What do you cook?

[nancylebov]

It's occurred to me that practically everything I cook is basically a stir fry. There's just plain stir fry, soup (stir fry simmered in broth), spaghetti sauce (stir fry simmered in tomato sauce), and stir fry mixed into scrambled eggs.

The recent pesto is an exception.

Anyway, while stir fry has a lot of room for variation and I actually like chopping things, it does begin to seem repetitious.

So, what are you guys cooking, especially if it isn't stir fry?

Comments

[chickenfeet]

I cook all kinds of things by all kinds of methods. Last night's dinner was Thai; a red curry of mussels, pork stir fried with long beans and chilli jam, pomelo and prawn salad, nam prik kapi and a plate of raw and pickled vegetables (and rice of course). Tonight will be marinated and grilled chicken breast with salad. Tomorrow is looking like pasta with pesto. I roast, grill, boil, steam, braise, stew, bake, pan fry, stir fry and occasionally deep fry.

[redbird]

At the moment, we've got a bunch of vegetables roasting in the oven with olive oil and garlic: potato, sweet potato, cauliflower, and onion. And a chicken, also roasting. The vegetables will be lunch with some boiled eggs; the chicken is for later. (It's warm enough that we wanted to do the oven stuff early.)

[brewsternorth]

Boiling fingerling-size potatoes to go into a salad with a vinaigrette with Puy (brown) lentils. Mmmm.

[caper_est]

Omelettes, especially with mushrooms. Stews, casseroles, chilis. Risotto. Fish or chicken, roasted in foil with butter and vegetables. All tolerably light on the preparation time, so they get done more often than stuff which takes up more significant slices of my day.

Also, speaking of pesto, one tasty and rather pretty meal I enjoy now and again is bacon with grilled tomatoes and pesto mashed potatoes.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I like roasting chickens.

[chomiji]

Well, summer is not my primary cooking season, but here are some types of things I do cook at various times of the year: broiled meats (boneless chicken thighs, steak, various cuts of lamb, fish and seafood) with or without rubs or marinades, starchy sides (rice, potatoes, noodles, pilaf, biscuits, spoonbread), steamed plain veggies, sautéed chicken thighs with various veggies and seasonings (Italian-ish or French-ish - my family refers to these favorites as "chicken stuff with sauce"), roast chicken with herbs rubbed under the skin, turkey or beef meatloaf, pasta with tomato, ground beef, and/or cheese, baked polenta casserole, one-pot-meal soups with meat and veggies. My daughter sometimes cooks curry with commercially prepared sauce.

No beans or lentils, you may notice. I love those, but the family doesn't (except that my daughter - now at college - is learning to eat lentils, and my husband likes navy bean soup with ham). They did like farro when we had it at my sister's house (her husband cooked it as a pilaf), so I may try that.

[regalpewter.livejournal.com]

Take your stir fry skills to the next level. Try these fajitas;
First dice a tomato, onion, and 1 or two seeded Jalapenos or tinned Chipotle peppers put them in a lidded plastic container and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours. You can also add corn and black beans to this.
Take either chicken or steak, slice into strips. Do the same with an onion and either a small red or green pepper.
2 teaspoons of minced garlic.
Mix 1 teaspoon of cilantro, 1/2 to 1 tsp of cayenne pepper, and 1 teaspoon of chili powder and pour over meat. add one tablespoon each of worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Put in fridge for at least 1 hour.
Interleave tortillas and paper towels and put in microwave, set for 1 min but don not press start yet.

Now to fry; start with a light coating of canola oil or olive oil plus butter in the fry pan or wok, add meat and any liquid in container. When browned slightly add onion and pepper strips, stir fry till all are cooked. Remove from heat.
Now start microwave. When done, remove immediately and fill each tortilla with fried items. serve with sour cream and mix from beginning.
Enjoy.
YIS,
WRI

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I frequently stuff poblano* peppers with rice, onions and garlic**, vegetables, sometimes bacon or sausage bits, and cheese, then paint them with oil and roast them in the oven at 350-ish for 30-45 minutes.

I also like baked potatoes a lot, and I get very creative with toppings. Also I make homemade pizza (ditto about the toppings), but rolling out the dough does take some time.

* Poblanos are spicier than bells, so don't use them if you're capsaicin-intolerant, but they're also less watery than bell peppers, so they keep and reheat better. How spicy they are depends a lot on how carefully you seed them.

** Granted, I sometimes stir fry the onions and garlic first, but they'll cook just as well if you merely mix them into the rice while it is cooking, so no stir frying has to be necessary.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Roasting chickens and ducks, and meatloaf, but a lot of what I do is stir-fry as well.

[nwhyte]

Stir-frying is very flexible - you can add soy sauce, you can add sugar, you can add flour to thicken it up, you can vary the timing of adding the ingredients ingredients - do the carrots need to be crunchy, or so soft they are almost liquid?

For meat, I am an advocate of roasting big chunks of it, especially slow roasting at low temperature (190° F) if you have the time. If it works, you can do whatever vegetables you like and nobody will notice because the meat tastes so good.

