AR Master on 14/1/2010 at 23:49

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you shouldnt really ever need more than a tablespoon worth of spice or sauce when cooking bromaldahyde, keep it light and you'll do fine

steo on 15/1/2010 at 00:28

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I haven't been shopping in over a week, and I'm a student, so I have no money and no stocks of long term supplies. My dinner probably cost less than £1 total:

Some rice, boiled with salt.

Half an onion, two cloves of garlic and about 1/4 of a small scotch bonnet (I sometimes remove the white membraney bit inside the chilli because it's apocalyptically hot, but since I was only using a small amount of the chilli, I left it in this time). These get fried in a pan with vegetable oil for a bit.

When the rice is cooked, add it to the fry pan with the other stuff. I didn't drain the rice, because I couldn't be bothered to wash up a sieve. Most of the water had boiled off anyway.

I added the following: soy sauce, black pepper, cumin, yellow curry powder, a small tin of pineapple pieces (I drank almost all the juice first), an egg and a little bit of pollock (pollock and the egg were courtesy of my generous housemate).

Serve. If you're feeling decadent, grate cheese on top. I was expecting this to be fairly horrible, since I was cooking using almost every ingredient I had to hand, which was very little. It was actually quite modestly marvellous.

Now that I think about it, it was a little lacking in veg. I usually put peppers in, but I didn't have any. I could have added frozen peas and sweetcorn, but I forgot and to be honest I'm getting fucking sick of those two vegetables, cheap and easy as they are. My only issue now, is what am I going to eat next. I'm going to seek the wisdom of TTLG on this matter.

My ingredients are:

about 750g White long grain rice
about 100g brown cheap & crap pasta
half an onion
three or four cloves of garlic
one quarter of a scotch bonnet (lots of seeds)
bountiful supplies of thai red & green chillis
about 280g of mature cheddar
half a bottle of Wyborowa
frozen peas, sweetcorn and prawns
malt vinegar
salt
black pepper
cumin
yellow curry powder
'hot and spicy seasoning'
powdered ginger
powdered garlic
lemongrass
mixed herbs
marjoram
coriander
bay leaves
about 900g of muesli (but no milk)
about 150g of strong white flour
ground coffee
teabags
about 60ml of vegetable oil
one sachet of sainsburys value powdered vegetable soup
one jar of red jalapenos
one bottle of Moutai Yingbin (53% chinese spirit)
the end of a bottle of cheap brandy
one off potato
cling film
tin foil.

There's a prize for the best recipe ;)

37637598 on 15/1/2010 at 07:53

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Unless you enjoy shitting fire like I do, in which case you can puy Cayenne pepper on EVERYTHING (even vanilla icecream).

If you want to make the meals right, there are some techniques you should know. I really liked RBJ's 'bread heating' technique! You can alternatively rub the outsides with water and olive oil with crushed garlic, pepper, and lime juice, to get more of an italian outside.

When cooking meats; steak, chicken, I always start by broiling them for a good 5 to 10 minutes (depending on how hot your oven broils), or cooking them on an open flame for 5-10 minutes, then bringing them to low heat to slow cook them the rest of the way. This method gives you a delicious carmelized outside, while keeping the juices inside, basically producing a perfect meat cooking job every time.

Make sure you marinate the meats in something so they actually come out juicy and tastey. For chicken, you can usually always marinate it in garlic, onion, vegetable oil, salt, and soy sauce, to make a delicious grilled chicken taste. Steaks usually taste great with the same stuff, but you can add brown sugar and vinegar to make it more rich.

To make a delicious cheese sauce for coating baked or mashed potatos, you can simply fry garlic in butter or veggie oil, then add milk and some handfulls of flour until it's slightly thick (thick as half and half), then add a couple handfulls of cheddar or whatever gooey cheese, then add 2 smidgens of salt, some more cheese, then a little tobasco if you like it hot. Just cook it until it turns thick. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will get.

hmm, anyone got some more cooking techniques? They help me more than recipes.

I hope this helps you out!

Renzatic on 15/1/2010 at 08:11

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Well normally I'd say "what's the fun in that", because I generally like taking the trial and error, learn as you go approach to everything. Thing is, that fun approach has yet to produce a single meal I'd consider above edible at best for me yet. Hence the reason why I'm now here, all begging for food tips.

Also SD's sandwich was quite good. :thumb:

steo on 15/1/2010 at 09:37

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Good idea! Don't have any butter, but vegetable oil could suffice. Yingbin is 53% ABV... has an interesting flavour, I'm not sure if I like it but it's quite hard to taste when you're drinking it straight. I could go out to the shop and buy some more ingredients, but I think I'm going to try this just for fun. I'll let you know how it goes.