recipes to impress

[Davricle]

Having a girl come over for lunch tomorrow and I am looking to cook something tasty for us. I'm looking for a great recipe that is:
A) lactose-intollerance friendly
B) relatively cheap and moderately easy to make

All suggestions are very much appreciated, thanks!

[Vandole]

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkin...st-1-semen.jpg

a homemade spaghetti is really good to impress them. especially if you tell them you made the sauce and it was "momma's recipe."

just make sure you make garlic bread from scratch too.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/a...ipe/index.html

[Heavencloud]

I'd normally make a chick macaroni and cheese, but if she's lactose intolerant, you might be better off cooking her a frozen pizza.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y23...6Bl1qc8pqd.gif

[Jicent]

risotto. just dont add the cheese. shit is cash

[Kerberoz]

Hard cheese doesn't actually contain much lactose.

Also, curry. Can't possibly screw that up.

[tonyg]

If she's lactose intolerant and he wants to impress (and thus bang her) I would strongly advise against the dairy products, in the possibility of violent diarrhea happening during coitus, which will fuck up his bedsheets and scar him for life.

Edit : actually on topic : Summertime = BBQ baby. For a chick, easy thing to do is make a warm salad. From the top of my head :

Prepare the base of the salad by rubbing Romain hearts, asparagus and slices of bellpeppers with olive oil, sea salt, cumin and garlic (these flavours can be changed around, can go for basil + rosemary or any other smart combination really)
Your meat can be anything really, but I really love when my meat tastes something different than the base of my salad, so in this case I make Ginger chicken :
1 part maple syrup
1 part soy sauce
1 part soy sauce
1 to 4 cloves of garlic, depending on the amount of marinade you are making
Fresh grated ginger (again, amount depending on the size, it's always better to put less than too much)
3 parts 7up (or sprite, just need a lemon/lime soda)
Put your chicken in a large bowl, put the marinade in and move it around so your chicken gets full of it, then put it in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook it. (You can prepare this an hour before you cook it and it'll be great, but do it the day before and it'll be awesome)

Start by cooking the chicken first, and when it's almost done put the asparagus and peppers on the grill at medium (cooking won't be long on a BBQ, 3-4 minutes tops)
Before serving, close the grill and put your lettuce on it, just to get that nice grill imprint on it

When serving, put the lettuce on first, then the vegetables, chicken and garnish with lemon zests + sunflower seeds (The sunflower seeds are a good replacement for salt and they add another texture layer to the dish)

This dish takes about 40 minutes to prepare and most of that includes the cleaning of the area after you handled the chicken, and another 20 minutes to cook.

Oh and bitches like it because they think it's so healthy.

[Darlantan]

Take her to a restaurant. She's the one that needs to know how to cook properly.

[Byrthnoth]

If you think she'd be game and you want something that's cheap and easy, it's hard to beat roasting a chicken. Butterfly it (if you have joy of cooking, read the first few pages before the chicken recipes), rub oil on the outside, pepper, salt, and I always stick some slabs of butter under the skin for good luck. Make sure you remove the damned giblets. They all have them. Don't give up until you've found them. Cook 20min/lb at 350 degrees (so it doesn't even take long if you make a small chicken.) It's going to be a morning-of kind of thing, so you're best off going to the supermarket and buying a thawed chicken to start with.

