Absolutely not a Friday
1 Jul 2023 11:03 am![[personal profile]](/makepkg/implementing-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glindaStill working on that 'posting more regularly' so have another ![[community profile]](/makepkg/implementing-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thefridayfive post, though this one's from a couple of weeks ago. But it's about food, so obviously I had lots to say!
1. What is your favorite meal to order in a restaurant?
Well, I feel that depends massively on what kind of restaurant that we're talking about. Frankly it also depends hugely on the restaurant in question, some places have their specialities, and at places I go a lot I obviously have favourites. However presuming it's an unfamiliar restaurant... If it's a Chinese restaurant then it'll probably be something in Black Bean sauce, as I enjoy that sauce and it's generally a safe bet whereever I happen to be. (I usually have tofu if it's on the menu, but I once memorably - before I was a vegetarian - had frogs legs in Black Bean sauce in Geneva.) If it's a Indian restaurant it's likely to be Palak Paneer, with a side of daal and a paratha unless I know it well, in which case I might be more adventurous. At an Italian place I'm likely to have Spinach and Ricotta cannelloni, because I love that but it's a total faff to make myself. My safety order if I'm away filming somewhere in the Highlands in macaroni cheese, because that's the default veggie option.
2. What is your favorite home cooked meal?
Oh I love making lasagne. My absolute, special occassion, treat to myself meal is a sweet potato and butternut squash lasagne, for extra indulgence I like to serve it with roast potatoes. If I'm working Christmas I like to make it on the day - because I can prep it in advance and depending on my shift have it before my shift or leave it to chill in the fridge and bung it in the oven after my shift. Then leftovers for days! It's often a birthday indulgence too, for much the same reason in that I can prep it in advance, then bung it in the oven once my guests are here and have plenty of food to share.
3. What was the best meal you ever ate?
Now that's difficult to say, because there's so many different metrics for that, I've had a lot of great meals that were special because of the combination of people round the table, what was cooked and who it was cooked by. I'm nearly 40, how can I quantify, the amazing home made lasagne my teenage best mate's dad cooked us, against a big bowl of my mum's homemade soup when I'm feeling ill, or learning to cook rice and chicken with my first serious boyfriend, against the chicken parmasan my first proper girlfriend made me the first time I stayed at her flat? Against meals eaten in hole in the wall takeaways in London or Dublin on formica tables crushed together too tightly with friends, against excellent veggie food in Riga or Helsinki, or alfresco dining in Brussels or Paris, against the same thing in Glasgow or on the West Coast of either Scotland or Ireland after a long day's filming? How can you hold a home cook making food for the people they love against a professional chef? I had the best crepes of my life in Quimper, I can tell you that, and I still miss the excellent Chinese restaurant in my childhood hometown, I had schnitzel at an old fashioned restaurant in Vienna that was the purest distillation of comfort food I've encountered, and no paella will ever compare to the little place round the corner from my hostel in Barcelona.
4. Do you ever try to re-create a meal you've eaten that someone else cooked?
Yes, often. I have no shame about asking for the recipe if I've enjoyed something. In fact even if one of my colleagues has a dinner that just smells amazing and is veggie suitable I'll snaffle the recipe and give it a bash. I love sharing food like that. When I was doing my masters one of my 'grown up' friends, taught me to cook a bunch of her favourite recipes over the internet and classed up my repertoire signficantly. More commercially, I have a Wagamama's cook book, as they are my favourite chain restaurant, but there aren't any for 100 miles up here so I've had a bash at several of my favourites from their book.
5. What's the first meal you tried cooking yourself?
It was a very long time ago, so I presume it was some combination of pasta, sauce and sausages, as that was a staple of my diet as a student. I think of the months when I was writing my dissertation and learning to practice self-care through cooking as when I properly started learning to cook beyond the basics, and at that point I was working my way through one of my mum's 'Oxo' cook books, and transferring the successes into my own little recipe notebook. According to that little notebook my first success was exactly that, a dish called Rainbow Pasta: pasta with a selection of frozen veg, a can of chopped tomatoes some sausages and a few herb-based embellishments. But the first time I felt like a proper cook that knew what they were doing, was a couple of months later when I first made myself lasagne, and yes the pasta was out of a packet, and the white sauce was out of a jar, but I'd read the back of a jar of the lasagne 'red sauce' in the shop and thought 'I could do that' and bought passata and onions and celery and a carrot, and I figured it all out. I had to buy a big casserole specifically for the job (and to this day I mentally refer to it as my 'lasagne dish' even though I rarely make it in that anymore, it's huge) but I made a massive lasagne for myself and it fed me for the rest of the week and it tasted excellent. I refined that recipe over the years, but until I became a vegetarian it was a staple part of my diet, a dish that made me feel grown up and competant - doubtless helped by the fact that it was never one my mum mastered - a comfort food dish that takes me right back to being 21 and finally feeling that I might actually know what I was doing.
thefridayfive post, though this one's from a couple of weeks ago. But it's about food, so obviously I had lots to say!1. What is your favorite meal to order in a restaurant?
