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Anybody want to learn how to cook?

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Jello
I work at a restaurant and have recently started picking some of the guys' brains on how to create these dishes. So I'm learning how to make something and then going home and trying to execute it myself. I'm also writing up the instructions and emailing them to my sister per request. I'm a complete amateur in the kitchen, but in the past 3 nights I've made restaurant quality meals - pork tenderloins with sauted fruit in a red wine sauce; the best chicken francese I've ever eaten; and a pretty delicious sea scallops with mushroom asparagus mix.

Anyway, these dishes have been incredibly easy to execute and if anyone's interested I'd be happy to copy and paste my emails here. ( If not, that's cool too.) As somebody who has lived on fast food and scraps for the majority of his life, it's pretty cool to be able to make fine cuisine with no training whatsoever. This shit is not nearly as hard as you might think and it's pretty satisfying to be eating quality food that you prepared for yourself.
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way cool. was a line cook to sous chef to get me through college. lots of coke in the restaurant industry. can cook now. hooray.
 
Turkey Meatloaf

If you don't have a loaf pan, get one. Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the meatloaf ingredients by hand (make sure you boys wash your filthy hands first) and form into a loaf in an ungreased loaf pan. When the oven finishes preheating, bake the meatloaf for 30 minutes. Remove and glaze. Bake uncovered for another 20 minutes.

Meatloaf
1 lb. ground turkey
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
2 tbsp. chopped onion

Glaze
1/2 can tomato sauce (2 oz.)
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1/2 c. water
(Or if you want to be completely ghetto, cover the meatloaf in ketchup only)
 
Beans on Toast

Empty can of beans into a small saucepan and slow heat on a gas flame, stirring occasionally.

Place both pieces of bread in a toaster, it is important that they go in separate 'slots'. Heat until bread turns golden brown. When still hot, spread butter onto the toasted bread and allow melted butter to soak. Carefully pour the heated beans on top of the toast.

Toast
Two slices of white bread
Butter

Beans
One can of Heinz Baked Beans

I know some people are intimidated by gourmet cuisine but I hope I have demonstrated above that it can be mastered.

(in all seriousness, thanks Jello)
 
kato
way cool. was a line cook to sous chef to get me through college. lots of coke in the restaurant industry. can cook now. hooray.
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Please feel free to pop in here with suggestions or corrections at any time.

You ain't lying about the coke, either. I used to work at places where it was really bad. I'm actually at a place now that is pretty much coke free believe it or not. I'm sure some people might dabble outside of work, but for the most part they are all pot heads and drunks.
 
Alright, here's an incredibly simple way to cook pork tenderloins:



You need pork tenderloins, an apple, a half cup of dried cherries, butter and red wine.

The tenderloins are the thick kind that look like filet mignons but are pork. I took the cherries from work, but you should be able to get them at practically any grocery store. If you have a grill pan (cast iron skillet) or one which is all metal so you can put it in the oven that would be ideal, but you don't need it. Also, you don't really need the dried cherries. My sister doesn't like cherries so she made this with just apples and loved it. If you do that just double the apples. (I was cooking one pork tenderloin here, so adjust portions accordingly.)

Salt and pepper both sides of the pork pretty liberally. Warm a pan (preferably a skillet or a pan with a metal handle) up to medium. As always, wait for the pan to get hot and then sear the tenderloins on both sides for 3 or 4 minutes. While you are doing this, have the oven pre-heating to 400 degrees.

Get another saucepan up to medium and melt a couple tablespoons of butter in it. Dice your apple as your pan is warming. Once the butter is melted put the dried cherries and diced apples in that saucepan.

So you have the fruit sauteing in butter and the pork searing on both sides for a few minutes. Once the oven is preheated, put the tenderloins in there. If you have a pan that you can put in the oven just continue to use that, but if not just transfer them over to something you can put in the oven. You are going to roast them about 10-15 minutes in there.

Get another saucepan out and put about a cup of of red wine in there (pinot noir is best, but it doesn't really matter), bring it to medium heat and just let it simmer as it reduces. Don't worry about it thickening, because that's not going to happen here. It's just going to reduce and evaporate all the alcohol.

Keep stirring your fruit occasionally and your apples will get soft and start to caramelize. After they bronze and the wine has been reducing for 5 minutes or so, pour the contents of the fruit pan in with the wine and bring it down to low. Stir it all in there until the wine reduction is coating the fruit. It will saturate it. If you want to thicken the wine sauce a little you can throw in a small tab of butter. We're not really shooting for too much of a sauce here though.

By the time you get to this point, the pork should be about done. You want it cooked to medium, a little bit of pink on the middle but still moist. You can pull it out and cut through it to check at any point, as you're going to slice them eventually anyway.

Once you have cooked the pork to your desired temp, pull it out of the oven, slice the tenderloins and put them on plates. Take the contents of your fruit saucepan and just pour it over top of the sliced pork. I ate this with a side of herbed mashed potatoes and a salad. I used my restaurant's potatoes but those bags of instant mashers in the grocery store are pretty decent and just require a cup of boiled water.

