Suggestions for a novice cook?

[dolseni]

Long story short, my older brother is coming back to town for a little bit before he goes off to start basic training and I figured it would be nice to make a good meal while he is here. To put it simply, I'm just starting to get into cooking and I don't really know what to cook and what would go well together.

I haven't made any of this before, but thats part of the fun. I think I've subconciously chosen things mostly because they sound interesting to make and I haven't had them before. Here is what I think sounds good so far for the main meal:

Chicken Kiev with tarragon and parsley

Rice Pilaf with onion, red bell pepper, green peas, and saffron. Garnished with golden raisins and/or pistacios

Green peas with minced shallot, fresh mint, fresh parsley, and either ricotta salata, fontina, or swiss cheese

And for the desert I was wanting to make some tres leche cake with a whipped cream frosting.

Is there anything you would suggest that would go better with the chicken kiev? I basically just picked things that sounded good, not really knowing how they would go together. I started with the chicken kiev and figured I would make some sort of a pasta or rice to soak up the butter and then added a vegetable.

I suppose I should also start it off with a salad (romaine lettuce) but I don't particularly like store bought salad dressings and I don't know how to make a good homemade dressing either.

I've never really made a whole meal before, I've cooked various desserts now and then (because they are fun to make and good to eat ) but nothing substantial. Do you 'real' cooks have any suggestions and/or comments? Thanks.

[Marlene]

You're a real cook, you just haven't tapped into your potential yet.

Vinaigrettes are really really simple to make. You could easily do a simple vinaigrette and use it over arugula or other lettuce and greens to make a simple tossed salad.

If you've got green peas in your pilaf, you may not need them as a side dish. You could leave them out of the pilaf. Green bean sauteed with butter and olive oil with a little pancetta and garlic is wonderful.

But then, again, what are your brother's favourite foods/dishes? where do you live and what's in season right now?

You may also want to start off with things you have had before because then you've got a basis for how things should taste. Once you've got a feel for how things go together an how you put things together in a kitchen, move then into expanding your cooking horizions with the unknown.

Edited July 16, 2007 by Marlene (log)

[RyuShihan]

The most important thing is being with people who support you right before you go. ITs the small things that really start to matter. On that note, a good grilled bbq chicken or steak are always a hit. Because when he gets to basic he wont have time to taste his food for a while. See what his favorites are, he will really appreaciate it....with a letter often in the mail.

Edited July 17, 2007 by RyuShihan (log)

[tino27]

I agree with RyuShihan -- especially since you are just beginning -- keep it simple. Sometimes a grilled steak with just the right amount of salt & pepper can be truly sublime. My suggestion would be to treat your protein and your vegetable simply and if you want to do something fancy with your starch, that's where you can experiment a little. I like the idea of a pilauf with pork or chicken, but if you decide to do steak, I would maybe switch to a potato based starch.

But, that's just me.

Besides, no matter what you cook for him, it comes from a place of love, and that's what is the most important.

Good luck!

[BrodeurR]

My one suggestion is make sure you have everything ready before you start cooking anything. Read the recipe through a few times. Chop everything and have everything already measured out and ready to go so that once you get to that part in the recipe you can reach over and grab it. It was pretty recently that I really started cooking and I remember the pain of getting in the middle of a dish (plus having two other pans going) and realizing that I needed some more chopped onions. Argh, and then everything goes down in flames from there. Maybe you already know this, but I know I didn't...until it was too late

Good luck and have fun.

[deltadoc]

I'm not altogether sure that suggesting "grilling a steak" to an self-admitted inexperienced cook is especially a good idea. It took me quite a while before I felt competent to grill steaks. It wasn't as easy as it looks, unless your taste runs in the "well done to very well done" range.

I think Chicken Kiev is a bit of a reach too for an inexperienced cook.

While this is simply my opinion, I'm thinking, take the chicken breast and lay it between two sheets of waxed paper or put them one-by-one in a ziploc Freezer bag (a sturdy bag) and pound them to about 1/4" thick. Then salt and pepper them, mix 1 C of flour with 1 TBSP salt and 1 tsp black pepper, dredge the chicken breasts in that, shake off the excess.

