Inspired by the very great Late-Night snack thread, i've decided to go ahead and to create this one
It's for the epicurean members who love cooking, eating and enjoying this art who makes life more fun and tasty

so, share recipes, ideas, tips...
also do not fear to extrapolate on what cooking and food means for you

if you do not think Cooking is metal, do yourself a favor and check out The heavy Metal cookbook by Annick Giroux

-just did a spicy fettucine with shrimps, tomatoes and red peppers, great!

For lunch I made a sandwich on a ciabatta roll toasted with mozzarella cheese with mayonnaise, a whole caramelized sweet onion, and avocado. I like cooking, but only when it's me eating the finished product.

Why the fuck would you care if cooking has been deemed "metal?"

If you can cook, you get to eat nice food. If you can't, you don't. Seems like a simple choice to me. It's also quite relaxing.

Unfortunately, living in a dorm with no nearby supermarket or adequate kitchen makes cooking rather difficult, but when I'm able I do a lot of Thai and Indian cooking. Thai cooking is great for quick meals, while Indian is much more involved and time-consuming (but rewarding, in my opinion). I've also learned a fair bit of Armenian and Greek cuisine from my mom, as well as Spanish and Italian.

no i don't care, it was just to plug that excellent book!! every metalhead should own it if they like cooking!
i really love thai cuisine, i've made an excellent Pad Thai some weeks ago

This is the first school year where I started cooking for myself every day, but I enjoy it. Lately I've been making a stir-fry type dish, with chicken, peppers, onions, assorted vegetables, and rice. I've started substituting quinoa for the rice, but add chili powder to the pot as it's cooking to counteract the slightly bitter taste. It's a healthier alternative and it takes pretty good.

What are some basic Thai recipes? If Thai is great for quick meals, then I'm interested. Thanks!

Also, for lunch I added 1/4 chopped apple, handful of grated cheese, mayonnaise, and black pepper to half a can of salmon (or tuna, but I use salmon) and spread it on a sandwich. Cut the leftover apple into 3 and have it on the side. It's healthy and delicious. Plus, there's leftover salmon in the can, if you want it again in a day or two.

Pad Thai is very good but tricky to do I think. I've made it several times to varying results, but I'm working on honing a good recipe for the sauce. As of now, I usually make a base of tamarind juice, chili sauce and a hint of fish sauce and then usually add ground peanut, minced plum, ginger and/or kaffir lime leaf. I've got a lot to learn about perfecting the dishes that I love, spanning from those of India and then southeast through Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., but I've always loved the unique flavors native to that part of the world.

I like making up relatively large amounts of fried tofu; chop up a few bricks of it into nice small pieces, spice them up real nice (with chili powder, garlic powder, stuff like that but the specific ones I use change fairly often), put 'em on a tray covered in butter, cook them for like 30 minutes, re-butter the tray and flip them, cook 'em another 20 or so minutes, and sometimes I'll put hot sauce or honey mustard dressing on them as I eat...love that stuff. Fried tofu is awesome...too bad raw tofu is terrible.

Every time I've ever had tofu it was like chewing on fucking whale blubber. And for me, there texture would normally put me off, but I might have to try that recipe once.

The texture is drastically different when properly fried haha. I can't stand the texture of raw/lightly cooked tofu at all, but when fried well it's nice and crispy.

Many quick, basic Thai recipes are based around red curry paste, so always have that on hand - you can buy it from the store, but its best to make it yourself. Search around for various recipes, find one you like.

Here's a nice, quick noodle dish:

1 chicken breast, cut roughly into small cubes
12 oz sen mee (rice vermicelli - make sure they're rice noodles and not soy before buying), soaked for ~20 minutes in cold water and strained. Weigh *before* soaking.
2 tbsp red curry paste
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 cup bean sprouts
2 cloves garlic, skins removed and finely chopped
2 tbsp flavorless vegetable oil (corn, peanut, or similar)

Heat oil in frying pan or wok over high heat, fry garlic until golden. Add curry paste, stir until it's evenly heated, then add the chicken and stir-fry until cooked through. Add noodles and beansprouts and lower heat to medium, stir well. Add fish sauce and soy sauce, and cook until completely absorbed. Add sugar, mix one final time, and serve.

My Super Rad Lime Paprika Chicken and Chorizo skewers.

Mix 2tbsps of oil, 2(heaped) tsps of paprika and half a lime's juice. Dice about 500gm of chicken breasts and marinate with above mentioned mixture for about an hour. Stick on skewers with sliced chorizo. Barbeque until chicken is cooked and chorizo is crispy!

AWESOME RECIPE!

Tofu is ridiculously delicious when you buy the right brand and prepare it correctly. I'm a vegetarian so I eat it a lot. Lucky for me both my parents are vegetarians as well and have been since before I was born, so my mom sure knows a whole lot about vegetarian cooking. Anyone else a vegetarian?

While technically not cooking, I do enjoy making beef jerky regularly and encourage everyone else to give it a try, because it's very easy and much cheaper than anything you can get in a store. Plus, you can flavor it however you like. The recipe I started with was from Alton Brown on the Food Network:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alto ... index.html

But since then I have modified it quite a bit. For whatever reason he didn't allow nearly enough time for it to dry properly, so keep in mind it might take a lot longer than 12 hours. Also, I don't know what kind of red pepper flakes he's using, but it's not nearly enough. I doubled that and also added another 2 teaspoons of my favorite hot sauce. Otherwise it's really up to you. One time saver I discovered is that my local supermarket actually carries jerky-cut meat, which eliminates the most time consuming step of the whole process.

Anyway it's really easy and the jerky turns out really well, and you can do all sorts of stuff with it. Works very well when sliced up and added to classic student meals like ramen noodle soup or mac & cheese, though add the jerky early so it has a chance to soften up a bit.

