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[Patrick]

So I'm living with my dad and stepmom in California now, and my parents have a schedule worked out for how dinner relates to shopping. They plan their dinner menu every Tuesday, and they shop every Wednesday. Now that I've moved back in with them, they want me to cook one day a week. I guess it's a thing to help me become more self-sufficient, and I have until tomorrow evening (around 7pm) to figure out what I wanna cook.

I was wondering if anybody had any ideas for this first week. I was thinking lasagna, but in a house that focuses primarily on mediterranean-type food (read: this week we've already had moussaka and spaghetti with homemade sauce), maybe not so much.

Now, the details? They want it to be a decently balanced dish in terms of nutrition. And I want it to be something that can be made within the space of 30 minutes to an hour.

Prizes: one hug.

[FruitKat]

Taco

[TheFuriousWombat]

A heaping bowl of shrimp curry with couscous never hurt anyone.

[Blue Kitty]

borscht

[FruitKat]

http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/shrimp%27s_dirty_secrets:_why_america%27s_favorite_seafood_is_a_health_and_environmental_nightmare?page=entire

Taco

[Inlander]

What's the weather like where you are at the moment? This is very important. I'm not going to recommend a salad if it's cold; likewise a stew would be silly if it's hot. I know it's winter in the U.S. at the moment but it's my understanding that California is a big place with lots of different climates.

[Ozymandias]

http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/shrimp%27s_dirty_secrets:_why_america%27s_favorite_seafood_is_a_health_and_environmental_nightmare?page=entire

Taco

they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics

OH NO NOT BACTERIA!

[TheFuriousWombat]

http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/shrimp%27s_dirty_secrets:_why_america%27s_favorite_seafood_is_a_health_and_environmental_nightmare?page=entire

Taco

Chicken curry?

[Nodaisho]

Try making what is basically shepherd's pie, but instead of a crust, you make it in a casserole dish and put mashed potatoes on top? You also don't have to use lamb, ground beef works well. It has meat, vegetables, and whatever the hell the potatoes count as, don't they go in the same nutritional category as grains?

edit: Oh, it's also delicious as hell.

[Reed]

Jordan, I hate to tell you this, but the important part is that all 162 species were antibiotic-r. When you see such a wide distribution of antibiotic markers it means that they are highly mobile within the population. This means that when you ingest these species they can spread the resistance genes to the normal flora of your gut. I think it's pretty obvious why maintaining a reservoir of highly mobile antibiotic resistance within your intestines is a bad idea.

[Patrick]

@Harry: Here in the East Bay we've been getting FUCKTONS of rain, and the temperature has been between upper 40s and mid 50s fahrenheit. Warm dishes are a good idea, and I'm glad you mentioned it, I wouldn't have thought of that.

@Kat: I am looking for things that are a bit less of a lazy last resort than tacos. That is not to say, however, that I won't be doing those at some point in the relatively near future.

@You other guys: curries and borscht sound like good calls. Have you got some recipes you could share? My dad loves insanely spicy food, and the recipes in our cookbooks are weak, pathetic imitations of truly spicy curry. A secondary goal is to get my parents to shit fire.

[Jace]

do you have a crockpot? if so, brown some beef and empty the fridge of vegetables into it with some beef broth. dump it all into the crockpot and let it sit for the whole day. BAM you have stew/soup depending on how much it thickens.

[scarred]

Homemade pizza is always a winner (unless your family is a bunch of pizza-hating demon overlords). If you're too lazy to make your own dough (I am) Pillsbury makes some good shit. At that point, all you need is some Ragú and whatever toppings you feel like.

[TheFuriousWombat]

A good, basic curry that I came up with some time ago which has served me well:

stuff:
note that this won't be extremely spicy as is so feel free to up the ante on all the spices as much as you want
-2 tbsp curry powder
-1 tsp cardamom
-1 tsp chili powder
-1 tsp cumin
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp red pepper flakes
-1/2 tsp chipotle pepper powder
-1/2 tsp cayenne
- A bunch of chicken, parts of your choice, as much as you need to feed who you're trying to feed (with the amounts listed for the rest of the ingredients you'll want a couple pounds or less so adjust accordingly)
-1 big yellow onion
-A couple carrots
-2 tbsp minced ginger
-4 garlic cloves
-1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper
-1/2 cup white wine
-1/3 cup coconut milk
-1/4 cup yogurt, plain
-about 4 tbsp oil or ghee (ghee is best but hard to find so olive oil or canola oil or w/e works fine)