IN a separate bowl, whisk a couple egg yolks with a tsp or two of water, and dip the floured breasts in that. Then dredge them in some store bought Italian bread crumbs. Fry them in olive oil at moderate heat until they're golden brown. This way you'll be sure the chicken is cooked through. Take out the golden breasts and put them on a plate covered with aluminum foil and stick them in a 200 F oven.

In the meantime, chop some shallots or red onion finely diced, add a bit of butter to your pan that you cooked the breasts in, and when the onions/shallots are just starting to turn clear, add some TBSP's of flour whilst stirring like crazy. You should end up with a thick floury paste (what you're aiming for is an equal mixture of oil (original olive oil + butter) and flour. Have handy some stock or very warm milk and slowly add that in whilst stirring madly again, until you get a sauce that surprisingly will loosen up that doughy mixture (roux) and turn into a nice sauce.

S&P and maybe add a bit of freshly grated nutmeg and maybe some parmesan cheese. This will go good with the breasts that are still in the oven staying warm.

As a side dish, any type of rice or mashed potatoes will go nicely with the sauce. Any kind of steamed fresh vegetable will also be a colorful and tasty accompaniment, and all you have to do is make sure the veggies don't get too mushy while you're steaming them. A fork pushed through them should show them tender, with little resistance. If the veggie "mashes" easily, they're overcooked!

All of the above would seem to me to be within the range of an inexperienced cook, yet the finale will be quite edible and enjoyable to you and your brother. He won't eat that good in the Army!

Just my thoughts.

doc

[doctortim]

While it's always good to try out new dishes, experience has taught me that if you want the meal to be a success, never make it then for the first time. If you're using any new techniques, cooking an ingredient in a new way or cooking a new ingredient at all, try it all out before the main event.

And may I suggest braises (e.g. ossobuco, ribs, etc), curries, stews, and soups as ideal dishes for this kind of dinner. You can still wow them with great flavours, but you get the added advantage of being able to cook most of the meal ahead of time, and spend the evening hanging out and eating with your brother rather than fussing around in the kitchen.

[Lisa1349]

Welcome, Dolseni, to eGullet!

I am not an authority on easy dinners. When people ask me for easy, they say what I give them is hard.

But it's a good time to mention doing something nice for Service men/women. I was at a rest stop a couple of weeks ago where I encountered Marines on the way to "you-know-where". I bought them dinner, even though the dining option was BK. Kudos to your brother.

[snowangel]

One thought is since your guest is off to basic training think about what his favorite dishes are.

[hongda]

Here's a recipe for tres leches from good eats

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_13536,00.html

If you can find the show on food network or ummm, other means, Alton does a good job of making it look easy.

It's always a good idea to plan ahead. Tres Leches is good because it's better if you make it a day before. Also the stews and ossobucco suggestion are also great made the day before then reheated. For Chicken Kiev, pound, stuff and roll the chicken the day before, then bread and fry the day of the dinner.

Also I like to cook like BroeurR, have everything cut up and ready to go before cooking. I think it's usually referred to as Mise En Place (sp?) or french for everything in it's place.

Maybe add some broiled asparagus with garlic and a squeeze of lemon. The brightness of the lemon will help to cut through the richness of the kiev.

[dolseni]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not too worried about the food being too hard or complex to cook since i've got Good Eats on my side. That show is amazing... its really the best cooking show I have ever seen and one of the only shows I find to be actually entertaining.

My brother got here late last night and doesn't have to leave for a couple of weeks so I have time to make a number of new things. I always want to try to make something that I haven't done before or something thats a little hard or complicated because that is the best way to get better. Sure, it may not be absolutely perfect the first time, but it isn't like this is going to be a major meal like Thanksgiving or the like.

I would have gone with steak since I mean, come on... who doesn't love a big ol juicy steak cooked to medium rare... but 5 good steaks are a bit more expensive than 5 chicken breats for the chicken kiev I'm planning.

