I am one of those readers.  I enjoy this thread, although I don’t fancy myself a good cook.  I have a very limited range.  Meatloaf and sloppy joes are solid.  Lefse tastes perfect, but I haven’t been successful in rolling it out perfectly round.  My Swedish potato sausage and fresh walleye tacos are excellent (in my opinion).  However it pales in comparison to what I see posted here.

My one daughter (she’s 10) has taken an interest in cooking and I am trying learn and be supportive for her.  She can handle the lefse fairly well and enjoys making the spicy mayo and cabbage slaw for the fish tacos.  She doesn’t do too well with meat yet, too gross in her eyes, especially when I pull out the grinder to make sausage.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Altho I am no high quality chef, I do enjoy good food.

I was a very finicky eater until i was left at my uncle's farm. there were always plenty of children at the table, especially at holiday diners. All of us children would pitch in for the preparations. I, especially enjoyed preparing the raw cranberry relish. The attraction for me, and most of the children, was not that we were chopping and mixing, but there was a lot of sneaked tasting involved. One thanksgiving dinner, the preparations were assigned by my cousin (like a mom to me). She happened to put me onto chopping the cabbage for coleslaw. I thought i should be chopping the cranberry relish and was only half heartedly weighing into the cabbage. As i was muttering under my breath and chopping slower and slower, my cousin came over and sort of mentioned that I should put a little energy into my chopping. now, whenever Mary sort of mentioned an increased effort, one just sort of changed gears and that's when i got to chopping with just a bit more effort.  Soon, Mary came over to check on my progress.

She looked at the copped cabbage and said, "Did you already add pepper?"

"No."

She looked a little closer and started to chuckle. "You are chopping up the bowl!"

I agreed, sure enough, those little peppers were indeed particles of the wooden bowl.

"Don't you breath a word. Just take it a little easier with the chopping." The slaw turned out great and nobody suffered from eating the saw (chop) dust flavoring.

Tinker

Easter Sunday dinner classics.

Scampi.



Vol-au-vent.



Kind regards,
Oliver

Hi,

@Cheese

Chicken and mushrooms.

Chicken goes into pressure cooker for 20 mins. Keep broth/stock.

Clean mushrooms (200g) and dice. Braise for a couple of minutes, add salt, pepper and a little bit of lemon juice.

Remove bones and skin from chicken and kinda "pluck"/pull the meat into pieces.

Make white roux (40g fat, 60g flour) and add 500ml from the chicken broth/stock. Maybe add some chicken broth/stock concentrate to intensify taste.

Add chicken. Some more salt, pepper.

I like a drop of Worcester(shire)sauce added. And I enjoy a Maraschino-Cherry or two - it's a really great and interesting taste ...

--

Today Roastbeef and Asparagus (from the oven). Since I'm on a pretty strict diet, none of the self made sauce hollandaise for me.



Kind regards,
Oliver

@GoingMyWay , if it works - it works.

When I finally caved and got cable tv I got hooked by the Food Network.  I then spent one year making all our meals totally from scratch.  Nothing pre-processed or frozen.

That was an interesting and expensive experiment.

My wife is a mashed potato snob.  One of the few things she makes.  Always had to make from scratch and perfectly beaten.  No lumps for her.  When I was going thru chemo food was my diversion.  I would walk around grocery stores leaning on my cart for exercise, an excuse to get out of the house, fighting depression, and looking for interesting food to try that I hadn't tried before.  I figured that if I hadn't had it before, my messed up tastebuds couldn't tell my brain it didn't taste like it should.  Weird, but it worked.  Anyway, I discovered the new versions of ready to make mashed potatoes that are around a buck a bag.  They hit the spot.

Guess what; my wife liked them enough that they are now in the pantry!

Rock on and keep cooking'

Peter

@GoingMyWay , if it works - it works.

When I finally caved and got cable tv I got hooked by the Food Network.  I then spent one year making all our meals totally from scratch.  Nothing pre-processed or frozen.

That was an interesting and expensive experiment.

My wife is a mashed potato snob.  One of the few things she makes.  Always had to make from scratch and perfectly beaten.  No lumps for her.  When I was going thru chemo food was my diversion.  I would walk around grocery stores leaning on my cart for exercise, an excuse to get out of the house, fighting depression, and looking for interesting food to try that I hadn't tried before.  I figured that if I hadn't had it before, my messed up tastebuds couldn't tell my brain it didn't taste like it should.  Weird, but it worked.  Anyway, I discovered the new versions of ready to make mashed potatoes that are around a buck a bag.  They hit the spot.

Guess what; my wife liked them enough that they are now in the pantry!

Rock on and keep cooking'

Peter

Yup it is a tasty meal.  I used to make it for my parents long time back.  It was quick and simple to make.  I couldn't even imagine trying to make chicken cordon bleu from scratch.

What brand of mashed potatoes do you buy?  I also love mashed potatoes (so long as there are no potato skins in there).  I think I may like the gravy that goes on top even more though.  Does anyone have a good recipe for homemade gravy?  I've never really had any luck attempting to make it myself.

Last night I made sous vide steaks with baked potatoes and some grilled corn.  Sort of a repeat, but this is the first time I showed grilled corn.  My wife made her corn mexican style with mayo, chili powder, and parmesan cheese.

Have you ever tried using a food mill?  I believe that would eliminate the lumps, with maybe a little less effort than using a ricer (cleanup might be a different story?).  I wanted to buy a food mill, but my wife said we don't need another kitchen gadget!

I'll have to see if that brand is carried by a local grocery store.  I suspect it is, I just never noticed them.