To go with your chicken, you can make mashed potatoes. It's not hard, but does take time. Probably ~an hour, so you could make them after putting the chicken in. Scrub them down with a brush (or rub them hard with your fingers if you have no brush) and get all the knotty-wood-like stuff out using a peeler. I don't bother peeling them. It's extra work and I like skins in my mashed potatoes. Cut them into ~1inch cubes. It's important that they're all approximately the same volume, but a little variance never hurt anyone. Boil them in your largest pot (fill it with hot water from the sink to give yourself a head start). Depending which type of potato you have, the cooking time and amount of water that you should use is going to vary. You can't really go with too much water, but you can go with too little imop. You can tell when they're ready to come out like this:
* As soon as you put them in, poke one with a fork and try to feel how hard it is to pierce so you can get a feeling for later.
* When your fork pierces a potato chunk pretty easily (push it against the side of the pot), but it doesn't split apart, it's ready to come out.
** You're aiming to hit a ~5-10 minute window of "okay, that would probably work" here. It's not some precise 30 second window that you have to hit or your potatoes are going to taste like ass.
I'm too lazy to use a strainer, so instead of taking them out I put the lid on the pot and tilt it over the sink to get the water out. Do NOT risk getting your hand wet, ESPECIALLY if you're wearing an oven mitt. You'll scald that shit and your lunch date will turn into an ER visit. Maybe just use a strainer. Anyway, get it relatively water free somehow (shouldn't see any standing water) and put butter in. A lot of butter. Like, put in half a stick (dice it up into smaller chunks so it melts faster. Wait until it's pretty melted, and then go after the potato/butter mixture with your handheld mixer. The potatoes are not going to whip up and look creamy yet (probably), but they will break apart which is what you want. Next add a dash of milk, beat some more, add a dash of milk, beat some more, etc. until they look about how you want. Put as much salt and pepper in as you want. I go heavy on the pepper and medium/light on the salt, personally. If you think it needs more butter, add more butter. Amount of butter is directly proportional to how good it tastes, but you don't want it leaving an obvious butter spot on any plates. I have gone down that road before, and the reactions were "that tasted awesome!" mixed with "oh man, I can't believe I ate that."

If you think that looks like too much effort to her (although you'd probably only spend an hour actually cooking it) and want to come off as nonchalant "Oh, you're hungry? I'll go make something." It might be better to do something like a salad with a homemade salad dressing. Depends on the girl, but some chicks would be majorly impressed if you had enough fresh produce in the house to make a real salad (fresh tomato, fresh lettuce or spinach, maybe some cucumber if you want), and then had enough nuts and crap to put on it that it gains some caloric value but still looks healthy. Almond slices are cheap and craisins are another good option and both keep well. If you can't find slices or something, you can take whole nuts and put them in a plastic bag wrapped in a paper towel, then crush them with something hard. This is not going to be a pasta-cheap route if you are not the type of guy to keep fresh produce around, but it'll still come out cheaper than going to a restaurant probably.

Typical vinaigrette is 3 parts oil, 1 part vinegar. Make about a cup, and add a teaspoon of lemon juice. Add a dash of salt/pepper (people would say "to taste" here, which means it's really just arbitrary. Add as much or as little as you want). Put it in a sealed container and shake the shit out of it. Taste it, see if you need to add anything. If you want a sweet vinaigrette and you have some weird vinegar (maybe strawberry vinegar, for instance), use that and put like a tablespoon of sugar in it. If you were going to make this along with the above two things, there's plenty of time while the potatoes boil and chicken cooks. It would be ~2 hours from "I have all the ingredients" to finish. I do it in as little as an hour depending how small a chicken I have, so I'm leaving you some leeway when I say 2 hours.

The above combination of recipes is my "comfort food" recipe. If my girlfriend is angry at me, I combine it with the cake recipe on the back of the Hershey's Dark Chocolate cocoa powder box and let that cook while we eat dinner.


You probably want to come off as someone who is competent in the kitchen and eats well, but not the type of wussy sissy man that cooks all the time. If you're starting a potentially long-term relationship, it's important to avoid building expectations that you have no intention of fulfilling in the long run. If you're looking for a one-night stand, whatever.

I'd vote for just a solid salad either way. Light lunches are socially acceptable, it's easy as crap, people find it impressive that you bother buying produce regularly enough to have it fresh, and it's under $20. Salads are also one of the few things that people find impressive but require almost no cooking experience. You want a salad that tastes good? Look at a picture of a good salad and make your plate look like that. Other things, (Chicken, mashed potatoes, cake) are things that you might mess up once or twice before getting a feeling for it. Heck, I'm still discovering new ways to mess up mashed potatoes and I've been making that recipe for years.

If you want to play it up even further and live in a city, google for farmers markets nearby. I've yet to be in a city that doesn't have at least one Saturday morning farmers market this time of year, and you can pick up fresh tomatoes with all the adjectives attached to them that you want (ORGANIC GREEN LOCAL FREERANGE TOMATOES). Fresh tomatoes are awesome.

[Davricle]

Great ideas so far guys! Sounds awesome!

[Cyn]

allrecipes.com and type in a few ingredients that you like. C'mon dude, if you can level goldsmithing and lead a linkshell in XI, you can make a couple decent dishes using recipes from the internet.

[SamanosukeShiva]

Well, assuming you can cook chicken breast properly, grilled or roasted chicken with roasted veggies should be relatively cheap and very easy to make.