I was wanting to put green peas in both the pilaf and as a seperate vegetable for 2 reasons. First, it will brighten up the pilaf a big and make it a look a lil bit better (plus it is in the original recipe) and second, we have frozen peas and if you have something, you might as well cook it before going out and buying something else.

deltadoc, that sounds good, I'll have to try that sometime.

I should be getting some vanilla planifolia beans in the mail in 2-5 days and I'm wanting to make some really good vanilla ice cream. What do you guys suggest I go with? Either an egg based ice cream like most 'premium' ice creams are, or a Philadelphia style ice cream that doesn't need eggs?

The vanilla ice creams that have the tiny vanilla specs in them, is that just the innards of the bean or is that the actual bean that has been ground up finely? I've never used (or even seen in person for that matter) whole vanilla beans and I don't know what the bean's exterior texture is like and such. What are some dishes that you guys would recommend I use real vanilla beans in?

edit:

hongda, haha I love Good Eats, Thats what really made me want to start cooking. All the recipes that I'd originally planned were from Good Eats =)

Also I like to cook like BroeurR, have everything cut up and ready to go before cooking. I think it's usually referred to as Mise En Place (sp?) or french for everything in it's place.

Yep yep, thats a mise en place. I know a little bit about cooking just from watching good eats but I've never really cooked a whole meal or anything substantial.

I've seen every single episode of good eats and I have most of them on my harddrive. Gotta love torrents =). If they actually decided to make DVDs with full seasons of Good Eats on them, I'd buy 'em in a heartbeat... but they don't...

Edited July 17, 2007 by dolseni (log)

[hongda]

The specs in vanilla ice cream are the seeds. The texture of the skin is almost leather like. Cut down the middle using a paring knife and scrape the seeds out with the back of your knife. The texture of the seeds is kind of gummy, almost like a thick paste. If it's a solution that your gonna boil, you can let the skin steep in the liquid for a while, otherwise toss the skin in the sugar bowl and make some vanilla sugar.

I just used some to make vanilla to make a vanilla pudding. Had some leftover cupcakes, so I made a ghetto trifle with layers of chocolate cupcakes, vanilla pudding and home-made strawberry jam :-P

[dolseni]

Ah jeez... I tell people about it and they decide that its not going to be 4 people (me, 2 older brothers, and my mom) and that it is going to be 6 maybe 7 people (me, 2 brothers, one maybe both of my brothers' girlfriends, my mom, and my mother's boyfriend).

It looks like the dinner is going to be on Thursday, so I made the tres leche cake today (it has to sit overnight to really soak up the milk before you make the whipped cream frosting) because I figured it would easily last 2 days and I wanted to go ahead and get some of the cooking done. I can make the compound butter and go ahead and put together the chicken kiev tomorrow. That way I only have to make the rice pilaf, the green peas with herbs, and cook the chicken kiev on Thursday.

It funny how it has turned into a simple lil family meal into a big dinner so rapidly. At least they offered to pay for all the ingredients so I'm off the hook there... providing I can live through it.

Right about now I'm really wishing I had made some of these things before so I would know exactly what I'm going to be doing. Before, if I messed up it wasn't that big of a deal since it was just a small family meal =/

*sigh* at least the tres leche cake appears to have turned out perfectly... I just have to make the whipped cream frosting (also for the first time) but that seems really quite easy. Take the heavy cream, add sugar and vanilla, then whip it untill it is thick (soft/firm peaks or whatever the correct term is)

edit:

any suggestions on what type of salad and salad dressing I should make? Should I just skip the salad?

Edited July 18, 2007 by dolseni (log)

[doctortim]

Well done on the perfect tres leches, it sounds great!

As for the salad, the possibilities are endless and bound to be tasty if you use fresh, good quality ingredients. Most green grocers and supermarkets sell mixed salad greens, which provide a good base for a quick salad. Just make sure the greens aren't at all slimy when you buy them. Add to that some halved cherry tomatoes, a bit of crumbled feta, and you're good to go. Perhaps some toasted pine nuts too? An easy dressing for this could be a mixture of olive oil and balsamic glaze (mix together some balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, and very slowly reduce it until it's a bit more syrupy).

