.
I'm a pretty damn good cook for an American man my age who doesn't work in a kitchen or similar.
If they like meat then brazed short ribs, found a real nice mix of maple syrup and smoked garlic to put on them
Green chili from a family recipe. You basically simmer pork shoulder or tenderloin all day smothered in onions and jalapeños and spices until it falls apart and turns into a savory spicy soup. It's easy, it just takes forever and tastes amazing so they assume you put in a lot more effort.
Bread
Chocolate covered strawberries. The dirty secret is they are so fucking easy to make. You can get fancy and drizzle some white chocolate lines if you really want to impress. It takes like 15 minutes.
I didn't have someone to impress for years now, so I can't add much. I just wanted to say that I'd be down for some test-impressing for most of the recipes shared so far, in case you want to try it first. It's a free service I offer.
If you are an omnivore foodie, gumbo. It impresses me, the depth and complexity of flavor in gumbo is delicious and very "me" if that makes sense, so it is something of myself I am giving to you.
If you are vegan foodie, a cream of mushroom soup made with cashew cream and fancy mushrooms, and some fresh sourdough bread (THE bread, as my kids put it) with a small salad of something fresh from the garden.
If you are my penultimate child and her girlfriend, apparently kimchi grilled cheese, I made them that once and they kept making it forever after, it is a ridiculously delightful sandwich.
Always something I personally like, for sure. I am a pretty experienced home cook at this point though. If you are not, I recommend the menu "Foods of Michochuan are Forever" on NPR, it has something for the meat eaters and the vegans, is outrageously good, uses ingredients that are available, and can be staged ahead of time and just reheated and make rice day of, so that you can enjoy yourself not be cooking all day. The soup I cheat with canned beans and canned tomatoes it's great.
Depends, if I'm cooking Texmex a can of chipotles in adobo sauce.
Sweets? A little bit of vanilla goes a LONG way. And I make my own with everclear and ordered pods split in half.
I know the secret to making a triple decker grilled cheese :-)
And my gf says she can make homemade alfredo or homemade meatballs.
Cacio e pere - just cheese and pears, with pasta.
Boil your choice of pasta. I usually prefer penne for this. While that's happening, dice a pear or two, pan fry them in olive oil. Take some of the pasta water, mix it into some pecorino romano cheese to make a paste. Add pepper. Drain noodles, add them to pan, along with cheese paste. Mix it all together. Done.
Grilled cheese.
Southern style savory cornbread
Black-eyed peas
Turnip Greens
It sounds like a really basic meal, and by most definitions it is, but it is so delicious.
i do a mean picatta. The classic (in the US where i'm located) is chicken but if i'm trying to impress i make it with fish (rockfish ideally since i'm on the West Coast) or chicken of the woods mushroom (in the right season). For anyone unaware, you flatten your chicken (or mushroom, skip this step for fish), season and dredge with flour, brown it a bit in oil, then simmer in a butter/lemon/caper sauce with a little white wine to help deglaze the pan. Top with chopped parsley.
If you are making the COTW mushroom version you need to slice and simmer in broth for an hour before you begin. Any broth works
serve with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. An American classic (by way of Italy like many others).
Gumbo
It's a dessert, but brownies made from the box, but substitute the oil for melted butter. Super easy, and delicious. The secret is always more butter.
I buy something, put it in a Tupperware, and act like I made it.
Shakshuka, Japanese curry, or misir wot if I can be bothered to pick up injera for it.
Shakshuka is the easy answer tho. Hard to beat.
Lemon curd cookie bars. 2 layers of butter sugar cookie with a thick layer of homemade lemon curd in the middle. Lemon curd is weirdly expensive for something so easy to make. I normally do a huge batch in a 10x15 glass dish (think one size up from a standard 9x13).
One of my kids had a pretty big birthday party once, they were at a very nearby elementary and lots of kids and parents showed up, I had made a cake with lemon curd, and one of the dads looked at me suspiciously while eating it then said "you make this lemon curd? " I said "Yessir" and he nodded like I had passed some sort of test, it was funny. Turned out he really liked to bake, was a good cake-maker himself.
Butter cihicken or Green curry. I make and sell DIY Butter Chicken kit and I make frozen green curry paste.
Im not much of a cook and don't have one but my wife had a thing when she wanted to impress at like a work thing or potluck or such. greek salad. super easy to make but people love it. Not me I hate anchovies.
Steak, usually Entrecote. Or if there are enough guests to justify it, pork belly roast.
Offer them ice cream.
You didn't say I had to make the food myself.
It's technique that impresses, not the food. Starting with good ingredients goes a long way toward making tasty food. With that said, if you have a two bunches of fresh asparagus that looks wonderful and one cook saute it and the other boils it... Guess which bunch will be more appealing...
My Mother-in-law (MIL) is not my biggest fan and never has been. I, a mid-west redneck, had the audacity to marry her east coast highly educated (multiple dotorates) daughter 21 years ago.
Fast forward to one of their many visits. My wife and I's two boys are early teens, early double digits and it's dinner time. My FIL and wife decide they want the BBQ Shrimp Cocktail out of the "Grill to Perfection" cook book. FIL, Wife and oldest son and I will eat that. My MIL hates shrimp and wants cedar planked salmon and my youngest wants a hamburger.
All of the dishes can be cooked on the grill, but all of them take very different techniques and time to cook... So I just did it. I managed to get all 4 dishes onto the table, as well as a side veggie which was brocolini, hot perfectly cooked and on time.
My MIL now always looks forward to visiting and having me cook for her and FIL. They usually host Christmas or Thanksgiving, but the last several years I've actually been the one doing the bulk of the cooking.
I impress them with my extensive knowledge of the best local takeout restaurants, then DoorDash that shit!
Pizza from scratch.