In the latest adventures of the Tin Chef . . .

My sister is amused that her contributions to my cooking repertoire have both been a matter of saying “well, we could do this half-assed thing I used to do when I lived alone,” and then me getting ambitious about it. Last time it was Upgrade Pasta; this time it’s fried rice.

I have made it before, but I think only once, and then all I really did was scramble some eggs, dump in the rice, dump in a packet of store-bought seasoning, and call it a day. This time I started asking myself “what could I toss in to bulk that up?” Which is why this is now in my recipes folder as “okonomichahan,” a play on okonomiyaki. Because my goal here is to get myself to a point where I feel comfortable throwing this together with whatever odds and ends we happen to have around (“okonomi” kind of meaning “whatever you like”). Tonight that was not just eggs but some onion, cubed pancetta, a red bell pepper that would otherwise have gone to waste, and peas because it turns out I have two unopened bags of them in the freezer, in addition to the one I finished off here. And for seasonings, I used the powdered crack we bought from Red Robin, which in addition to garlic and salt has paprika and who knows what else, plus some soy sauce. I took a small amount of guidance regarding quantities of cooking oil and rice and such from a recipe my sister sent me (a recipe in Japanese >_< — thanks for the reading practice, I guess?), but the process overall was a lot of educated guesswork, including doing things like removing the various add-ins from the pan before I cooked the eggs so those would remain a distinct element rather than just glomming onto the other bits.

It wound up pretty good! Honestly, the only thing I screwed up was one very basic step: I didn’t remember to break up the big mass of day-old rice before it went in the pan, so there was some very frantic breaking and smooshing to try and get it to separate into grains of rice before the ones on the outside got too cooked. In the end it did as it was told, though, and now my large container of leftover plain rice is a much smaller one of fried rice with assorted bits in. And in the future I can experiment with carrot and whatever else might be lying around looking for a dish to be cooked in.

I occasionally post here about my adventures in cooking — which are, on a 1-10 scale of impressiveness, probably aspiring to a 2, but hey, for me that’s an improvement. The most recent adventure involves what we have dubbed Upgrade Pasta.

Yesterday my sister and I were discussing possibilities for dinner, and she mentioned that in the days when she lived alone in a San Francisco apartment the size of half a shoebox, she would sometimes fry up some kielbasa and dump it over pasta with some spinach. And to my surprise, the thought “huh, that sounds fairly tasty” was followed immediately by “I wonder if I could upgrade it?”

The answer is that yes, I could. With some sauteed onions and some salt and some garlic and tossing the spinach in at the end to wilt it a bit. And what makes me proud enough to post about this is, I assembled the whole thing purely on the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the last few years about what order to do things in and for how long and at what heat. There’s nothing earth-shattering about the result . . . but having that knowledge and the confidence in it? That’s a landmark for me. I have other recipes that I’ve modified in various ways (and which have acquired interesting names along the way: our meal planning sometimes lists dishes like The Transitive Property of Marjoram or Forgotten Pasta or Lorem Ipsum Salad), but this is the first time there really hasn’t been a recipe, just an understanding of basic principles. And the result was not only edible, but moderately tasty.

So, go me?

There is a sad lack of noodle soup in my cooking repertoire. What recipes do you guys recommend? The main requirement is that it be non-spicy, in the peppers/chili sense; other things are easy to leave out (cilantro) or substitute (eggplant for squash).

While my husband and I were in Ireland before Worldcon, I picked up The Irish Pocket Potato Recipe Book, which purports to contain “over 110 delicious dishes.” This is a bit of an exaggeration, as many of them are minor alterations on previous recipes, but that’s fine; it’s charmingly idiosyncratic in places rather than Extruded Corporate Product (even if that idiosyncracy means that sometimes it fails to tell you what temperature or how long or why, if it spends time introducing you to different types of potatoes, it then doesn’t specify which types work well in which recipes).

Last night I made a soup recipe out of it that I liked, but which felt as if it would benefit from an addition. It’s billed as a “Provencal potato soup,” with a vegetable stock as the base, then basil, saffron, onions, peeled tomatoes, and of course potatoes. It came out very tomato-y in a way that I want to balance with something else — maybe a green vegetable of some kind. Spinach is the obvious suggestion, but that would make this nearly identical to a tortellini florentine soup I already make, and I’d like it to be more different. My brain went immediately to bok choy for some reason; I’m not sure if that’s a good guess or not. Cabbage? Something else? Doesn’t have to be a leafy green, but we can’t do any form of squash, as my husband is allergic. And if subbing in X would go better with a swap for the basil and/or saffron and/or garlic, that’s fine; I don’t mind altering the herbs and spices.

I’ve been cooking a lot more since moving into a house with a kitchen big enough to be pleasant to work in, but I’m still not much of a chef. This is, in part, because I don’t yet have a good handle on whether things I like separately will combine well — especially when it comes to herbs and spices. Their flavor profiles, and how they meld with the different foods they might be used to flavor, are still terra fairly incognita for me.

But the other day I tried out a new recipe for a side dish of onions and bell peppers with marjoram, and had some left over. When I went to put it in the fridge, I saw I also had some leftover kielbasa. And I know that one of the recipes I’ve made several times, a kielbasa stew, includes marjoram.

So, by the transitive property of marjoram: I can combine these things, right?

And lo, I have Invented a Dish. Fried the kielbasa for a couple of minutes, tossed the onions and bell peppers in to warm them up, dumped the result over rice, hey presto, it worked. In the future I can make this on purpose, as its own thing, rather than just as a way to use up leftovers (though it can be that, too). I’m still not knowledgeable enough to go tossing marjoram into things without precedent to guide me . . . but I can pay attention to which recipes use which flavorings, and start absorbing the underlying principles there.

