I am HUNGRY.

To add something other than drool to the conversation, (omg I want a piece of that Guinness chocolate cake RIGHT NOW) I’ve found a lot of interesting recipes on http://www.chow.com

I subscribe to “Cooking Light” magazine, which has lots of great recipes with lowered sodium and fat, but are still generally yummy.

My boyfriend grew up in a non-cooking household (unlike the household I grew up in) but loves good food. He’s just wonderfully jazzed about the whole home cooking thing. We’ve been having a lot of fun going through my back issues of foodie magazines and choosing recipes we’d like to try. We’ve worked out a deal that I cook and he does the dishes. This is a win-win for me, because I love cooking and loathe doing dishes. I’ve also taught him some very simple and very yummy recipes that he can cook on his own, for those nights I feel like taking a break from cooking.

Here’s a family favorite: Chinese chicken with lemon sauce. Vegetarians can replace the chicken with those soy chicken strips, which are actually pretty tasty, but need much less cooking time and won’t take the breading, so take that into consideration.

Chicken with Lemon Sauce

1 lb skinned, boned chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch strips

Marinade
1 tsp salt
4 tsp rice wine
2 tsp soy sauce
1 egg yolk
Freshly grated pepper

Lemon sauce
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup chicken broth
½ tsp salt
1 T cornstarch
1 tsp sesame oil
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1/2 a lemon)

Coating
6 T cornstarch
2 T all purpose flour

Mix marinade ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well. Cover and let stand 30 minutes.

Combine the ingredients of the lemon sauce in a separate bowl.

Mix together the flour and cornstarch for the chicken coating. After the chicken has been marinating for 30 minutes remove the pieces of chicken from the bowl and roll in coating ingredients. Discard extra coating.

Heat enough oil to cover chicken in a wok over medium high heat and then drop in the coated chicken strips. Cook until chicken pieces are golden brown and no longer pink on the inside. Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and discard all but 1 T of the remaining oil. Drain chicken pieces on a paper towel.

Put the wok back on medium high heat and add the lemon sauce ingredients after stirring (the sugar tends to settle). Cook sauce, stirring occasionally, until it thickens.

Once the sauce thickens, transfer chicken back into wok and toss to coat with sauce evenly. Serve over rice. Toasted sesame seeds and lemon slices are optional garnishes.

Do like the Minimalist and..
He’s a guy.

[Could be gay tho, I guess so the
boy/girl differential might be less.]

I also use recipes because I bake. Baking is time-intensive, and that part I hate. I really don’t want to have to spend a lot of time re-doing something because I messed it up freestyling it. So, I use a recipe to make sure that I do all of the steps absolutely correctly and can spend my time living my life instead of slaving away, dusty with flour remaking a loaf of bread for the second time.

I also like roasting turkey, chicken, and beef, because roast meats are great for sandwiches, and if you cook up a big batch, you have leftovers for at least a week (including what gets stashed in the freezer).

I don’t use recipes much, except for ideas, and specifics on roasting, since I’m less comfortable winging it there than I am with stovetop cooking. Ye gods, though, I’m glad I haven’t choked on smoke, because too often when I’m cooking, I get distracted by the internets, and before I know it, the lovely onions are not carmelized, they are carbon

Alton Brown, who as someone else has mentioned, is beyond ‘chatty’, (several recipes, and more to our benefits, numerous techniques that have permeated other recipes), Giarda DeLaurentis, and Paula Deen, whose ENTIRE SCHTICK is “chatty”, y’all.

Seriously….have any of these people ever watched The Godmother : Julia Child???

As for our cooking style it’s: do the recipe once, per the recipe, then fix it.

Some of the recipes allegedly from the show have become largely unrecognizable by the time we’re done with them….

But hey, I’m a chemist by training, and chemists are, generally speaking, good cooks, knowing both the virtues of following a recipe, and the wisdom of modifying one to get what you want.

The one exception is candy. I’ve been working on learning to make candy for over a year now (it’s slow going - that whole morning sickness/having an infant thing really messes up schedules) and I still follow those recipes exactly. Once I know what I’m doing, I’m sure I’ll get more creative.

I have a traumatic early memory. I was seven or eight, and I was in charge of making biscuits for dinner, and had been for a couple of years already. There had to be an adult in the kitchen, but I was the biscuit cook. My grandmother was visiting and she was my adult supervisor. I was mixing my biscuits and she noticed I only added half as much salt as the recipe called for and she yelled at me! She gave me a big lecture on how important it was to follow recipes exactly. She could have scarred me for life. Luckily, my parents assured me that cooking was personal and I could do whatever I wanted to recipes as long as the results were usually edible.

Nigella Lawson’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess was the start of my adult cooking career. I loved the idea of making food that looked and tasted like it took tremendous effort, but was really very easy. I also love the way she “chats” about the recipes and admits mistakes and admits to shortcuts and cheats. She seems very honest about cooking, and even if she isn’t, I appreciate the style.