-put 3tbsp oil in a pan over high until wisps of smoke come off it
-add all the spices mixed together and stir, cooking for about 1 minute but not much longer. make sure they don't burn!
-add the minced onion, ginger, pepper/salt in any amount you want
-When onions begin to brown, about 2 minutes, add minced garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute
-salt the chicken (I usually use chicken breasts that I've cut into chunks but I've also made this with bone-in thighs and gotten awesome results) and add it to the pot along with 1 tbsp ghee/oil and the peppers, chopped into chunks but not diced, and carrots cut into smallish rounds
-cook for a few minutes until the chicken starts to brown
-Pour in the wine and deglaze the pot, using a spatula to scrape up all the little bits stuck to the bottom of the pan
-After wine has cooked off for the most part, reduce the heat to medium, add coconut milk, and deglaze again
-Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer everything for about 15 minutes or so. Obviously go longer if the chicken isn't cooked but you don't want to stop cooking right when the chicken is done if it finishes in less time. 15 should be the minimum to make sure everything cooks together nicely.
-Turn off the heat and stir in the yogurt
-Serve plain or with basmati rice and some good warm naan if you can get it

feel free to leave out the peppers and carrots if you want, they just add some nice color and texture and stuff as well as a little sweetness. I've also made this with celery added at the same time as the chicken, and with potatoes (pre-boiled), and with lentils (pre-cooked) all of which add their own dimension to the dish. I'm pretty partial to it as is though.

Forgot to mention, you can use all coconut milk instead of white wine. Do everything the same, just use the coconut milk instead. Both work, the second is just a lot more coconut-y which means it'll be sweeter and fattier. it won't change the dish excessively or anything so it's really your call.

[JD]

Kat is suggesting just a single taco for you all to share.

[Emaline]

http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/shrimp%27s_dirty_secrets:_why_america%27s_favorite_seafood_is_a_health_and_environmental_nightmare?page=entire

Taco

they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics

OH NO NOT BACTERIA!

Borax is what I once used to rid my house of fleas. So uh, yeah. That's pretty gross, and I'd rather not eat something covered in something I used to kill fleas.

[E. Spaceman]

Chili con pizza

[Alex C]

@Kat: I am looking for things that are a bit less of a lazy last resort than tacos.

Tacos are really about as lazy as you let them be, and even if you do go a lazy route you can use the time you saved on the main dish to work on a real nice accompaniment, like some good home made salsa or chiles rellenos. The best thing about pairing an easy or familiar main dish with a hard or unfamiliar side dish is that if you screw up the side dish you can just grab a bag of tortilla chips or something and still have a completed meal to serve everyone. After all, if you were really an experienced cook I'd doubt you'd be asking us for suggestions. Save the really experimental main courses for when nobody is counting on you.

[Jimmy the Squid]

My girlfriend made chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and feta. It was pretty awesome and only took about 30 minutes. Maybe marinade the chicken breasts though because it was a little dry.

[JD]

Do Chili.

[Professor Snuggles]

Stuffed chicken breasts are easy and tasty.

You could do this chicken in like, 15 minutes.

Get boneless skinless chicken breasts.

Pound them flat until they're 1/4-1/2 inch thick. You may want to cut them into smaller pieces at this point.

Fry them shits in butter, they cook hella fast due to being thin.

Take the chicken out of the pan, put in oven on low heat to keep warm.

Add more butter to the same pan, melt it while scraping up all the brown shit from the chicken.

Add Lemon Juice and Capers.

Saute for like 2 minutes.

Add some parsley, cook for a minute more.

Toss the sauce with the chicken, if you want a carb I highly recommend gnocci with this, trader joes makes a decent packaged one if you don't wanna make em from scratch. Plain pasta works fine as well. Toss that shit too with the chicken and sauce too.

Serve.

It'll look mad classy, taste delicious, and shouldn't take long at all. You could make a loaf of garlic bread for a side, or, put broccoli in the oven, brown it at like, 400 degrees, take it out, and toss with almond slices(also roasted in the oven at the same time) lemon juice again, and parmesan.

Or fry Brussels Sprouts in butter with diced garlic, add red chili flakes, maybe some mushrooms if you get down like that. Cook brussels till the bottoms are browned, then add maybe half a cup of chicken or veggie stock. Cover for 3 minutes, then uncover and cook until stock boils off. These will be the best brussels sprouts you've ever had.

That is a complete ass meal, doggie. Protien, Carb, Green.