If you want to pair this with a wine, Pinot Noir would be perfect. It's generally the ideal wine for pork anyway, and the addition of cherries here makes it even more fitting. A Cab Franc would work really well too if you just don't like Pinot. I wouldn't go much heavier than that.
 
great sauce, jello.

i prefer to grill the tenderloin first, then finish it in the oven. you get a better crust. rosemary, garlic, and slat for the seasoning would go well with the sauce.

love the thread.
 
Jello
Thanks kato. Yeah, a grill would be ideal but I don't have one. I used a cast iron skillet with raised grooves that acts like a grill.
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Jello, buy some wood chips, and put them in the bottom of the cask iron, place a small rack, over the chips, and then cover whatever you are cooking with tin foil and you have a rigged up smoker. Great way to cook different proteins.
 
Sounds good tully. I'll try that for sure.

I've been working on eating healthier since I started cooking for myself. Anybody ever use quinoa as a starch substitute? Pretty interesting as you can do almost anything to it in terms of flavoring and it's really, really good for you.
 
Jello
Sounds good tully. I'll try that for sure.

I've been working on eating healthier since I started cooking for myself. Anybody ever use quinoa as a starch substitute? Pretty interesting as you can do almost anything to it in terms of flavoring and it's really, really good for you.
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Just make sure you put some water in with the wood chips. I would think it is common sense but I work in restaurant I told a kid once to put would chips in the in a skillet, and the dumb fuck started a good size fire.
 
Jello
Alright, I'll give you guys the Chicken Francese to start. This was way easier than I thought it would be and really, really tasty:



You need boneless/skinless chicken breasts, Olive oil, flour, minced garlic, 1 lemon, butter, white wine, chicken stock.


Take the chicken breast and cover the bottom and top with selifane on a cutting board. Take your pan and pound them flat. not completely flat to the point that they are shredding, but a nice cutlet sort of width....maybe an inch wide at it's thickest point. I had to turn the pan sideways and pound them with the edge for the most part.

Now cover the pan in olive oil and bring it up to medium heat. You don't want to cook anything in oil until it is hot enough to sizzle whatever you are putting into it. ( A common mistake most home cooks make is they put oil in the pan and then put the chicken or whatever in as it's coming up to temp. You always want to heat the oil first.) As the oil is heating here get a dish to put some flour into.

You don't need much flour. You are just going to "dredge" the chicken through the flour so it has a light coating (I used to make the mistake of wetting chicken before doing this which is wrong. it makes it cake up and it's nasty. leave the chicken with just it's juices). Put a pretty good amount of salt and pepper in with the flour. Take the chicken and run both sides through the flour mix. This is really just a dusting of flour, so you don't need much at all.

Make sure your oil is hot enough to cook (a drop of water in it will tell you) and then lay the breasts in the hot oil. You don't want it too hot to the point of smoking though. No really need to go over medium heat in this whole process. Make sure the chicken doesn't stick to the pan.

You are going to let that cook to a nice golden brown on one side, then flip it over to brown at the same level on the other side. So while you have about 10 minutes for this to happen, get your lemon out and cut some wheels. I used about 1 quarter inch width wheel per chicken breast. Maybe throw in an extra one for good measure. Lemon is a pretty important component of the dish. Get your wine, butter, garlic and chicken stock out and ready too. So you have all that stuff waiting by the pan as the 2nd side of your chicken is becoming golden.

Make a little room in the pan now and drop in a decent sized tab of butter, maybe a tbsp and a half. Place the butter in an open section of the pan, let it melt for a few second and then put your garlic in (just need a little bit to your taste....it's really optional if you're not a garlic fan) You can put the lemon wedges in now too or wait until you add the wine and stock. Stir it around as the butter melts, but you aren't going to do this for more than about a minute, if that. Maybe 30 seconds or so. You don't want anything to brown here including the garlic. A few pieces can get brown, but that's not ideal.

After about a minute pour some white wine and chicken stock in the pan. You want maybe about 1/2 cup or 3/4 cup of wine and maybe a little less chicken stock. You're basically going to have the sauce about 1/2 way up the chicken as it sits in the pan. (The amount of wine and stock depends on how much chicken too. I was cooking a 3 breast pack.)

Stir it all around so everything - butter, wine, lemon, garlic - is mixed up together and let that come to a nice simmer. I let it simmer pretty heavily (not quite a boil) for about 10 minutes. I may have even bumped it up to a medium high for small increments here.

The sauce will reduce a little and thicken ever so slightly. The chicken should be done after about this much time. Just before you are ready to take it off the heat, break off a small tab of butter and let it melt and mix up in there. Once it's about done melting just kill the heat. That butter will thicken the sauce up nicely. It will also of course thicken once it is off the heat too, so keep that in mind as you are judging when to kill the heat. You can always add a little chicken stock if it gets too thick.



So that's all there is to it. I boiled some angel hair pasta as the chicken was simmering. Drain and plate the pasta, place the chicken on top and then pour a little of the sauce over it all. If you want it to look nice, take one of the lemon wheels and lay it right on top of the chicken.

One other thing, if you want to incorporate a side dish into this meal you can slice some snow peas or zuchini nice and thin and throw them into the simmer. Otherwise, maybe just have a salad on the side. That's what I did. Hope you enjoy. I'll post another dish tomorrow.
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This is the one I'm gonna make for the retarded husband.
 
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