As with this and all salad dressings, go with what tastes good to you. Dip lettuce leaves into the dressing and taste as you go to get an idea of how the salad dressing will taste when done. Adjust accordingly. Here's the recipe for Thomas Keller's Bouchon house vinaigrette, which he serves with a salad of bibb lettuce and fresh herbs: 1 part dijon mustard, 2 parts red wine vinegar, 6 parts canola oil. It would no doubt go with most simple salads.

A slightly heartier salad that my family loves is: baby spinach, roasted cubes of sweet potato, toasted walnuts, castello cheese, and a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, crushed garlic, a little sugar, salt, and pepper.

(Oh, you probably know this, but don't dress the salad until just before you serve it or the acid will wilt the greens)

All the best with the dinner! Preparation is key. It can be quite daunting the first time you cook for a lot of people, but there's nothing more satisfying than cooking for close friends and family.

[MaggieL]

I hope this isn't terribly improper of me to do, but I'm going to add my own similar request for advice into this topic. I am a novice cook looking for similar meal suggestions, so I think it fits.

I am preparing a small (myself and one other person) simple birthday dinner for tomorrow night, and I'm looking for some feedback on whether or not my intended dishes 'mesh.' My guest is very easy-going, and will appreciate whatever I make--so this advice-getting is purely for my own sake.

I was initially going to make salmon (this recipe, with soya sauce added) with rice and some sort of vegetable side. But we just saw Ratatouille last night, and I'm now hoping to replicate the star dish from that movie, following [QUASI SPOILER ALERT IF YOU CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK--not in terms of plot, but it will give you a bit of info on the movie which you may not want] this recipe from the eGullet thread.

Would the slightly-Asian inspired salmon clash with the French ratatouille? If not, then I'll probably make the salmon, ratatouille, and rice.

Otherwise, do you know of any other salmon-cooking methods which would make it more appropriate? Or other dishes I could substitute?

Finally, I should say: I'm not really comfortable cooking non-seafood meat just yet, having only very recently begun making efforts to leave a vegetarian diet.

[saucée]

any suggestions on what type of salad and salad dressing I should make? Should I just skip the salad?

←

I'd say it depends on your personal preference. I myself would serve a somewhat tart salad (3 to 1 oil to acid ratio) with only an interesting mix of greens. I don't really like my salad to be full of stuff during a meal that already has so much. The tartness of the vinaigrette at the end of the meal might help to balance out the richness of the chicken kiev. I don't like as much mustard as appears in the Keller recipe and I use olive oil for the dressing. I do like to add shallots sometimes to spice things up a bit or a special vinegar. I do love to use lime as the acid and finish with toasted cumin seeds, but that might not work so well. I could write all day about this, but I'll stop now.

MaggieL, I don't think those two dishes clash that much, though I do agree with the commenter on the recipe board that the recipe is rather simplistic. I might suggest doing a fish preparation "en papillote," or, "in a pouch." Its the easiest preparation and can be quite impressive. There is a thread here about it. I like tomato, maybe a bit of wine, some thyme, S&P, and some butter (preferably a flavored butter like garlic lime butter or garlic parsley lemon butter, etc) and you can add asparagus, peas, etc. to the pouch. You get an instant sauce out of this and the flavors combine brilliantly. This is a good technique to know, because you can do so much with it and you can use it with chicken as well. It's great with salmon.

This could work with your ratatouille (one of my absolute favorites) quite well. If possible, cook your ratatouille as far ahead of time as possible, chill, and reheat. Its even better with some time for the flavors to blend.

Rice would be good--how are you going to cook it? A pilaf would be nice. Also, a simple potato dish like parsleyed potatoes would be good.

Hope these suggestions are useful.