Baby steps, yo.

My husband is allergic to citrus — not badly so, not to the level of “get him to a hospital” or “break out an epi pen,” but he should try to avoid it when possible.

. . . there are a lot of recipes that call for small amounts of lemon juice.

Is there anything that would make a good substitute for this? Something mildly acidic, I presume — maybe some kind of vinegar? White wine strikes me as the most “neutral,” but then again, I know little enough about this that I may have just typed utter nonsense. Recommendations appreciated.

I have a packet of really excellent-smelling pork seasoning.

I think I would like to make pulled pork sandwiches with it, because a slow-cooker recipe would be ideal for the logistics at hand.

How should I go about this? My pulled pork slow-cooker recipe calls for bbq sauce and a little bit of honey; should I just chuck the seasoning in with that (no, I have no idea what’s in it), or should I substitute something else for the liquid component? If so, what? Help me, o chefs more skilled than I!

A question for the culinary types.

I recently made a meal (chicken vesuvio, though not quite the version described there) that turned out pretty well, except the texture of the chicken breasts was less than ideal. The outer portion was great, but the core was kind of tough, and I’m wondering what the reason for that is.

The recipe calls for the breasts to be lightly browned and then put into the pan with potatoes, broth, and cooking wine and simmered for about 12-18 minutes. My impression is that the browning part went great (which is why the exterior of the meat was in good shape), but the simmering is where things went wrong. Could it be that the meat simmered too fast, or reached too hot a temperature? I’m supposed to get it up to 160 degrees; after 12 minutes it had already shot past that. My stove tends to run hot, so I feel like maybe it would turn out better if I reduced the heat (it calls for medium-low, so I could go to low) and let it cook a bit more slowly. But I don’t actually know the dynamics of how these things work, so I could use either confirmation of my theory, or an explanation of what’s more likely to have been the problem.

I am very far from Iron Chef status. But I’m starting to feel like I might at least have graduated to some form of metal. 😛

Since moving into our new house, I have actually done the Cooking Thing a fair bit — way more than I ever have before, that’s for certain. A few recipes I already knew; a lot more I pulled out of a cookbook and said “this sounds like it might be tasty.” Some I’ve even modified, like the ramen stir-fry where the recipe wound up being more what you might call guidelines than actual rules. (It was from a cookbook published in 1996; I used whatever fresh vegetables sounded tasty in place of the broccoli-carrot-cauliflower frozen “stir-fry mix” they recommended, teriyaki sauce in place of “stir-fry sauce,” and let’s just say that when you’re shopping at a Japanese grocery store in 2016, “oriental flavor” ramen is not one of the options on the shelf.)

A number of things have contributed to my increased willingness to cook:

* Having enough counter space that step one of making dinner is not “clear crap out of the way so I have somewhere to work.” This makes a huge difference all on its own, believe you me.

* Having enough cabinet and drawer space that I can lay my hands on the item I need without first having to move twelve other things out of the way. Ditto previous comment.

* Having a grocery store within pleasant enough walking distance that obtaining what I need for dinner that night is a nice excuse to get out of the house and move around a bit, rather than a chore.

* Having three (or sometimes more) people to cook for instead of just two.

* Having my sister around to help. This is a double benefit, since first of all, she acts as my sous-chef: I find the preliminary “cut stuff up” stage of making dinner to be entirely tedious, while she’s much more willing to do that part than the actual cooking, which means our inclinations pair up well. Also, her presence means that I have company while I’m cooking, instead of being stuck off in the kitchen bored out of my skull and wishing I was doing something I cared about more.

So I’m still not a gung-ho chef by any means, interested in the cooking for its own sake.
I am still prone to going “meep” and deciding a recipe sounds too complicated for me, even though I know many of my friends could do it in their sleep. But we’ve made a variety of different meals and show all signs of going on to make more, instead of defaulting back to pre-prepared stuff as often as possible. And I’m even developing a few instincts, like “I’ve doubled this recipe, but I don’t think I need to double the liquid; yeah, a little more than usual looks like enough” or “I think the turkey cuts need to be thinner next time” or “this was fine, but would probably be better if I browned the sausage first.”

I’ve made a tag for cooking-related content, so those of you who do really enjoy cooking, expect the occasional post wherein I will ask for advice on modifying recipes or what have you.

I’m not much of a cook, but I’m trying to change that. Which means that as time goes on, there may be more of these “help me figure out how to alter this recipe” questions.

The recipe in this instance is involves some advice about how best to arrange a pan of chicken pieces and vegetables to ensure optimal cooking in the oven. Dark meat + carrots and potatoes on the outer edge of the pan, white meat and brussels sprouts on the inside, because otherwise the white meat will dry out and the sprouts will get a little charred.

All well and good, except I loathe brussels sprouts. (They have a weird aftertaste for me that I find very unpleasant. This is possibly related to being a supertaster, though I don’t know for sure; all I know is, most other people don’t seem to notice any aftertaste.) So what can you recommend to me that would profitably occupy the center position in the pan? It needs to be less robust than carrots and potatoes, while harmonizing well with them.

I have a recipe that was originally intended as a side dish, and has been made into more of a main dish with the addition of hamburger — but it’s kind of a bland main dish. So I’m looking for ways to improve it, and I figured some of you who read this journal could probably make suggestions.

The recipe in its original form contains:

wild rice
onion
celery
salt and pepper
cream of mushroom soup
cream of chicken soup

Which you bake into a casserole, adding hamburger if this isn’t a side dish. But like I said: bland. Any recommendations for things I could add or substitute that would make it more flavorful? Note that household tastes mean we aren’t going to go for anything involving spiciness, fungus, or cilantro. But other options are fair game.

Ideas?