Celebrating our cooking successes!

I'm feeling great after a hard day because...

I just cooked two perfect chicken breasts on the pan! Just fully cooked and nice and succulent..

And to make it even better, this was a second time in a row and both times I did not time anything, just went by the feeling. Oh happy days.

I'm hoping you will join me in celebrating even the smallest victories in the kitchen! Maybe you made a great new spice mix? Baked a beautiful loaf of bread?

What are your latest cooking successes?

I like this idea. I often 'wing it' when I'm cooking and heavily modify a recipe. Often it works, sometimes it doesn't. My most recent success was a modified 'buttermilk cake'. I've already modified the recipe to use yoghurt rather than buttermilk on occasion, but I fancied making a savoury loaf, rather than a sweet cake, so I added curry spices, chopped sweet pepper and sweetcorn, with a little smoked venison that I had left over, and if I say so myself, it has turned out rather yummy! It definitely makes a nice snack with a cup of tea, especially toasted with butter!

Maybe I am not the right person to comment, since I am a professional chef. But one thing I would advice to everyone: keep the balance of tastes. The golden triangle. So many times you taste something you have made and know SOMETHING IS MISSING...

It is easy to remedy.

Every dish must have salt, sweetness and bitterness. If any of them is missing, it does not taste right.

lack of salt means out do not taste anything on the tip of your tongue.
Lack of sweetness is easy.
But every dish should have a dash of bitterness, like vinegar

I celebrate with you!!!
For me I feel especially victorious when my harvests and pantry all align perfectly to make a recipe. My long beans are FINALLY coming in, the same week that potatoes are on sale, and I have dried mushrooms to use up, so we'll be making a vegan version of nikujaga that everyone here loves.

Tereza Okava wrote:...so we'll be making a vegan version of nikujaga that everyone here loves.

OK, I pegged it as Japanese, but not any Japanese dish I'd heard of...

a Japanese dish of meat, potatoes and onion stewed in sweetened soy sauce and mirin, sometimes with ito konnyaku and vegetables.[1] Nikujaga is an example of yōshoku (Western-influenced Japanese cuisine). Generally, potatoes make up the bulk of the dish, with meat mostly serving as a source of flavor.[citation needed] It is usually boiled until most of the liquid has been reduced.[2]  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikujaga

That sounds like something my people would eat.

there are a million ways to make it, this version is almost infinitely adaptable (swap maple syrup for sugar or molasses, tofu for TVP or mushrooms, etc etc), one of those recipes I discovered when I was vegan and realized I liked it better than the original with beef. https://www.justhungry.com/vegan-nikujaga-making-japanese-recipes-vegan  there is a link to the original beefy version about halfway down the page, her site has a lot of good home-cooking Japanese recipes as well as adaptations for when you live abroad and can't get the ingredients.

Nancy Reading wrote:I like this idea. I often 'wing it' when I'm cooking and heavily modify a recipe. Often it works, sometimes it doesn't. My most recent success was a modified 'buttermilk cake'.

I'm in the modifying recipes club also! I also like to bake cakes and rarely pick out a whole recipe from somewhere, more like a sponge from here and a filling from there. It's always such a delight when a combination that you made yourself works out!

Yay for your buttermilk cake!

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Every dish must have salt, sweetness and bitterness. If any of them is missing, it does not taste right.

Kaarina, thank you for the great tips, we all now have better chances on cooking successes! When back in the days someone told me to always put some sugar on sauces, well that was a breakthrough for me. I'm still having a hard time with the bitter part of the triangle. I might need to try this golden triangle rule on something I make often.. I will report back the results!

Tereza Okava wrote:I celebrate with you!!! For me I feel especially victorious when my harvests and pantry all align perfectly to make a recipe.

Yay, thank you for celebrating with me! I have a not-so-great history with chicken, I have always been scared of undercooking it so pan fried chicken breasts have not been a thing in my kitchen. Also dry chicken is noooooot nice. I did salvage some chicken I totally overcooked a while back by cutting it to tiny tiny pieces and mixing it with mayonnase and spices. It was edible on sourdough.

And for the pantry aligning.. Oh yes, victory! Especially when I get a craving for something sweet and then find just the things I need to bake something.

I am enjoying reading about everyone's successes.

A couple of weeks ago, I put some Worcestershire Sauce on some pork chops.

Maybe I have not been shaking the bottle so the Worcestershire Sauce was too thick and just clumped on the pork chops.

I decided to make a marinade with soy sauce and brown sugar to counteract the clumpy Worcestershire Sauce.

At least my guests said they liked the pork chops.

Oh yes, another kind of success in the kitchen, the "I fixed it!" victory! Yay for your pork chops too!

Not too long ago I fixed a waaaay too salty sauce with some potatoes. Worked like a charm, took a bit longer to get the food to the table though..

I made super yummy meatball spaghetti today!

Meatball spaghetti, you ask? The toddler likes her tomato sauce and pasta, but the usual ground beef in it is not a hit.. But when the beef is made into meatballs it’s a whole new story!

It’s fun for me too.

..and now I’m going to reheat some of it on a frying pan, in some butter.. Om. Nom.

After retiring, my interests turned to cooking. I "created" a few dishes.

But . . . plot twist . . . my cardiologist insists I cut down heavily on
bread, rice, noodle and potato.

Let me share two utterly simple recipes:

A air fryer chicken wings -  hot and unbelievably succulent. Serve instantly once cooked.

   Cut 4 chicken wings into three pieces each.
   Drizzle soy sauce and oil.
   Massage to coat the pieces evenly.
   Arrange in a pan one layer deep.
   Air fry at 195C for 13mimutes.

   It is actually a Korean fast food recipe but with different seasoning.
    Adjust portion size to fit your air fryer. Mine fits 4 chicken wings.

B Rosti 2.0
  I think I have annotated the picture sufficiently.