Food, And Making It
 

Today, I wanted to make cinnamon buns. No, you can't have any. After baking primarily buns, cookies and some bastardized unholy melding of the two, I wondered if anyone else did any food related things that they want to share so that I could end up baking something other than chocolate chip buns.

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I think it would be pretty cool if you had taken pictures and a semi step-by-step on how you actually cooked it. I would be interested in swapping recipes and learning how people cook their meals.

I was totally going to make such a thread in the future called "Let's Bake: <Insert food here>" when I owned a decent camera, but alas!

Mississipi Mud Pies or Banoffee Pies are fun to make, but be sure not to make the caramel set too hard! Else you've got a mean paper weight.

I find Victoria Sponge Cake to be a great base cake. It's simple, tastes good but you can pretty much add a variety of ingredients to it to keep in interesting. Adding melted Dark Chocolate to the mix and adding some butter cream is a sure winner!

Next Christmas dinner I am wanting to try cooking up a Turducken. Anyone have experience in doing this? Any suggestions on cooking?

Edit: Do you have a beast of an oven as it appears or is it just an optical illusion?

I have a relatively big oven. Not huge, but big-ish.

i just ate "Potato ships on cheese ocean"

You see, i got medium sized potato. In a tuperware with water. Boiled on microwave for 2 minutes with some salt. Then, i got the potato out, sliced to thick slices, placed it on plate, covered it with 2 kinds of chesses (White cheese and provolone) and proceeded to nuke it again for 5 minutes.

The cheese melts and forms this "sea" around the potato slices, and forms this crispy crust around it. Soooooo good!

Did you know you can make a baked potato in the microwave? It's true! Just poke some holes in that beast with a fork, microwave it for four minutes or so, turn it over, microwave it for another four minutes or so, and bam, potato.

I take no responsibility for those who don't know to wash their potatoes before cooking.

You can use a microwave, but I for one find they're tastier coming from an oven; the skin comes out of the oven nice and crispy. Of course, if you're pressed for time and already cooking something else in the oven, I think you can cook them most of the way in the microwave, and then put them in the oven for just a few minutes to achieve much the same effect.

Also on the general subject of side dishes: asparagus. So many people cook asparagus by cooking the living daylights out of it, until it becomes limp and soggy and generally unpleasant. Or else they'll use canned asparagus, which starts out soggy and unpleasant to begin with. (This and canned spinach I'm not sure I'll ever understand.) I learned from my mother, however, that asparagus is much better when you (a) buy it fresh and (b) prepare it like this:

• Snap the asparagus stalks into lengths of about an inch or two; being exact hardly matters here just as long as you get rid of the bottom few inches of the stalk because those tend to be really woody and tough.
• Boil them in water until they're bright green and tender-crisp; it shouldn't take too long. (They'll have turned the water pale yellow-green, too.) You can do it with a pot of water and a wire-mesh strainer thing on the stovetop, or just put the pieces in a bowl with enough water to submerge them and pop 'em in the microwave for a few minutes.

She also makes this lovely sauce which is really just sour cream and dijon mustard in approximately equal amounts, with the optional addition of garlic powder to taste. It's great on the asparagus, and also on chicken.

One of my favorite meals at home (requires some spices and stuff) is cheese ravioli.

Specifically, boiling cheese ravioli in water (just wait until the ravioli starts floating), then pouring marinara sauce on top, with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and a pinch of basil.

It tastes great and it takes about 10 minutes to make, most of which you don't actually have to attend to.

Boiled cabbage can be a thing of true nightmares when done wrong. I have found most people boil until there is no color left and the cabbage is the consistancy of cellulose mush (I'm looking at you, Dad).

Get yourself a very large pot, something much bigger then the amount of cabbage you are going to boil. The extra water will help to dilute the acids that escape during the boil and as a result your house won't stink like..well, boiled cabbage.

Get that water hot, rolling boil is good here and medium high heats will get this about right. Cut your cabbage to your liking (I like to julianne them 1/4th a head at a time, removing the core parts before I cut). Once the water is rolling, dump it all in. You should notice almost immediatly the color of the cabbage brighten up, keep it in the pot for NO MORE THEN 3 MINUTES. 2 Minutes is really all I do, but I like mine just a tiny bit firmer. After the 5 minute mark your cabbage will have started on it's journey down the darkside, and 4 minutes might be too late as well depending on factors, but 2-3 is the safe zone.

Cabbage will be a lovely green color, won't smell like old socks, and will have a magnificent flavor. (For an enhancement, add a tablesppon or two of caraway seeds to the water after it boils up and before you add the cabbage. It's the Cabbage-friendly spice, you know)

Serve with some butter and a nice sausage or piece of pork, dribble it with some dressing and add it to your light meats dishes as a salad substitute, or save it for a day in the fridge (In plastic, or it'll pick up fridge smells) and give it a quick toss over a hot pan for a few moment the next day for your stir-fry.

I do the same pretty much for the above dish. This also goes for cooking Nachos (Or Doritos and grated cheese if I am very impatient).

This too I have found, and sometimes with other vegetables. I've never boiled any vegetable since I've found that steaming them not only cooks them thoroughly but preserves much more flavour. Plus the time between cooked and overcooked is considerablty longer than if you were to boil them; ideal if you're trying to multi-task around the kitchen.

Random tip: As BBQ season is fast approaching for many, a less common form of marinating your meat is actually using Coca-Cola. It makes the meat taste sweeter and gives it that little umph. Highly recommended with Pork.

Here's a sure-fire recipe for an onion dip. Specifically sour cream and onion dip. Get a tub of sour cream, the medium size, not the flat ones, but not the ungodly tall kind, either. Then get a packet of McCormic brown gravy mix and dump it in. Add a palmful (roughly a teaspoon) of dried minced onion, more to taste, mix, and voila! The best dip you will ever use on a plain or sour cream and onion chip, for less than it would cost to buy pre-made per ounce of ingredient.

Also, I made a nice shrimp scampi with rice once. All it took was cooking the rice, adding pre-cooked shrimp, microwaving it a bit, adding peas, melting the butter, and adding garlic and sage. Turned out really well.

Actually, most of my cooking is done completely by accident. Not like COMPLETE accident, but I'm crazy about it in that every dish is an experiment that usually turns out really well because I use my sense of smell to see what would and wouldn't go well together. Like Remy from Ratatouille. XD