5punk

Ok, I've got to start somewhere:

My name is Gordon, and I can't cook!

I'd like to cook a meal for me missus one day. I've had 9 years of eating either cheap slop provided by a service mess, or boil in the back rat packs (mmmm, biscuits brown, and cheese possessed!) so I'm a little (very) out of practice.

I have access to an electric hob, a microwave, and a fan oven.

Any good ideas for cheapish (I don't mind shelling out for decent stuff, but I'm a total biff in the kitchen so don't wanna ruin a nice steak f.ex) meals that any old fool can cook on the above kit.

and go easy on words like 'infuse' and 'jullien'. or stir for that matter.

Cheers easy!

You can cook anything with an oven/microwave, even a full Sunday dinner with a bit of juggling and timing.

How much of a biffer are you really? I don't want to presume too much/little in terms of your cooking skills because it won't help. And is it idleness or just a passing fear of the unknown/forgotten?

Microwave dings and you're good? You know how the oven works because you're a bloke, but stuff is frozen or burnt because it's not like what the dials say? Or do you reckon you can knock together a spag bol* easy enough and you want a next level meal?

If you want to try something a bit fancier tasting but still quite low on effort scales then stews and casseroles are good for this.



*A tasty spag bol is easy to make and allows garlic bread and wine to be consumed heavily and it's quite cheap and easy too. Italian stuff generally is. Doesn't require too much buying for a from scratch either. Italian herb mix, tomato purée, tin of tomatoes, onion/garlic, green pepper and beef mince. You can add paprika, smoky bacon, mushrooms, chilli etc as you get used to making it and want to tart it up a bit. If this sounds like a good starting point shout out and I'll put method in another post.

Whilst I'm nowhere near pete's level of cookig, I do have a few quick and easy meal ideas that can be thrown your way.

Also, more cook books/magazines are getting the idea that many people have forgotten how to cook fr themseles, so have started putting more plain language in things

Further on Pete's spag bol above, I have the recipie for a quite decent lasagne, goes awesome with salad and baby new potatoes.

Say what you can do about the kitchen, and postings shall be done...

And if your missus has any food intolerances and stuff feel free to ask, Mrs Fab and I have a shitload of them between us so know good substitutions and recipes for stuff

Also: Make some bread, it's easy and impressive (not to mention damn tasty!)
Got a recipe in the thread somewhere, 1 sec

[edit] DING! http://www.5punk.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic. ... 080#160080

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Just for future reference: You shouldn't use the words 'guaranteed shag' and 'grandma sucking' around here

I use this:

Cooking For Blokes

It's alright, lots of good ideas in it though, and fairly idiot proof instructions.

Spag bol is the way forward, if only because it's near enough impossible to fuck up, also easily morphs into chilli, and similar stuff goes into lasagne and cannelloni.

Something like <a href="http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/ch ... l">this</a> might be worth trying too, dead fucking simple, but really very nice.

oh, yeah, and the best thing about spag bol? It's better if you cook it, fridge it, then reheat the next day, no idea why, but I think science is involved.

This: http://www.malaysiabest.net/2006/06/22/ ... inach-pie/ is one of the easiest meals I've made in recent times (spinach can get to fuck, I ain't popeye). Basically:

Get some potatoes in a pan, boil em up real good now jah, mash it up style.
Cook some fishy, (used some boil in a bag cod with cheese sauce one time and it did the trick nicely. If not that, then you still need some sort of fishy sauce. My mom microwaves frozen fish in the microwave with milk for example, but personally I think thats pikey as fuck.)
Hard boil some eggs, slice em up (but chunky eggy is good, nice contrast in texture), give them a quick mix into the mashed potato after it's been mashed.
Throw fishy into a casserole or lasagne dish, then throw down the spuds on top yo.
Run the back of a fork over the mash, spike it up like a hedgehog fool.
FINISH HIM: Give it a nice healthy layer of cheddar cheese.
Stick it in the oven for roughly 40-50mins. As everything is pre-cooked, gauge it by cheese.