I like my mashed spuds all lumpy. My wife even leaves the skins on when mashing. she dices before cooking so the skins are in tiny pieces scattered thru. We both love our baked potatoes with the skins on. She likes them done in the micro, but I like them old fashioned way baked to crisp. I slice them open, scoop the center out, pack in the butter >>> Yummy.
Tinker

Me too on the lumps and the skins. I just use an old fashioned wire masher. I add butter, sour cream and heavy cream and then have at them with the masher,

Ron

My mashed potatoes;

Smooth, no lumps. Hand mashed with a waffle head masher.

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/oxo-good-grips-reg-smooth-potato-masher/1011586082

5 pounds potatoes, washed and peeled, quartered if size dictates

1 medium size onion, peeled

Place in large pot, cover 2" with water add 1 tea spoon coarse salt

Boil until soft, drain, add potatoes back to pot

Add,

Warm to 130° 3/4 cup milk

1 stick butter

Mash away

Add some Parmesan cheese to taste if desired

Remove from pot to bowl (oven safe, see below)

another option;

Flatten top of potatoes

Cover with 1/8" of milk

Place under broiler until browned

Enjoy......

Tom

Yes, passe-vite it is. Tell your wife, @six-point socket II said it's a must have in the kitchen. lol. 

Try to get one of the originals, like the moulin-legumes.

Kind regards,
Oliver

I had to look up what passe-vite translates to.  LOL - it's food mill!  I was surprised to see the original, moulin-legumes is only about $10 more than the Oxo that I had planned to buy.

I find it interesting to hear about the different ways people like their mashed potatoes.  Some like it "rustic" with the lumps and others prefer it to be perfectly smooth.  I guess it may largely depend on what you grew up with and is familiar or comforting to you.  Or maybe some people just like some texture in what they're eating.

Well nothing is cooking today except me.  It's 102 degrees on my covered patio and I'm enjoying my favorite Labatts Blue Canadian beer which is a rare find in the SoCal desert. Kept cool courtesy of Festool. Hmm, maybe time for one more 

(Attachment Link)

102 degrees already?  It's not even May.  With that heat you gotta stay "hydrated" !  I don't know that I've ever had a Labatt's before.

All the talk about meatloaf on here inspired me to take another stab at it.  My wife had also been asking for meatloaf for a while.  I already had the "base" recipe, I just needed a better cooking technique.  I've always used dry italian breadcrumbs, but to my horror we didn't have any in the cupboard so I had to make some fresh breadcrumbs with Wonder Bread in the food processor.

















I microwaved on high for 5 minutes, drained out about 1/2 cup of fat.  Put on 3 tbsp of ketchup and microwaved for another 20 minutes at 50% power.  Sadly the ketchup didn't really caramelize like it did when my grandmother made it.  Probably 30-35++minutes at 50% power would have been better.  I thought about adding some brown sugar to the ketchup for the glaze, but I thought that might be too much sugar and it might burn.  I don't recall my grandmother adding brown sugar.  I'm pretty sure we just dumped some ketchup out of the big glass bottle and spread it around.

We used 93% lean ground beef.  I was a little surprised by how much fat and grease was in the pan, even after draining out about 1/2 cup.  I remember it being greasy, but not that greasy.  I actually bought my grandparents a special plastic microwave meatloaf pan.  It was like a tray within another pan so the grease could easily drain away.  My grandpa thought it was a really good idea.

The mashed potatoes were the Simply Potatoes.  They were very tasty!

I have the meatloaf sandwich to look forward to today.

I primarily wanted it to make tomato sauce from whole San Marzano tomatoes.  It's obviously much more versatile than that.

That old instruction book is neat.  Skimming through it made me think of an infomercial - but wait... there's more!

I learned that you shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to get rid of person's belongings after they have passed away.  I learned that the hard way.  I took someone's advice too much to heart.  He said something to the effect of "one person's stuff just becomes another person's junk."   At the time it sounded like very sage advice.  We already had too much of our own junk, no need to kind of hoard all of my grandparents belongings - most of which had no use or significance.  On the other hand, there were a few items that I wished I had thought a little bit more about before being tossing.

It does hurt having to go out and buy something again that you used to have.  It's even worse considering that most things aren't made the same way they used to be.  I bought a set of metal measuring cups around 2008.  I really liked em so I wanted to get another set (because one set is just never enough when cooking).  I bought a new set just a couple of years later.  It looks identical, but the weight and feel is much lighter than the original set. 

Quote from: six-point socket II on April 25, 2019, 12:57 PM

Yes, passe-vite it is. Tell your wife, @six-point socket II said it's a must have in the kitchen. lol. 

Try to get one of the originals, like the moulin-legumes.

Kind regards,
Oliver

I had to look up what passe-vite translates to.  LOL - it's food mill!  I was surprised to see the original, moulin-legumes is only about $10 more than the Oxo that I had planned to buy.

I find it interesting to hear about the different ways people like their mashed potatoes.  Some like it "rustic" with the lumps and others prefer it to be perfectly smooth.  I guess it may largely depend on what you grew up with and is familiar or comforting to you.  Or maybe some people just like some texture in what they're eating.

(...)

Hi!

I don't exactly dislike any kind of mashed potatoes. If I get to choose, and if it's a dish with a great sauce, I prefer the totally smooth kind as it mixes better. But then again.

What I also like to do with bigger portions of mashes potatoes: put them under the oven's grill with some butter and panko/breadcrumbs (really, really fine)

A bit like duchess potatoes.

Kind regards,
Oliver

I get my mashed potato texture buy smothering them with cream style corn .

I really like cottage cheese, that had a little texture....

I did score another All-Clad pan, wife wanted to go to Marshals for shoes, I wonder by the cooking stuff. Caught the pan out of the corner of my eye, $120.00 pan for $30.00. They had a few Lodge cast iron, going back in a week to see if they’re still there and price drops.

Tom