The same way I always grade success when it comes to food; A) Did you like it B) (more importantly) Would you make it again? and C) Would you serve it to family and friends.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Wife and kids made bruschetta (sp?) with ingredients fresh from the garden last night. It was incredibly good. I never knew bruschetta was just a high-falutin name for French bread pizza. I also have no idea what it's supposed to be made with. What I do know is that the just picked tomatoes, basil, oregano, onions, etc made it incredibly delicious.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Well, I made the Shrimp with Ettouffee sauce last night. It was good, though it would have been better had I made it the right way (non lazy way).

Shrimp on the grill were delicious, servered over wild rice. The sauce had a real earthy taste with tomato and some zinggy (that's a real word) pepper bite, but not too much. I only microwaved the sauce though because the g/f was busy using the range for her non-adventurous frozen fries and other stuff. I think the sauce really needs to be reduced a little on the stove, but it was good none-the-less.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

exactly the same item of shrimp was made by that women(madam) on the television early in the morning today, when I was checking the news headline, my remote switch was pressed wrongly and it was rest on the "cookery",in which the madam was teaching that how to make the "kofta"(say a soft cake)made of shrimp, she further said that she always clean up the hard portions through it, so that children can swallow in well manner.

Finally today there was a Rice in our cooker, (arranged with the vegetarian decoration into it, like french beens, american almond, english cashew and chinese pepper powder).
added with some butter+tamrind into it along with a very few ginger paste. Infact when we eat such type of rice, our eyes immediately gives a green signal to the "tears", because the chilly added with this item was big.

Tonight! Feast de resistance, ala Shrimp Scampi on the fly because I got home late from work, I'm starving, talking to my dad on the phone, and didn't want to waste time cooking, so I made this:



Shrimp boiled in spices, sauted in garlic, butter, and herbs, laid over a bed of spaghetti and sour cream/cream cheese sauce with Italian seasoning.

Sounds like it takes hours, right?

Nope!

Here's how I do it in 15 minutes:

1. Open door, inside, lock door, suit off, shorts, t-shirt, sandals on, --> kitchen.
2. Turn R and L burners on high.
3. Fill 2 Qt saucepan half full of water and put on right burner
4. Put cast iron skillet on left burner.
5. Butter from fridge - 3 tbsp in skillet, 1 tbsp in saucepan
6. Remove pre-cooked shimp from freezer and dump in skillet
7. Peel garlic and press into skillet.
8. Add Italian seasoning, salt, pepper to skillet; add salt to saucepan.
9. Small loop of spaghetti, crack in half, into saucepan, stir.
10. Saute shrimp until unthawed.
11. Stir spaghetti.
12. Saute shrimp until hot, then simmer.
13. Stir spaghetti, get out sour cream and cream cheese.
14. Pour spaghetti into strainer, wait three seconds, then back in the saucepan.
15. Add dollop (large, heaping spoonful) of sour cream and dollop of cream cheese to spaghetti, stir (simmer)
16. Pour spaghetti onto plate.
17. Pour shrimp on top of spaghetti.
18. Place meal on chair.
19. Take photo.
20. Eat meal.
21. Upload photo to computer.
22. Upload photo to photobucket
23. Spend as much time typing this as it took me to make the meal!

What's the key?

Buying large bagfulls of raw, mostly peeled (except the tails), frozen shrimp, boiling them in spices in my largest pot, then putting them into meal-sized bags for later use.

That, and the most important thing - always thinking ahead and never waiting until a step comes up before you get out the ingredients/tools you're going to use for the next several steps.

Just a top loin steak and some mushrooms.



Time: 16 minutes.

Here's how:

Night before - smother steak in Paul Newman's Balsamic Vinegarette.

1. Put cast iron skillet on front burner and turn on high.

2. Remove steak from marinate pan and dump sauce in skillet.

3. Light grill, place steak on grill. Close cover.

4. Add 2 tbsps butter to saute pan.

5. Rinse, chop mushrooms, add to skillet. Saute. Simmer.

6. Flip steak (about 7 min on on side on high). Reduce grill to lowest setting. Baste with favorite BBQ sauce.

7. After 7 more minutes, put steak on plate, grill off, pour sauteed mushrooms on steak.

8. Take picture, upload to computer, forget to post to photobucket until friday.

9. Type this post right after the Shrimp Scampi because the Shrimp one reminded you of the other one you were supposed to post earlier in the week.