Well, I feel that depends massively on what kind of restaurant that we're talking about. Frankly it also depends hugely on the restaurant in question, some places have their specialities, and at places I go a lot I obviously have favourites. However presuming it's an unfamiliar restaurant... If it's a Chinese restaurant then it'll probably be something in Black Bean sauce, as I enjoy that sauce and it's generally a safe bet whereever I happen to be. (I usually have tofu if it's on the menu, but I once memorably - before I was a vegetarian - had frogs legs in Black Bean sauce in Geneva.) If it's a Indian restaurant it's likely to be Palak Paneer, with a side of daal and a paratha unless I know it well, in which case I might be more adventurous. At an Italian place I'm likely to have Spinach and Ricotta cannelloni, because I love that but it's a total faff to make myself. My safety order if I'm away filming somewhere in the Highlands in macaroni cheese, because that's the default veggie option.
2. What is your favorite home cooked meal?
Oh I love making lasagne. My absolute, special occassion, treat to myself meal is a sweet potato and butternut squash lasagne, for extra indulgence I like to serve it with roast potatoes. If I'm working Christmas I like to make it on the day - because I can prep it in advance and depending on my shift have it before my shift or leave it to chill in the fridge and bung it in the oven after my shift. Then leftovers for days! It's often a birthday indulgence too, for much the same reason in that I can prep it in advance, then bung it in the oven once my guests are here and have plenty of food to share.
3. What was the best meal you ever ate?
Now that's difficult to say, because there's so many different metrics for that, I've had a lot of great meals that were special because of the combination of people round the table, what was cooked and who it was cooked by. I'm nearly 40, how can I quantify, the amazing home made lasagne my teenage best mate's dad cooked us, against a big bowl of my mum's homemade soup when I'm feeling ill, or learning to cook rice and chicken with my first serious boyfriend, against the chicken parmasan my first proper girlfriend made me the first time I stayed at her flat? Against meals eaten in hole in the wall takeaways in London or Dublin on formica tables crushed together too tightly with friends, against excellent veggie food in Riga or Helsinki, or alfresco dining in Brussels or Paris, against the same thing in Glasgow or on the West Coast of either Scotland or Ireland after a long day's filming? How can you hold a home cook making food for the people they love against a professional chef? I had the best crepes of my life in Quimper, I can tell you that, and I still miss the excellent Chinese restaurant in my childhood hometown, I had schnitzel at an old fashioned restaurant in Vienna that was the purest distillation of comfort food I've encountered, and no paella will ever compare to the little place round the corner from my hostel in Barcelona.
4. Do you ever try to re-create a meal you've eaten that someone else cooked?
Yes, often. I have no shame about asking for the recipe if I've enjoyed something. In fact even if one of my colleagues has a dinner that just smells amazing and is veggie suitable I'll snaffle the recipe and give it a bash. I love sharing food like that. When I was doing my masters one of my 'grown up' friends, taught me to cook a bunch of her favourite recipes over the internet and classed up my repertoire signficantly. More commercially, I have a Wagamama's cook book, as they are my favourite chain restaurant, but there aren't any for 100 miles up here so I've had a bash at several of my favourites from their book.
5. What's the first meal you tried cooking yourself?
It was a very long time ago, so I presume it was some combination of pasta, sauce and sausages, as that was a staple of my diet as a student. I think of the months when I was writing my dissertation and learning to practice self-care through cooking as when I properly started learning to cook beyond the basics, and at that point I was working my way through one of my mum's 'Oxo' cook books, and transferring the successes into my own little recipe notebook. According to that little notebook my first success was exactly that, a dish called Rainbow Pasta: pasta with a selection of frozen veg, a can of chopped tomatoes some sausages and a few herb-based embellishments. But the first time I felt like a proper cook that knew what they were doing, was a couple of months later when I first made myself lasagne, and yes the pasta was out of a packet, and the white sauce was out of a jar, but I'd read the back of a jar of the lasagne 'red sauce' in the shop and thought 'I could do that' and bought passata and onions and celery and a carrot, and I figured it all out. I had to buy a big casserole specifically for the job (and to this day I mentally refer to it as my 'lasagne dish' even though I rarely make it in that anymore, it's huge) but I made a massive lasagne for myself and it fed me for the rest of the week and it tasted excellent. I refined that recipe over the years, but until I became a vegetarian it was a staple part of my diet, a dish that made me feel grown up and competant - doubtless helped by the fact that it was never one my mum mastered - a comfort food dish that takes me right back to being 21 and finally feeling that I might actually know what I was doing.