Or failing that: Cook 3 birdseye potato waffles in the grill, 2 beefy burgers, 2 rashers of bacons, fry an egg and grate some cheese.
Arrange: Waffle>burger>bacon>cheese>waffle>cheese>burger>egg>bacon>waffle and grill for as long as you dare.
I call this the ROFFLE BURGER

Eat, try to stand up and spend the next 2 days regretting.

My ultimate method of checking if Spaghetti is cooked...

Throw a strand of it at the wall, if it sticks, jobs a good un...

The Shutting Downs wrote:My ultimate method of checking if Spaghetti is cooked...

Throw a strand of it at the wall, if it sticks, jobs a good un...

or, you could bite it. far better for judging if it's cooked right.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
or, you could bite it. far better for judging if it's cooked right.

Just adds more things to clean after cooking.

But is way more fun...

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amblin wrote: Poorly cooked spaghetti will also stick. Throwing it at the wall is a bad test.

IME it only sticks once it's totally cooked, once you've fucked about throwing it at the wall, the pasta in the pan will be overcooked and well on its way to stodge.

I find rice/pasta cooking times vary quite a lot.

Pudding rice or long grain merkin or basmati or brown wild rice etc all need different timings. The info on the back of a packet is generally wrong too.

I aim for ~100g of rice per person with basmati. 75g for a small side portion or 150+ for a fuck load that goes well with a massive chilli.

When it's going in a pan you want twice as much water as rice, minimum. Oil and salt (maybe use some garam masala or similar to add a touch of flavour to the rice if it's for a curry) get pan boiling, put rice in. Let it start boiling again then stir it a little bit so it's not clumpy or stuck to the pan. Leave it the fuck alone except for checking it's consistency.

I like rice barely cooked because sticky rice annoys me so I tend to grab a little bit out and chew it. People who aren't silly can use utensils for this, if I'm in a hurry I use my hand and then swear a lot. Washing very starchy rice through the colander/sieve with a kettle of boiling water is a good way to finish the rice if you want good separation on the grains. Doesn't work on overcooked rice though, makes it squidgier.

Pasta, again I like this very al dente 'firm to the bite' but if it's wholemeal dried it's going to take longer than fresh+freeze dried stuff that needs only a couple of minutes in the water. I'll generally take it off the heat before it's sticky and still has the edge of a crunch to it and give it a couple of minutes in the pan then drain, oil it a bit and serve.

Personally I've found that if I think something has been on about the right amount of time it generally has, but maybe that's just how much of the stuff I've cooked over the years.

If you want something a bit more impressive than spag bol, I have a great chicken recipe. Don't get me wrong, spag bol is lovely and one of my most regularly cooked meals, but it doesn't generally look impressive.

The most difficult part of my recipe is butterflying a chicken breast, but all you really need to know is that you need a decent sharp knife. This video shows you how, but only do the bit to 45 secs as the rest is unnecessary for this.

Once you've done that, you can then stuff the inside of the breast with anything you like. I often go for asparagus and mozzarella, but it works well with loads of things such as sun-dried tomatoes too. If you use asparagus, get the smaller tips, and steam them a little first. Put the stuffing in a lump at one edge of the breast, then roll it up tightly, starting at the stuffing side so that it finishes in the middle. Then wrap the whole breast in a few bits of bacon.

Finally, get a piece of tin foil and place the chickeny bacony lump of goodness near the middle of one side, and roll it up in the foil, trying to keep it as tightly rolled as you can. With the foil at either side of the meat, twist it up tight so that it looks a bit like a cracker. Then cook it for 25 mins in an oven at 180C. Put a tray on the shelf below as they can sometimes leak a little when cooking.

I tend to serve this with something like boiled new potatoes, broccoli and a creamy mushroom sauce, but you can do pretty much what you like. When you unwrap the cooked chicken, you can then slice each portion into 2 or 3 bits and it looks great from a presentation point of view.

This is handy because although it's a bit of a faff to make up, you can do it in advance and keep it in the fridge until you want to cook it, or even freeze it.

I think those instructions make sense, but I haven't got time to go over it in detail. In any case, it may be too fiddly for what you fancy doing, but I thought I'd put it out there.

Can some of these new recipies be added to wiki plz? Kthanx

buzzmong wrote:Can some of these new recipies be added to wiki plz? Kthanx

Yes, go ahead.