Roasted Veggies:
Pick any vegetables you like, carrots, bell peppers (yellow/red), poblano pepper, celery, eggplant, zucchini, red onion, potato, etc.
Cut them relatively the same size
Toss lightly in oil (Olive oil work well, but any kind works really), Salt and Pepper, w/e spices you like, cant go wrong unless you put in too much, If you use salty seasoning like Mr. Dash or something, skip the salt.
Roast in a pre-heated oven, 400F, until tender, 15-20 minutes usually. Toss the roasted veggies in chopped herbs, like parsley, tarragon, thyme, etc
Only toss chopped fresh herbs after roasting the vegetable, if you add fresh herb then roast it, it will burn, lose the herb flavor and wont look good.

Grilled or Roasted Chicken Breast:
It's very important to marinade the chicken before cooking it, for at least 1-2 hours, overnight is better. If you want easy, just pick whatever vinaigrette(=Vinegar base, no creamy stuff!) on your grocery aisle and marinade your chicken with it. Personally I like to marinade my chicken in yellow onion, thyme, rosemary pureed together + salt/pepper. Amazing flavor.

Grilling:
Pat the marinated chicken breast down with paper towel, getting as much marinade off it. You know you want to leave the marinade on, but dont, cuz it will burn and taste bitter, all the marinade you need is already in the chicken. Proceed to grill, make cross-hatch marks if you're pro.

Pan Roasting: Pre-heat oven 350F
Do the same thing as above for marinade before roasting. Heat up a sautee pan, wait until it's hot then pour a little bit of vegetable oil (dont use olive oil, its smoking point is too low for roasting), cover the hot pan with oil, put the chicken breast skin-side down if you're using chicken breast with skin, or the "smooth" side down if you're using skinless. Each side should take about 5 minutes, your only concern when cooking chicken on sautee pan is appearance, when it looks golden brown, flip it. When both sides are brown and good lookin' check the breast if it's still raw, put it in the oven until it's cooked.


Go youtube alton brown's video on how to determine chicken's doneness by touch if you dont know how to. You can also use thermometer if you fancy. Health department says "Cooked" chicken must have internal temperature of 165F, if you do that you will almost always get a dry overcooked chicken, I usually cook it to 155F and let carry over cooking do the rest.

Warning: If you have to choose, serving undercooked or overcooked chicken, go with overcooked. 99.99% chicken in the US tested positive for Salmonella. just sayin.

[Byrthnoth]

In contrast, like 99.99% of eggs in the US test negative for salmonella, and your body is perfectly capable of fighting off a little salmonella if it has to. That's why "you shouldn't eat cookie batter," but it actually doesn't hurt you.

Seconding the roasted veggies thing as a general "keep this in your technique repertoire." I currently get a CSA box, and some of the veggies they send are pretty much intolerable any way but salted, flavored, and coated in oil. If you slice them thinly enough, you can pretty much make chips out of anything.

[Koul]

http://www.pigpigscorner.com/2010/06...pork-ribs.html

my roommate made these for her boyfriend. it's super easy. and insanely good! Pretty much just put everything in a pot and let it cook itself. Don't really see a lot of dishes that use Lychee so that should be the WOW factor.

also, you can always look around foodgawker.com site is awesome! Pretty much an internet database for recipes and everything has pictures etc. amazing site

[SamanosukeShiva]

And oh serve with a glass of wine if you like. In a hot summer like this, white wine would be awesome.

[Kerberoz]

Go youtube alton brown's video

This. Recipes are useless if you don't know how to cook, and if you know how to cook, recipes are only mildly helpful. Just go watch the whole first few seasons.

[Niiro]

In contrast, like 99.99% of eggs in the US test negative for salmonella, and your body is perfectly capable of fighting off a little salmonella if it has to. That's why "you shouldn't eat cookie batter," but it actually doesn't hurt you.

I honestly think I've consumed more chocolate chip cookie dough in my life than actual cookies.

I've definitely consumed more sugar cookie dough than sugar cookies.

[Boyiee]

I see most bases are covered here.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

this thread went hard considering I'm the first actual spam poster to post in this thread

Spoiler: show

edit: just realized this thread is in general and not spam wrong tab loooooooooooool

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

anyways the real answer is the bitch should be making you a sandwich after you're done fucking

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

anything else would be uncivilized