For vegetables, I am a strong advocate of steaming. They cook beautifully but the flavour is not boiled away. This works for practically all vegetables, but especially good for the likes of brussels sprouts.

One other variation on stir-frying is to use butter instead of oil. But this is best done with relatively few ingredients, oltherwise you lose the flavour and might as well not have bothered.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Apologies-- I just deleted an anonymous comment as probable spam, but was able to save the text:

sushi
lasagna/caneloni
paella
bread baked with ham & cheese mixed in
pizza
crêpes
salads

So, whoever you were, your words are saved. I may just disable anonymous commenting, though nicknames will be alright.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Soup! As much chopping as you want, a chance to play with herbs and spices; I like to add so much stuff it's just the other side of stew. You can buy stock to start with. A big pot lasts well.

Somewhat similarly, pasta sauce, usually store-bought marinara with chopped stuff & herbs.

Roasted vegetables.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

In the summer, it's no fun to roast vegetables and bake things--it gets too hot in my kitchen. So aside from stir-frying, I do some steaming and boiling, and I make salads. My kid really likes a nice boiled cauliflower, plain. I like green salad with tomatoes. I recently got lactose-free yogurt and mixed it with lemon juice, lemon zest, salt and pepper for salad dressing, and that was delicious with tomatoes and thawed-out frozen green beans on lettuce. (My regular dressing is lemon, miso, tahini and mustard, thinned with water and shaken up hard.)

When it cools off, I'll start baking bread and roasting vegetables, and maybe even make more stuffed baked tomatoes and zucchini.

[regalpewter.livejournal.com]

In the summer is when you take roasting outdoors, baking done in a dutch oven can be really fun, and roasting becomes grilling....

YIS,
WRI

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The bulk of my cooking tends to be roasting, when I do it... my recipes tend to be sized for families and when I cook it's most often for myself alone, so I get huge left-overs that I freeze for later. (Friends jokingly refer to this as "home-made TV dinners", as I usually freeze them as portions with sides and veggies in the same container. Remove from freezer, microwave, eat. Only it's home cooking instead of industrial cooking.)

Beef is simplest; salt and pepper the exterior, put in oven for roughly a half-hour per pound at 350°F, remove and let rest for 10-15 minutes, carve and serve. You can get trickier if you wish, particularly in using the drippings for gravy or dumplings (I tend to put parboiled potatoes in the pan for the last half-hour, sometimes with diced or "baby cut" carrots, as lazy-man's dumplings) but you don't have to.

Pork roast isn't as simple as you need to be more creative with the seasoning if you want it to taste good, though as with many things BBQ sauce covers many sins. You also have to be more careful to make sure it's cooked thoroughly; with beef, a rare centre isn't a problem, but with pork it's not safe. There's also the problem that many folks can't/won't cook it due to dietary restrictions... so not a favourite of mine when company's coming.

Roast fowl is slightly trickier but still not hard; the trick is the stuffing. I use stale bread blended into a fine crumb, diced onion, fresh-ground pepper, and store-bought "poultry seasoning" spice blend. Pack the bird's cavity (for chicken and turkey, fill the cavity; for duck or goose, or the fattier birds in general, fill no more than half) and close it, then salt the skin lightly; again 350° for a half-hour per pound until juices run clear. (Some folks prefer to stuff the cavity with diced citrus, for instance duck a l'orange... the trick also works for other poultry, I'm told, but I like the bread stuffing so much I haven't tried it myself.)

I also do some stews when feeling ambitious.

-- Steve doesn't do much frying, and hardly any baking... which probably means he needs to further develop his repertoire.

[cellio]

I roast chicken, root veggies, and hunks of beef. I bake fish with various treatments ranging from butter and herbs to tomato sauce to parmesan coatings. I bake chicken with sauces, usually barbecue. I bake enchiladas and noodle casseroles and vegetable kugels.

I use the crock pot to make chili, chicken/veggie/barley "stoup" (heartier than soup, not a full-fledged stew), barbecue chicken, and vegetarian stews and curries, among things.

I use the stove to make eggs in various forms, hot cereals, stir-fry, rice with or without vegetqables, hash browns, boiled or steamed vegetables, pasta, blintzes, and other stuff that's not coming to mind right now.

I also make cold salads of various sorts.

That's all off the top of my head.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

I made baked hoisan chicken for Shabbos lunch. For lunch today I took a tortilla, covered it with buffalo wing sauce and blue cheese dressing, then added soy chicken strips, bacos, and shreaded mexican cheese. Baked in a 400 degree toaster oven for 10 minutes. Lovely.

[gildedacorn.livejournal.com]

I like stir fry too.

I'm also partial to roast chicken, roast pork, broiled steak, and pasta with sauce of all kinds. Fruit and vegetables (especially in the summer). The thing to do with roasting is either to get up really early to do it, or do it really late at night, to avoid the heat issues.

Soups and stews will begin to interest me again when it gets cold and I rev up the crockpot.

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

Well, to the limited extent I cook as opposed to heating up, I make a lot of soup/stew things.

Beans with ham, ham and cabbage, Tried Kimchi soup once, gonna try it again someday, rice with boullion and misc vegetables, lentils and ham.

(Rather a pork heavy theme, I see.)