[RyuShihan]

maggie, if it was me i would go with a very hard sear on the salmon and do either a easy butter sauce ( beurre blanc), or a little harder hollandaise. My reasoning is, thats alot of items that are mushy, and a little texture contrast can go a long way. IF your bent on soy, I would shoot for some sort of acidic sauce to help cut the fat in the salmon, adding a little pineapple or vinegerete (sp).

[dolseni]

.....

so... I just have completely gotten done with preparing the chicken kiev and cleaning up the kitchen... I just have to bread it and cook it tomorrow. Its 4 am now and I think I started at around 1:30ish. What a hellish experience that was. Alton Brown makes things look so deceptively easy. To put it simply, it started off bad and then got much worse.

I pull the chicken out of the fridge, pull the compound butter out of the freezer, and the panko out of the pantry and procede to sorta setup my area. I then go to get the meat mallet... I said that I go to get the meat mallet... oh shit we have no meat mallet. Then, remembering the episode of good eats where he says you can use a pie pan with a heavy can of food, I look around and find that we have no pie pans nor any heavy cans of food.

By that time I'm running around the house like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to find something, anything I can use to flatten the chicken breasts. Eventually I find a big ol metal hammer out in the garage and a 2x4 (which I cut into a 4 inch square 2 inches thick). Score.

Next, I pull out a chicken breast, trim it up a lil bit with an amazingly dull knife. I then flatten the breasts and pull my compound butter back out of the freezer and start putting together the chicken kiev thingies. Noticing that I didn't flatten them enough and it is extremely hard to roll it around the butter, I go back and flatten them all more and roll them all up.

After that, I realize that they are really pretty massive and there's no way they are going to cook nicely. So, reluctantly I unroll all of them, cut the flattened breasts in half, and roll them all back up. (ugh, what a pain)

Finally, after what seemed like years of work, I end up with 11 chicken kiev things (one was pretty badly torn so i cooked it up and cut a piece for me and gave the rest to the dogs) all nicely wrapped up in plastic wrap and I put em in the fridge and start cleaning up.

You guys REALLY weren't kidding when you said that chicken kiev isn't for a novice cook... I blame it all on Alton Brown though... he just made it look SO easy.... Overall, I'm quite happy with the end result though.

Rather than going through another game of "Find out you dont have an essential piece of hardware as you are cooking!", I decided to make sure I have everything I need for tomorrow only to discover that I dont have a pan that can go in the oven (they all have plastic handles or some other design flaw). There goes my rice pilaf. Following Alton Brown's advice, I was planning on starting the pilaf on the stovetop and then finishing it in the oven so I get more consistant and even heat.

Any advice on how to fix the pilaf now? This is what I was going to do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a heavy, wide, lidded pan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Add onion, red pepper, and kosher salt. Sweat the onions and peppers until aromatic, stirring constantly. Add the rice and stir to coat. Continue stirring until rice smells nutty. Add chicken broth, orange zest, saffron and water, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Stir once, then cover pan with moistened dish towel (or tea towel). Place lid on pan and fold towel corners over lid. Bake for 15 minutes. Then rest at room temperature for 10 to 20 minutes without removing the cover. Meanwhile, simmer peas in salted water until heated through or heat in a microwave. Remove lid from rice and turn out onto a platter. Add peas and fluff with a large fork. Add raisins and pistachios.

Oh and MaggieL, I don't mind if you use this thread rather than start a new one... One 'help meeeeeee' thread is plenty, we don't want to annoy the real chefs now do we?

Edited July 19, 2007 by dolseni (log)

[Torrilin]

He's having you do a pilaf like a risotto. This works, is very tasty... and is probably more stress than you need for this meal. (For the future, if the guest list expands like this, fall back on a roast... they're traditional for big dinners because they're a low stress way to feed a crowd)

Prepare the rice according to the package directions, subbing chicken broth (or bullion cubes, I'm not proud) for the water. You can add the veggies when you start cooking the rice. Bay leaf can go in then too. The orange zest and saffron I'd tend to add at the end. If you want peas in the pilaf, add frozen peas a few minutes before it's supposed to be done. They'll thaw while the rice does it's last bit of cooking. Most regular rice wants to start cooking around 20-40 minutes before you eat, and will hold decently on a turned off burner for around 20 minutes.