You could also just make a salad, throw in some gorgonzola or blue cheese, a dried fruit(cranberries, raisins, cherries if you're nasty and some candied walnuts. To candy walnuts melt sugar in a pot, stir constantly so it doesn't stick, add walnuts, coat, put on parchment paper, break apart. This is again really easy, and will impress the family.

[Patrick]

Kiff, holy shit, you amaze me sometimes. I think I might actually print that out and do it. Would it work well if I made the pasta with a carbonara sauce and just did pasta carbonara as a side?

[Emaline]

I think carbonara is a bit to heavy to be a side.

[Professor Snuggles]

Yeah Carbonara would really overpower the lighter flavor of the chicken. I'd just toss the pasta with the chicken, or better yet serve the chicken on a bed of pasta. In fact definitely do that. I think that's what I did last time I made it.

Israeli couscous would also work.

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

I want to eat round your house Prof. That's the kind of foods I like....

[Malek]

Fry them shits in butter, they cook hella fast due to being thin.

First thing to catch my attention.

[Slick]

Wait did you stuff those or just pound them flat?
When pounding that chicken, put plastic wrap beneath and on top of it. Pounding chicken that flat is a mess and a half. A nice pretty side that I did the last time I did stuffed chicken was a bunch of sauteed bell pepper, sliced. Slice up a couple of different colours of pepper and fry them until they're just beginning to caramelize, and they look nice on the side of a chicken dish.

Carbonara is dish in itself. Do not, however make carbonara for the first time for supper. Try it out some other time because it is a bit quirky and if you are afraid of raw egg you might botch it. It is super impressive to make and not too hard once you've got it figured, though.

I would recommend roasting a chicken. That is dead simple, dead simple. Dump half a bottle of beer in the cavity, prop up the neck and back so it doesn't all leak out right away, and add some chopped (large pieces) portabello mushrooms, onions, and potatoes to the pan (this is what you are using to prop the neck and back). Cook covered for 45 minutes, then uncover it and cook till it's reached the right temperature with a thermometer. Or you could calculate x minutes per pound, that usually works, I just don't know the rate.
Serve with butter sauteed asparagus and spunky rice.

[Inlander]

@Harry: Here in the East Bay we've been getting FUCKTONS of rain, and the temperature has been between upper 40s and mid 50s fahrenheit. Warm dishes are a good idea, and I'm glad you mentioned it, I wouldn't have thought of that.

The temperature converter thingy I found online says that's between four and ten degrees Centigrade. That's stew weather, which is good for you because winter stews are some of the easiest and tastiest dishes going!

Get some good meat. Beef is the best. Get some with bones in so you can get at the marrow, that stuff's crazy delicious. Then get some vegetables - onions, carrots, some big cloves of garlic (Russian garlic is ideal), that kind of thing. Simmer some stock in a saucepan and brown the meat in it a little, then chuck the it in a casserole dish or some other kind of heat-proof cooking vessel, along with some red wine, the vegetables, a bunch of bay leaves and thyme and parsley and some pepper and salt, and cook it at a really low temperature - like, 80 degrees Centigrade (whatever that is in your crazy pretend measurements). You don't want the stew to boil, because boiling meat makes it tough. Cook the stew pretty much all day - eight to twelve hours. Stir it occasionally, but at that temperature it shouldn't need too much stirring. You can put a bit of hot paprika in the stew too, if you want to spice it up a bit. Make some mashed potatoes and cook a few simple green vegetables (such as beans, which will cook in boiling water or by steaming incredibly quickly - take them out when they're bright green and they won't be overcooked) to serve with the stew. Heat up some fresh bread, too, and you'll have yourself a great meal with the added benefit that the stew will become more flavoursome the longer you keep it in the fridge. The heat from cooking it all day will also warm up those parts of the house near the kitchen, which is nice in winter.

As an alternative to beef you can use chopped up pork sausage - if you're going to do that put some halved or quartered potatoes and some puy (French) lentils in as well, they go really well.

[Professor Snuggles]

Yeah I shoulda mentioned, pound them shits between parchment or wax paper, ideally. It doesn't stick in the same way, and it'll keep shit a little neater. Take pictures and let us know how that ish turns out, also be careful not to overcook the chicken, when it's mad thin like that those nigs'll get dried out like a motherfucker with mad quickness.

[valley_parade]

Damn Kieffer, didn't know you had mad cooking skills. I may try that later this week..got a bunch of chicken breasts sitting in the freezer.