If you hadn't figured it out by now, I love cooking, but I hate slaving in the kitchen, and that includes cleanup. I don't ever want to spend more than half an hour in the kitchen, total, and sometimes I just get some bread, cheese, a couple cold cuts, some lettuce, mayo, and mustard, and have a sandwich (3 minutes).

I love spending time in the kitchen prepairing the food...it's the cleanup I hate. Add to it that we have almost no counter space and no room to even buy a dishwasher, and a seemingly perpetual mound of 2-month old dirty dishes/cookware/cups/etc... bah!

I need a chef's kitchen.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Actually, no. Shrimp is a very quick cook and spaghetti noodles take ten(ish) minutes after the water boils, which takes a few minutes.

But it looks like a nice quick meal.

Well, that was a rhetorical question for the uninitiated who might look at the pic and say, "wow - he spent a lot of time on that..."

The cleanup is easy, too:

skillet
saucepan
wooden spoon
butter knife
plate
fork

The first four were done during the minute I was letting my dinner cool somewhat below 180 deg!

wow, interesting stuff here by you, you did 23 things in just 15 minutes, means we can declare it another world record.

I heard about herressa spaghettini, how it like !!, anyway today we have made in ten minutes "potato-paratha" (paratha means a thick chapati, in other words paratha means a thick cavity on the masala potato, which are undertaken for "mixer-therapy", what you say it rotten-potato. and some hot butter added on its surface like very much tasty, and what the children says that word..,.. Oh found "yummy".

And I can use the, ahem, "facilities," in less than sixty seconds, and that operation requires nineteen steps.

Then again, so can you and everyone else, here. No "world record." That's just life.

The point of my post wasn't to say, "looky! see what I can do!"

It was to say, "keep the next couple of steps in mind, conserving your time, and something that looks like this (the pictured meal) can be made in less than 15 minutes - by anyone.

Ok, it appears everyone stopped eating, so I'll share my weekend meals with you...

Last weekend, I started some vishy-moo stew (salmon and steak that was a week old and needed to be cooked or tossed). Well, Wed rolled around, so I brought it to a boil but couldn't decide what I wanted to add to it, so I put it back in the fridge.

Today I looked around at some vegetables and other things that were nearing the end of their shelf life, and remembered the stew.

An orange? You bet. Red and green bell pepper? Sure. An apple? Why not? Certainly the potatoes had to go - either in the trash, or in the stew. I cut the eyes and in they went.

Then I got creative.

Brown sugar, a small packet of animal crackers, a short (6 oz) roll of refridgerated buttermilk bisquets (half each bisquet, roll into a ball - dumplings!), some vanilla-flavored whey, about seven spices that "looked about right," two small cans of mixed, diced fruit in water, half a bannana (I had the other half with cereal this morning), 1 dollop of sour cream, 1 dollop of cream cheese.

This is what the dumpling I had for lunch looked like:



I was still hungry, so I had a bananna-blueberry whey shake!

Still no posters...

For dinner, I had small steaks (intended for kabobs, but I didn't know that until I took them out of the package). I smothered them in my mushroom sauce I made last weekend:

Here, I'll be trying something new - imbedding a very short (<3 sec) video. This is of my vishy-moo stew shortly after the dumplings rose to the top!

Enjoy!



PS: Sorry about the sound of the exhaust fan - the camera picked it up a lot louder than it really is.

Not bad - it only posts the picture, but with "film holes" and lets you click it to see the video!

Yes, it looks quite good. Now I'm hungry again and it's midnight. You jerk!
I think I'll go grab another VO and coke. Liquid snack, ya know.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

LOL!

Not my fault - who started this thread, anyway???

really I am frankly speaking the lazy people will complete this vizard in just 15 hours as if it is said to them to do the same things in just 15 minutes. very interesting. though, I have enjoyed your photobucket photographs of food, and a glass of pink-milk.

