What do you cook the best?

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I was wondering if people had one particular item that they were best at cooking or if they had a style that they ate best at?

I'm best at cooking my black bean brownies. I have a great recipe for chocolate chip black bean brownies which I'll try to write up here in due course, but it got me thinking that really I am only any good at cooking cookies or similar and that other people might be the same as well.
 
I would say my soups.
Now is it you are good at them because it is what you like to cook or because it is about all you have cooked?
If you can make cookies and brownies, you can master anything.
 
I don't think I'm particularly good at cooking anything. It all depends how the mood takes me. I can cook two identical meals separately and they'd both be entirely different, from bordering on (what I think is) perfect to being an absolute disaster. I think I may be better at adapting recipes rather than actually cooking anything.
 
Probably the one thing I'm not good at is cookies!
Elawin said:
I don't think I'm particularly good at cooking anything. It all depends how the mood takes me. I can cook two identical meals separately and they'd both be entirely different, from bordering on (what I think is) perfect to being an absolute disaster. I think I may be better at adapting recipes rather than actually cooking anything.
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Adapting is in itself a skill. Many famous chefs adapt recipes!
 
morning glory said:
Probably the one thing I'm not good at is cookies!

Adapting is in itself a skill. Many famous chefs adapt recipes!
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This leads to another thought. I do believe all chefs had to follow a recipe at some point.
Most they use are now in their heads.
Adapting a recipe is cooking. So what if one can't make a curry without a recipe. They are still cooking.
Most of the time if I am making something I use and adapt recipes. But I still cook the food.

I know on all the food competitions, you never see a recipe card. But you have to consider most of those people have been cooking for years. They generally make a semblance of one of their signature dishes that they have the recipe memorized.

Now my daughter can't cook. She honestly thought recipes were just for baking. Her reasoning was she had never seen anyone close to her use a recipe. (She didn't live with me). But then the people always made the same set of dishes that they had been making for years. Even leading her to websites didn't help. She does cans and boxes.
 
I must confess - my sole skill lies in the full English breakfast. Maybe not the most healthy or the most culinary advanced but to get it right [and all ready at the same time including the coffee - ok slight modification] takes a bit of practice, as I discovered when we bought a new oven/grill and suddenly all my timings were way out.
 
Cinisajoy said:
.....

Now my daughter can't cook. She honestly thought recipes were just for baking. Her reasoning was she had never seen anyone close to her use a recipe. (She didn't live with me). But then the people always made the same set of dishes that they had been making for years. Even leading her to websites didn't help. She does cans and boxes.
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Years ago, when I lived in flat without a fridge, there was a cookery magazine which used to base their recipes on canned foods. They had some fantastic recipes in there - things I would never have dreamed of making with purely canned food. Like everything else I found useful, it finally fell by the wayside when people started getting freezers.
 
Elawin said:
Years ago, when I lived in flat without a fridge, there was a cookery magazine which used to base their recipes on canned foods. They had some fantastic recipes in there - things I would never have dreamed of making with purely canned food. Like everything else I found useful, it finally fell by the wayside when people started getting freezers.
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True - but as the recent poll Do you eat tinned (canned) food? shows, we still buy quite a lot of tinned foods. I think in the US there is more of a tradition of using canned food (soups in particular) in recipes. Also, @Yorky has a few recipes with tomato soup and mushroom soup as an ingredient. I'm not sure if he got those recipes from the UK or not.
 
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morning glory said:
True - but as the recent poll Do you eat tinned (canned) food? shows, we still buy quite a lot of tinned foods. I think in the US there is more of a tradition of using canned food (soups in particular) in recipes. Also, @Yorky has a few recipes with tomato soup and mushroom soup as an ingredient. I'm not sure if he got those recipes from the UK or not.
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I have used condensed tomato soup with slow-cooked rolled chuck steak. The recipe I adapted actually called for thick tomato juice but I didn't have any. There was plenty of water in it too so there was no problem about the soup being too thick.

I got out of the habit of using tinned stuff because it always had too much salt in it, but that is not such a problem nowadays, but I still only stick to various beans and tomatoes rather than anything else.
 
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morning glory said:
Also, @Yorky has a few recipes with tomato soup and mushroom soup as an ingredient. I'm not sure if he got those recipes from the UK or not.
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No, I made them up. Primarily the reasons being the absence of some ingredients here (fresh cream being one of them) and laziness. I have tried yoghurt which works in some dishes (e.g. curry) but not in others.
 
I am not known for being a good cook but I'm good at making anything requiring a roux, bolongaise, sponge cakes, and I suppose, I have perfected anything that I particularly like such as kedgeree.
 
I'm better at freelancing. cooking what takes my mood. Indian in particular. my husband is better at recipes that require exact time and exact quantities. he's not good at ad libbing, I am. I'm not good at exact this or that...
 
Curry. I started with a recipe of David Smith (of all people) back around late 80s after returning from a couple of visits to India. I messed with the recipe for many months (using Madhur's influence) and ended up with a chicken curry which is ideal for me and mine (as was). The ingredients are now measured reasonably accurately and it turns out similar most times although the heat varies depending upon the heat of the fresh chilies (which varies considerably here).

curry.jpg
 
Yorky said:
Curry. I started with a recipe of David Smith (of all people) back around late 80s after returning from a couple of visits to India. I messed with the recipe for many months (using Madhur's influence) and ended up with a chicken curry which is ideal for me and mine (as was). The ingredients are now measured reasonably accurately and it turns out similar most times although the heat varies depending upon the heat of the fresh chilies (which varies considerably here).

curry.jpg
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I have something similar with what we call my Indian. It's written up here but I doubt anyone else would really love it the way we do. I guess it's also a curry really...

Great photo, as always :thumbsup:
 
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