[Slick]

Hang on though, are you stuffing them with anything or just frying them and tossing them with sauce?
When I do stuffed chicken I usually pound 'em flat then roll them up around a stick of cheese and a hot pepper, then bread them and bake them.

[Professor Snuggles]

Naw just flatten and fry.

If I'm finna stuff some chicken tits I just slice them in half but leave like, a hinge, then throw some sauted shallots and onions in there, maybe some goat cheese, spinach, mushrooms all diced up with tomatos, then maybe some dried apricots or somethin that have soaked in warm water for a while, possibly toasted almonds again, or pine nuts if I'm tryna get laid, then bind them shits hella tight with some cotton string, brown for 2 minutes on a side, and bake that shit.

I like some sort of sauce with this, you can brown the shallots then deglave the pan with cider vinegar, let it reduce a bit, and you got a sweet sauce with a little bite. Maybe some dried chipotles in there too if you're hard.

[Caleb]

You should write a cookbook like the Achewood one.

[ViolentDove]

I cooked this courgette, anchovy and lemon fettucine dish the other night. Pretty tasty and mad easy to make.

[Lunchbox]

Nick when I move in can I pay you to cook all my food please?

[Professor Snuggles]

Why the fucc you tryna call a zucchini that faggy ass courgette shit.

All capsicums and courgettes, no wonder australia's so whacc.

[Lunchbox]

we don't normally call them courgettes, that is a recipe from the uk dude

[Inlander]

This seems like a good opportunity to clear up something I occasionally wonder about. Do other people in Australia call aubergines aubergines? Or do they always call them eggplant? Sometimes I find that I have strange English phrases and terms that I picked up from my mum, that don't make sense to other Australians (referring to High Street in Northcote as "the High Street" instead of just "High Street" is one that was recently pointed out to me).

[Lunchbox]

Yeah they're eggplant, Harry!
I find I have picked up a lot of really daggy old-person phrases from my Dad and Grandpas that people point out to me a lot. I can't help it!

[Jimmy the Squid]

I'll tend to say aubergine when I'm around my brother or my mum, eggplant everywhere else.

[Nodaisho]

I get around the issue by just calling them disgusting.

[Jimmy the Squid]

That is a wise stance.

[Spluff]

Albeit incorrect.

[Patrick]

Carbonara is dish in itself. Do not, however make carbonara for the first time for supper. Try it out some other time because it is a bit quirky and if you are afraid of raw egg you might botch it.

The accuracy of the spirit of this statement leads me to think that I should just do good ol' southern fried chicken this first go-round (after helping my mom make this shit for people for years, I basically can't fuck it up). After that, I'll rank the suggestions you guys have given me in order from "least difficult/complex" to "most", and do a sort of graduated progression where I make more difficult/complex stuff each week.

These suggestions are great though, and I really hope they keep coming! I'm looking forward to trying out Kiff's stuffed chicken first.

Do any of you guys have any suggestions for dishes that involve eggs so that I can work on building up to carbonara for a later date? I really love that shit.

[Lunchbox]

Pat you could also do what I do a lot which is to buy good fresh ravioli and some tinned tomatoes and just cook the tomatoes up with some herbs to make basic napolitana sauce and then toss that ravioli in, it is excellent and super easy.

[Johnny C]

Learn how to make risotto!

[Johnny C]

Make totally ballin' lean turkey burgers! OR REGULAR BURGERS.

[Johnny C]

Make Kieffer's Stuffed Chickens!

[David_Dovey]

I made Moroccan lamb with couscous one time and it was fucking excellent and probably quicker than thirty minutes even. I'm at work so I'll post the recipe when I get home/if I remember

[Professor Snuggles]

Stuft chicken tits is finna take longer to make slash be hella way more complicated than the scaloppini receipe I posted, but still delicious.

It's a bomby skill to get down because you can stuff that shit with anything after you have a basic idea of how to cook it.

Fried chicken is the best shit though, real talk. Make that shit with some mashed potatoes and greens and you got America done right.

If you add like, 2-4 oz of pepper Jack cheese to the potatos bite a little harder, then throw like, 2-3 scoops of sour cream and they'll get hella creamy.

Do greens on the side too, boil em for a while until the volume reduces and the center ribs are tender(collards are traditional, but chard and beet greens and flavor/color) then once their reduced throw em in a pan with lemon juice, butter, and maybe some cumin and chili powder, let it fry up hella tender. Chicken on a bed of greens with potatoes, gravy if your nasty.