I am also one.

Regarding Tofu, one has to understand that it has cultural boundaries in a sense. There is always these yuppie recipes of adding tofu in places where it really doesn't belong. Tofu works best in Asian dishes (Indian, Chinese, Korean and so on) because it originates there. If you don't like soft tofu, I recommend trying Ma Po Tofu which is probably something that is hard not to love when done properly. Very saucy, salty and compliments rice nicely. Fried Tofu is ok but if you don't have the right ratios of oil to tofu, it gets too oily.

Man, that's awesome, thanks! I love beef jerky.

Usually when I cook/prepare a meal it's not very proficiently. My thought process to cooking is usually "Noodles or salad?". Then what meat to I want (usually chicken)? Then I add my favorite veggies (tomato, red pepper and broccoli. Change the meal up by using different sauces/salad dressing or spices/herbs/garlic. I just got a slow cooker for Christmas though, so I'm pretty pumped to rock some stew, chili and best of all, slow cooked ham in brown sugar. Fuck yes. Luckily my girlfriend cooks me more varied meals, so I don't get bored of my one dimensional cooking skills.

I usually end up taking really shitty and unhealthy lunches to work. Anyone have any good, healthy recipies that would be good for a packed lunch?

This is the main problem with contemporary western "vegetarian" cuisine - it revolves around attempting to emulate dishes originally made with meat by substituting other ingredients (such as tofu). It's a horrid approach to making food that has horrid results. If you want good vegetarian cuisine, try a cuisine in which the dishes are traditionally vegetarian. If I were ever to become a vegetarian, I'd probably eat mostly Indian food. The idea of "adapting" recipes to be vegetarian is absolutely silly.

Well, there are certain success but it has less to do with Tofu and more with soymeat or w/e the stuff is called. I just ate a burrito that had veggie 'meat' and it essentially tastes the same. That being said, I've seen recipes which just substitute plain tofu for hot wings and stuff. Tastes like utter shit

Agreed. I love Indian food, and I usually don’t order any meat dishes when I go out for it.

On another note- I got a really awesome wok for my birthday. I’m pretty excited to try it out- gonna do Kung Pao chicken this weekend.

The only time I like tofu in something other than a dish it really belongs in is when my mother makes "tofu burgers" sounds weird I know, but it's actually quite quite good. Besides that though, I'd prefer to have my tofu with soy sauce and whatnot.

Well, you can try this (shameless plug alert):


If you take lunch to work, though, then I'm not sure how you'd preserve the apple (both in the sandwich and the extra three quarters). Maybe you can just eliminate the apple from the sandwich and bring a whole one to have on the side.



Excellent, thanks! I'll try this out the next time I go to the store and get some curry paste.

Wow, that sounds freakin amazing...I'm def trying that! I have access to a fridge so i should be all set!

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Personally I wouldnt add the beansprouts untill the last step so that they dont lose any crispness.

yeah that's like mine, but i used shrimps instead of chicken, chicken would be good too. Pasta is so easy and good

I'm also a vegetarian, for moral reasons not health reasons or any crap like that, and hopefully some day I'll be able to become vegan, but fuckin' a, cheese, butter, chocolate milk/milkshakes, etc, too fucking good.

I could never go without cheese.

That's the nice thing about a lot of Thai dishes - really easy to make, and the flavors work with a variety of meats.

And it's really hard to express just how nice it is to have curry paste on hand. Nothing like a good Thai curry to warm you up.

I tried making Thai curry before but botched up, I think I put in too much coconut milk? I would like to learn how to make some of the crab dishes that they have in Thailand though, those are seriously drool-worthy.

For every tablespoon curry paste, it's 1/2 cup coconut milk and 1/2 cup chicken broth.

easy-as-fuck bread:

FLOUR
SUGAR
BEER

http://www.cooksrecipes.com/bread/beer- ... ecipe.html

It's really good if you put melted butter on top, which gives it a crunchy crust... mixing a little into the dough (which, just to warn you, is incredibly sticky, and should be mixed and scooped by hand and/or a rice paddle) is also good.

Rosemary mixed into it, with a little spinkled on top is also really good.

As for what beer to use, I've only tried Miller High Life and Steel Reserve. It's really good when made using Steel Reserve, I think, but pretty much any beer ("Light" varieties excluded) will work for this.

Also, it's best eaten fresh, or re-heated in the oven, but it's alright cold too. Whole wheat seems to hold up better than bleached flour when eaten cold in my experience, but it's still better to re-heat it.

All the times I've had it (within the last couple of years, at a local restaurant, and served mostly in wraps), it had the texture of eggs... I never really had any that was "chewy". I think the stuff I eat isn't fried very much since it doesn't have that "crispy" texture really, but I like it all the same.

BBQ tofu wrap... mhhhhh...

My school's dining hall makes couscous burgers from time to time, and they are delicious!

couscous burger nice!! i made oatmeal burgers (no buns) with soy yogurt, that was different, didn't like it very much, i've got to try it again (it's a recipe in Annick Giroux's book)

i can make baked mac and cheese and omelettes. that's about it

Cashew burgers are really good too.

Was cooking some fairly boring chicken and rice soup trying to decide what would kick it up a notch, then it hit me: egg yolks and lemon juice! Now if only I had some corn it'd be perfect...

Me neither cheese is just the best. Insanely sharp cheddar, gruyere, robusto...nothing beats those.

I love me some aged cheddar.

just want to share the recipe i'll do tonight
it's fetuccine with bechamel sauce, ham, brocoli and asparagus. You put that on a pan and add cheese on top and put it on the oven to make it melt. Will be delicious

Cooking perogies is pretty fun.