That help?

[dolseni]

yeah, thanks Torrilin. Its Always nice to know what to do in future situations if I get a wrench thrown into what I'm cooking. I ended up just pulling out a screwdriver and removing the handle on the pan and throwing it in the oven like the recipe says.

Overall, I am very proud of how everything turned out. The chicken kiev was amazingly good (despite one or two of them that didn't get rolled exactly right.. the butter oozed out during cooking). I think that was the best chicken I have ever made. From now on I'm going to flatten all chicken I cook... it was so moist and juicy and not a single bit overcooked. I'm used to having to overcook the chicken so the outside ends up dry just to get the inside cooked enough that it isn't raw.

The pilaf was good. Maybe next time I'll serve it with something that has a little bit more liquid or juice or something. It wasn't amazing, but it was really good. Most rice I've made in the past ends up sorta bland. The green peas were decent as well. I think they would have turned out much much better if I had used a better cheese. I had basically 2 choices of cheese onhand: swiss or an aged chedder. The chedder was, I believe, going to be too sharp and wouldn't have gone well with the red wine, olive oil, shallot, etc. dressing that was tossed in with the peas. The tres leche cake for desert... oh my.. heavenly. It was just.. so good.

The chicken kiev was clearly everybody's favourite. Clearly it is something I'm going to have to make again. I might even toy around with seeing how well they freeze... I could make a bunch of them, freeze em, and just pop one out, and fry one up every few days as the main part of a nice meal for myself. I'm not too sure as to how well it would cook from being frozen... might have to cook it a tiny bit longer at a lower temp.?

Honestly... I have to start cooking. This was one of the best meals I've had in a long while.

[MaggieL]

Thanks for all the advice. And thank you, dolseni, for graciously sharing your thread.

RyuShiHan: I liked your suggestion of searing the salmon, but my previous efforts to cook salmon that way have ended in disaster. I'm not sure if its my pan, my oven, the salmon (which I can only get frozen, at the grocery stores close to my home), or what, but my 'nice crispy salmon skin' has always turned out kind of mushy and unpleasant. That is a skill I definitely intend to work on in the future.

saucée: Thank you for all of your suggestions--they definitely helped make the meal very special. I followed your advice, and cooked the fish in little parchment pouches with a mix of: carrots, tomatoes, green onions, garlic, lemon thyme, lemon, salt, pepper, and white wine. The fillets turned out deliciously--and it was much easier than the other method. My only problem: when I opened the packets, the fillets had quite a bit of white matter on their surface--melted fat? I've seen this before, but never to such degrees. Do you know what this happened? I think it might be because I overcooked them. I was in a bit of a cooking daze, and left them in for a minute longer than I should have.

As for the rice, I ended up making 'yellow rice' from a Moosewood cookbook: I toasted the rice in a bit of oil, with some turmeric, then steamed it in water. At the very end, I tossed in some chopped parsley. It was very simple, but quite tasty. If I made it again, I would substitute some stock for the water.

The ratatouille was my favourite dish. I kind of failed at plating it, but it was really fun to prepare and looked absolutely stunning in the skillet. I'm currently trying to upload pictures to the Ratatouille thread.

Finally, I also made a cake for dessert: a deliciously moist chocolate cake, from the final page of this thread.

---

All in all, I think the meal was a great success. My guest was thrilled, I had a great day of cooking and experimenting, and I learned a whole new way of preparing salmon. Thanks again for everyone's help.

[dockhl]

Congratulations !

Sounds like it went just fine. Did your brother like it? Was everyone suitably impressed?

[saucée]

MaggieL I'm glad everything worked out--your dinner sounds great. Preparing things "en papillote " couldn't be easier and its a very versatile preparation and very hands off. Depending on thickness, I usually cook salmon for about 8 minutes, usually 10 minutes max. I like mine a little on the rare side though.

As for plating the ratatouille, since its a stewed dish, I wouldn't worry much about the plating. As long as the colors and flavors are bright, it can't be beat.