I belongs to a pure and strictly vegetarian family, and hence I have not taken any taste of non-vegetarian, but here the non veg dish decoration is looking much enhanced, no doubt.

mostly we drink a half glass plane veg soup in warm water poured with some pepper powder, it works just like an apetiser, and today we cooked(not me alone), the Besan bhaji(a vegitable along with a pulse powder) with paratha (a butter spread-wheat powder coated soft small oval shaped chapati (chapati means just like a slice). This sort of food is best in the month of winter particularly, but if we feal bore then we also can make it in the rainy season. (here people eats season wise food items)

sunil

Got it into my head that it was time for "Mexican night" - and so it was.



Spicy Mexican rice and two black bean & chipotle pepper burritos. Maybe a bit more Tex-Mex than true Mexican but whatever. It was mighty tasty, and properly hot too - by the end of the meal I was sweating a bit and had to get up and walk around for a few seconds to cool off. As it should be.

Big thanks to my mum who raided my favourite Mexican grocer back in Canada and sent me some vital ingredients. Berliner "Mexican" spices just - aren't.

- J
(Sorry for the crummy cell phone pic.)

That's a picture from your cell phone? Man, I gotta get a new cell phone.

Germans don't do picante, eh?

Keep 'em coming, mugs.

Suntrack - I'd love to read some recipes from you

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

BBQ'd chicken, potato salad, bean salad. Washed down with about half a gallon of iced Early Grey tea.

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Angel of the Abyss
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"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"

Early Grey huh?

At night, you should have Late Grey Tea instead.

Did you see all the dumplings in the pot of fishy-moo stew I made? That's an eight-quart pot and it's half filled. Guess what I've had the last three nights in a row?

mugaliens - that's why science invented the freezer.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

Yeah, but evolution invented the stomach...

pork chops with stewed? cabbage.

Not sure if stewed is actually the correct word, recipe follows:

• Pick a cabbage in the garden, removing the outer leaves, critters and whatnot. (or buy one if you aren't lazy)
• Pluck a pound of leaves from the cabbage. (this method leaves the rest of the cabbage intact and able to keep for a long time)
• Cut in thin slices and boil in salted water for ~5 minutes or until texture is as you like it, I prefer al dente.
• Drain in a colander, remember to collect some of the water.
• Put one cup of the water and one cup of milk in the pan and heat to boiling, thicken with a table spoon of flour shaken with half a cup of milk.
• Dump boiled cabbage back in.
• Season to taste with salt, white pepper and nutmeg.

If that's all you have next to the meat it serves two, with potatoes it'll serve 4-6.

I weighed the cabbage, it was 7 pounds so I'll probably have to find some other recipes for cabbage as well

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Okay, okay, I am happy to know the above statement by you, now you can start to make the following items in your kitchen, but there is a condition whenever you prepare these items then you have to send the "sample of the items" to me. (optional)

1. chicken tikka (a roasted chicken rolled on one stick)
2. panner butter masala (sweat and hot chilly)
3. kofta (a sort of spunj like experience when we swallo it, both veg and non veg are available)
4. idle, sambhar, dosa, uttappa, wada (all are south Indian dishes)
5. puran poli, shreekhund, basundee, kheer, noodles sweet curry along with milk)
6. bhakree ( a jwar grinded powder along some water into it and baked on the pan)
7. tamrind curry (both hot and sweet)
8. moong bhaje, barbati bhajey, kandyachey bhaje (onion's) Bhaje means a soft besan item.
9. potato patis, potato wada with bred, tomato bhajee, tomato soup, tomato juice,
10. kadhee(made of curd), shikran(a sweet milk based banana salad)

the list is very long, I have kept some other menus with me. Infact the above menu is a menu for any big program like a) marriage, b)naming ceremony dinners etc.

If you would like to understand of some meanings of the above menu, then just completely "copy" the line and paste it into the /google.co.in/ just to know the meaning and detailed procedure "how make it there in your kitchen".