So, the last couple nights, I’ve made sort of random dinners out of leftovers. Sunday night, it was chicken katsu sandwiches. Basically, we had some leftover chicken thighs, which I breaded in panko, and pan-fried. Mixed up some ketchup and worcestershire (sp?) sauce to make a tonkatsu sauce, and had it on a split Acme herb slab (bread). Good stuff. Went with a salad Joe was making. Ate, and watched Battlestar.
Tonight, I remembered we had some left over frozen shrimp, and had a hankering for a po’boy. Now, I’ve never made a po’boy before – hell I’ve only had ’em a fistful of times. But I figured, what the heck. Looked up a Food Network recipe, and was off to the races. 20 minutes later, the other half of the herb slab was the foundation for an awesome shrimp sandwich. Mmmmm. Good stuff. That + more Battlestar = good times.
Made me wonder, though, what can I cook?
That is, what can I cook without looking at a recipe?
Not much, honestly.
* Chicken Teriyaki (with a sauce made from scratch)
* Jambalaya
* Risotto
* Ravioli (dough from scratch)
* Harb-stuffed roast chicken
* Roasted Salmon w/ Cranberry/lemon relish
* ?
Not much else is coming to mind. I think for the most part, I don’t tend to make the same things over and over – we tend not to cycle recipes much, even if there’s stuff we like. But I think that might change, because we’ve found a stable of stuff that’s relatively quick, and tasty, and gotten to the point where we cook enough things that even if we cycle them in a regular rotation, there’s enough variety that it’d take a good long while before we got bored. Now, if only I’d made enough of the shrimp sandwich filling for leftovers. Damn!
Aside from slapping meat down on the pan w/ garlic & rosemary, I too only have a handful of dishes I can cook w/o a recipe. I can make:
– random pasta sauces to accompany random pasta
– spicy chicken & dumpling stew
– braised shortribs (well, now I can, but until like last week, I needed a recipe)
– tuna salad (shut up, it’s delicious and great in a sandwich)
– scallion pancakes
– shabu shabu (which really requires no cooking, heh)
– rice cake & dumpling soup
– seaweed soup
– fishcake stew
– porridge
– kimchee jjigae (ignoring that last horrific disaster)
– mapo tofu
– fried tofu
– mochiko chicken! (but only because I have the recipe memorized now)
I can make a handful of Korean side dishes, like the spinach thingy, the bean sprouts thingy, the other mung bean sprouts thingy, steamed savory egg custardy thingy, rolled egg thingy, and sauteed fishcake thingy.
I think that’s it.
Man, now that I think of it, I can only think of… one full blown meal/dish that I can cook off the top of my head. Okay, two if you count tuna salad. 😉
That’s right — two!