Learning to Cook: My Winter Break Experiences with Walter Staib

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cyrus
  • Start date Start date
Click For Summary
The discussion centers around an individual's attempt to cook during winter break, specifically trying recipes from a European cookbook by Walter Staib. The dishes attempted include poached salmon, Brussels sprouts with bacon, and Macaire potatoes, accompanied by Sauvignon Blanc. While the results were not visually comparable to the cookbook photos, the cooking experience was deemed enjoyable. Participants express admiration for the effort and encourage further exploration in cooking, suggesting that practice improves presentation. The conversation shifts to the importance of good kitchen tools, like a Wüsthof chef's knife, and the value of creativity in cooking rather than strictly following recipes. There are mentions of baking bread and cooking techniques, with some sharing personal cooking experiences and recipes. The dialogue highlights the challenges and rewards of cooking, emphasizing that experimentation and learning from mistakes are key to developing culinary skills.
  • #91
turbo-1 said:
Cy, you've got to come to Maine. You can camp out in my garage, and I will teach you to cook actual meals made out of actual food. Opening cans and heating stuff up doesn't cut it! Today, I put a large roasting chicken in the oven around 1:30 at 450 deg. (F, for the smart-assed Euros who will make jokes) I put the bird in a large pan with about 1/2" of water in it, along with a large quartered yellow onion. I rubbed the bird with peanut oil, and dusted it with powdered sage, paprika, salt and black pepper. After about 45 min of browning, I tented the bird with aluminum foil and continued cooking at 350 deg F for another couple of hours. Add side dishes of steamed green beans, mashed potatoes made with fresh garlic and onion, and you've got a meal that is killer.

Secret: There is no secret. Good cooking is simplicity, a bit of planning, minimum prep, and a lot of waiting around (if you are roasting large critters). You can learn to cook - you just need motivation and some inventiveness.

Have chicken parts? Wet them in raw scrambled eggs, and roll them in crushed Panko bread crumbs with sage, pepper and salt added. Place the chicken parts in a roasting pan lubricated with peanut oil, garnish them with a bit of lemon zest (shredded peels) and drizzle a bit of lemon juice over them. Bake in a hot oven until done. One of the quickest, tastiest entrees you will ever taste.

BTW, all the juice from the roasting pan, and all the juice from the potato/garlic/onion mash-up, and from the steamed beans is now in a large revere-ware pot along with all the bones, giblets, and other parts that didn't get eaten tonight. I'll boil that tomorrow to make chicken stock for stews or soups.


The problem is that I don't have hours to cook. I have under an hour. I'm working my way up there to real cooking though......some day.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #92
Evo said:
Isn't that tuna casserole? :biggrin:

Exactly!

*lisab LOVES tuna casserole :!) *
 
  • #93
lisab said:
Exactly!

*lisab LOVES tuna casserole :!) *
Come here, I have enough leftover tuna casserole in my fridge to kill 50 people. :-p
 
  • #94
Evo said:
Come here, I have enough leftover tuna casserole in my fridge to kill 50 people. :-p
She's not kidding! Listeria, Salmonella, whatever... it's in her fridge.
 
  • #95
turbo-1 said:
'Kraut is preserved by brining. It's essentially shredded cabbage packed in salt, so it's fine to eat as-bought. Ain't nothin' bad going to grow in an environment with that much salt in it.

Still, you've got to learn to cook some stuff, Cy! Buying stuff and frying it or warming it up is very expensive and it gets old after a short time. Get some salt pork (or even better, a meaty bone from a ham-hock) and boil it with lentils, onions, celery, and some pepper and a little salt (not necessary if you use either salt pork or really salty ham) and see what you think. Carrots are very inexpensive and they keep well in the fridge, and they are also a nice addition to lentil soup.

the nice thing about lentils is they're quick.

for something less quick, but still cheap and not a whole lot of actual work, soak dried pintos overnight. rinse and put in a crock pot with the above trinity of onion/celery/bell pepper, black pepper and salt, maybe some garlic. instead of the salt pork, get some of that sage breakfast sausage that you slice up, and brown it in a skillet like hamburger. toss the sausage in the pot and let it cook all day on low. serve over rice. cubed and pan-sauteed potatoes makes a good side, imo.
 
  • #96
Moonbear said:
What did it look like before the cat vomited it up? :rolleyes: Sorry Cyrus, it might taste good, but you need to work on presentation and photography...it looks like a bowl of vomit.

i agree. it looks so bland. make it more attractive and put more color to contrast the white.:wink:
 
  • #97
turbo-1 said:
Cyrus, cookbooks are OK as far as they go, but the real fun in cooking is creating your own meals. Think of things that might go well together and give them a whirl. My wife and I are always tossing things together and many of our favorite dishes were born that way. Recently we sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms until they were browned, stirred in a can of black beans and some of our jalapeno salsa and served that over a bed of Basmati rice. It was delicious. We made a similar dish recently by mixing all those ingredients (including the steamed rice) putting them in a casserole dish topped with shredded cheeses, and baked it until the cheese melted in and browned on top.

I applaud your efforts and wish you well as you learn, but don't be too constrained by recipes. The best meal you've never had (yet) is probably riding around in your imagination right now. My wife took a course in gourmet French provincial cooking, yet she never makes a single dish that she made in that course. The practical things that she learned, like how to make a good soup stock, how to debone chickens, how to handle chef's knives, etc, were worth the tuition, but our best dishes still come from imagination and a creative treatment of whatever is available in our freezers or was on sale at the market. This morning we had a great breakfast of pan-fried potatoes and sea scallops sauteed in butter. Fresh scallops were on sale yesterday.


Yup, the key to learning to cook, is experimenting. Learn to know your cooking temps and measurements, as time goes on and yo master your own dishes, these factors will come naturally. I don't even use a measuring cup anymore.