Lasagne. And I hate Mondays.
If it helps, we’ve found cooking the noodles was unnecessary. It holds together better if you don’t.
I just soak the sheets in water whilst making the other elements then construct otherwise I’ve found sometimes you get crunchy lasagne.
That’s never happened to us. Could be our usual sauce is too wet.
Maybe I need more wetness ;p
Skillet lasagna is the answer you seek! Maybe.
And if you’re really feeling lazy, cook up some ravioli, put it in the skillet with the meat sauce, cover it with mozzarella, and throw it in the oven for a few minutes. Voila! Psuedo-lasagna
Sourdough
Gonna take a detour here and mention the time that I tried to make tofu from scratch, starting with making soy milk from dried beans that I’d ordered just for the task:
The soy milk turned out surprisingly well, with the help of a semi-automated device, but I realised on the spot that most commercial soy milk has a tonne of sugar added to it, and I didn’t want to go down that route. In fact, it just about turned me off of soy milk permanently.
Anyway, I moved on to the tofu-making stage, and realised that both coagulants I tested (lemon juice and nigari powder) imparted a huge, unwanted taste to the tofu, on top of neither being all that great at coagulating the soy milk. In the end, I think I could have improved on this cooking disaster, but my motivation was gone at that point, and I wanted to move on.
There’s also the fact that no matter what a versatile food tofu is, it’s also a significantly processed one, and I wanted to move in the opposite direction. That said, I understand that fresh-made tofu in Japan and other places can be incredibly tasty, almost worth wolfing down straight with no cooking or spices.
So I have this problem… I enjoy cooking and when my grandmother passed away, I inherited her recipe book and her Le Creuset dutch oven.
THEN I discovered I lived a short drive from a Le Creuset outlet store AND they have a mailing list that regularly delivers 30% to 70% off coupon deals.
So I’ll find a pan that makes me go “Oooh!” then I look for excuses to use it.
So it’s not really a lack of motivation, but rather I want people to cook for. Cooking just for me? Incredibly lazy. “More time to make and clean up than eat? I’m not making it.” Cooking for OTHER people?
Chuck roast:
Shakshuka:
Chocolate hazelnut chocolate chip cheesecake:
Beef roast:
Pork loin w/ scalloped potatoes:
Ableskievers:
Hello it’s me ur friend I’m coming over for dinner
Holy fuck that chuck roast looks good
It was really good, with bacon, veggies, braised in Malbec wine and Grand Marnier.
I found 2 recipes I couldn’t decide between so I just combined them. ;)
1 pack of bacon, diced and cooked in olive oil on medium high until the edges were brown, then removed.
In the same pan, 2 diced carrots, 2 diced celery stalks, 2 diced Walla Walla sweet onions. Cooked on medium high until carmaelized, then removed.
3.37 pound boneless chuck roast. Patted dry, heavily salted and peppered, seared on one side for 5 minutes, flipped and then seared on the other side for 5 minutes and removed.
Added back 1/2 cup Grand Marnier and 2 cups of Malbec Wine. Deglazed the pan scraping up all the brown bits.
Put the bacon back in, put the veggies back in, stirred until well distributed. Added bay leaves, thyme and rosemary, several cloves of minced garlic, topped with the meat.
Brought to a boil then placed in a pre-heated 325° oven for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, beef was to temp and easily shreddable. (Finally! A reason to use the meat claws!) Resting on stove top while I cook some pasta to go with it.
Pasta was super simple. Boiled water and salt, cooked a bag of egg noodles for 8 or 9 minutes. Drained, removed, then melted a stick of butter in the pot, added a small container of heavy cream, added rosemary and thyme, brought it to a simmer then popped the pasta back in and cooked a couple of minutes.
I fear you’re living too far away from me to say “I’ll come and eat that!”
Doing grilling lately so just follow the smoke. :)
Proper paella. I enjoy making it in the sense that it’s simpler to cook and is more like a risotto, but to make an actual paella as close to the way the dish should be made takes so much effort, the correct ingredients and equipment I have neither the time nor the money for.
Chicken Biryani. I keep getting the ingredients and making simpler things.
Are you me? I keep doing that too
Cubanos. I want to really, really bad. But I know I will never go through that.
Croissant
This, I love, LOVE croissants, and have basically baked and made every other thing I love that much at some point or another. Flattening a giant sheet of butter again and again into a dough sheet? Ain’t nobody got time for that
Doughnuts. I made doughnuts by hand recently, and kneading the dough. For. 30. Minutes. By. Hand. Fuck, never again. I usually don’t mind kneading dough by hand, but this was the first time I wish I had a mashine for it
Ramen, but it takes so God damn long to make.
I have the Ladurée macaron cookbook and I look at it frequently, and then go buy a lesser version of the cookie and pretend I’m happy.
I don’t really lack for motivation, I’ll take on some pretty wild culinary adventures, but occasionally I run into things that I just can’t logistically make happen.
For example, nowhere in my house has the right sort of temperature/humidity to cure my own salami and such (I’ve checked,) and I just don’t have the space to squeeze in another fridge with humidity controls and such to make a curing chamber.
I’ve made my own bacon, various kinds of sausages (including smoking my own kielbasa, andouille, and hot dogs) I’ve helped butcher chickens, I’ve made beef Wellington, sushi, I’ve baked bread and cakes in a Dutch oven in a fire pit, I’ve made ice cream, homemade pierogies.
protip : you can cook anything. maybe you don’t cook it well the first time. but if you’re not completely freeballin it, and are following an established well reviewed recipe, once you cook it poorly or not to your taste, you can always make notes, and adjust the next time. be fearless in your experiments, there’s a lot of freedom (and cost savings) in learning how to cook what you like to eat, the way you like to eat it, at home.
Buying tortillas is getting kind of expensive, but making tortillas seems like such a damn pain uuugh
It’s so hard to get a good texture too, to get a nice soft foldable one that is thin but tough enough not to rip is an art. My attempts, and I did give it a good damn few tries, were all sad failures and, well, I decided pre-packaged wraps/tortillas are worth the cost to save my sanity lol.
Homemade flour tortillas are unbelievably good though. I don’t know what it is that makes them taste so different from storebought, but it makes all the difference.
I don’t have the tools or energy to make my own either though :/
All food is like that to me. I only cook because otherwise I’d die of starvation. I eat to live - food has always just been fuel for me. I don’t want to put any more effort into cooking than what is absolutely necessary. If money was not an issue, then personal chef would be the first person I’d hire. Hell, if it was possible I’d hire someone to eat it for me too.
I feel this so hard. If I could just have a pill that would properly supply my body with all the nutrients and sustenance it needs I would 100% do it and then just eat one or two actual meals a week for the flavours.
