For me, its Eggs Benedict.

Perfectly hand poached eggs, fresh scratch made hollandaise, fresh baked english muffins, ham steak (maybe add some spinach to make a Benedict/Florentine hybrid) served with potatoes O'Brien and an espresso. mmmm.....

Just wondering if people here like whisky/ey. I recently discovered that I actually enjoy Irish whiskey more than scotch even. What are your favorites? Do you like all kinds or just a kind in particular? Favorite brands there? Any particular whisky you've tried that is not common and you'd like to recommend? Microdistilleries that you really like?

For me, its a bowl of cereal, usually grape nuts or cheerios. Sometimes with blueberries. Quick and easy.

Also, weird fact;

I put table cream or half and half in my cereal. My grandmother grew up on a dairy farm on PEI and when they were kids the best cream was always used by her family for cereal or tea. Well, she had 6 kids, who then had 13 more and all of us use cream like weirdos (and drink lots of tea). And no, we are not all obese because of it, everything in moderation. =)

^ I may or may not be eating grape nuts and cream right now.

Is there a "theory of cooking"? I'm interested in learning to cook (but could not spend much time learning it unfortunately), but I don't like the general ad-hoc and very subjective nature of recipes. Also, information is very disorganised, it's dispersed in many resources, most hardly accessible. I always thought that there should be a general set of theories when preparing food, like what sort of ingredient does what, how things react when mixed together at different times, and what processes like heating, freezing or kneading do to food. Indeed generally it's possible to find detailed and nearly objective information, sometimes even physical and/or chemical explanations to certain stuff, but then it's always ad-hoc, i.e. related to the particular food item or recipe I'm looking for. I've been searching for a resource that aims to be a comprehensive and scientific (as much as possible) intro to cooking that gives the sort of culinary theory I want, but I've been unable to find such a thing so far. Does anybody here know of such a resource?

Some questions to get us started:

• Do you drink water? Does it taste like anything?
• Coffee or tea? What kind? Do you put milk in it?
• Do you drink the alcoholic beverages? What's your drink of choice?
• Do you drink the carbonated beverages? What's your fizzy drink of choice?
• Do you drink the fruits or the veggie or the smoothie? How you drink it?
• Do you make a Drinky McDrinky Drink, what is it, how do you make it so I can drink it?
• Does the word drink sound funny now?

As the title says, I am looking for your go-to recipes for when you are not in the mood to cook. They should be fast and simple to make and be preferably not too expensive.

Let me start this: Tortelloni with tarragon-cream-sauce (3-6€/2servings, depending on the tortelloni)
*500g Tortelloni, 250ml (sweet) cream, 2 tomatos, tarragon/salt/pepper;

1. Water with salt in one pot, cream with tarragon and 4 short splashes of water in another;
2. Cut the tomatos into pieces and add the to the cream when it boils slightly
3. When the tomatos are added, stir the cream (it should get slightly red from the tomato juice
4. add salt and pepper
5. at this point the water should be boiling, add the Tortelloni
   5.1 I usually buy the Tortelloni from the fridge, they only need to be boiled for 2 min, adjust the timing when you heat up the cream according to needed time to boil the pasta
6. When everything is finished put everything together and enjoy

I always look forward to fresh ingredients for substantial salads during the hot months of summer. Unfortunately, my repertoire is wanting. I make the same basic salad every time just changing a few ingredients depending on availability. This consists of greens, sometimes cold penne or other pasta, usually garbanzo beans, sometimes meat of some kind, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, basil or oregano and/or mint and perhaps hard boiled egg, sometimes pickled beets.

Thanks for any suggestions or recipes.

What I mean by "treat yourself" is something which makes you happy, not just something which satisfies an urge. We all get days where we just want to gulp down a nice plate of spaghetti but what meal do you prepare/buy for yourself when you really want to eat something special?

When I have the time, money, and energy, I like cooking proper meals from scratch (as much as is reasonable, anyway). There's one that I like making more than any other, though, and that I've been making for several years now: pizza. There's nothing quite like a pizza made from freshly rolled dough, a good sauce, and cheese shredded by hand (with none of that cellulose getting in the way), and the smell of the yeast from the dough is wonderful. There's still quite a bit I need to learn to make it better, but I've so far gotten to the point of preferring it over anything you'd get from the popular pizza chains, so I'm pretty confident in what I've managed so far!

What about you? Do you have a favorite? What meal do you consider your "specialty"? Is there anything in particular that keeps bringing you back to it?

What's your go-to weekend dish? Whether it's a fried breakfast or eight hour smoked pork shoulder, what do you love to cook on the weekend?

Personally it's split between bacon and egg sandwiches on homemade bread; my chili recipe, loosely based on SeriousEats Best Ever Chili and potato, chorizo, and cabbage hash with a runny egg on top.

For the uninitiated, Surströmming is an infamous heavily fermented herring.

Below is my experience with it. Happy to answer any questions :)

Preparations

I “smuggled” (more on this below) it from Sweden a few months ago and yesterday evening my brother, a brave (or naïve) soul of a schoolmate of his, and I (not to mention our dog) opened it up near the river. We chose the riverside and the night time strategically, of course.

As was advised to us by a friend, we also took a bucket of water with us. Not – as some may wrongly assume – to vomit into, but to open the tin under water. Due to the fermentation continuing in the tin, it builds up pressure and when you open the tin, it inevitably and violently discharges the bile water. The best way to avoid it spraying your clothes is to open it under water.

The tasting

Since this was an impromptu action, – other than the bucket – we came only half-prepared. As condiments we brought only a little bread, a shallot and three pickled gherkins.

The hint with the bucket was greatly appreciated, as the opening of the tin was the most vile part of the whole experience. So if you plan to try it, do get a bucket! It stopped not only the bile spraying us, but also diluted most of the putrid smell that was caught in the tin.

Once opened and aired, the contents of the tin were actually quite recognisable. Fish fillets swimming in brine. The brine was already brownish and a tiny bit gelatinous, but darkness helped us get past that.

As for the taste and texture, if you ever had pickled herrings before – it’s like that on steroids, married with anchovies. Very soft, but still recognisable as fish, extremely salty, and with acidity that is very similar to that of good sauerkraut.

Washing the fish in the pickle jar helped take the edge of – both in sense of smell and saltiness. The onion as well as the pickles were a great idea, bread was a must!

In summary, it is definitely an acquired taste, but I can very much see how this was a staple in the past and how it can still be used in cuisine. As a condiment, I think it could work well even in a modern dish.

We did go grab a beer afterwards to wash it down though.

P.S. Our dog was very enthusiastic about it the whole time and somewhat sullen that he didn’t get any.

The smuggling

Well, I didn’t actually smuggle it, per se, but it took me ¾ of an hour to get it cleared at the airport and in the end the actual carrier still didn’t know about what I was carrying in my checked luggage. The airport, security, two information desks and the main ground stewardess responsible for my flight were all in on it though. And in my defence, the actual carrier does not have a policy against Surströmming on board (most probably because they haven’t thought about it yet).

As for acquiring this rotten fish in the first place, I saw it in a shop in Malmö and took the least deformed tin (along with other local specialities). When I came to the cash register with grin like a madman in a sweetshop, I asked the friendly young clerk if she has any suggestion how to prepare it, and she replied that she never had it and knows barely anyone of her generation who did, apart from perhaps as a challenge.

I've somewhat recently become vegan and am looking for more recipes to cook. I love pretty much all kinds of food, especially kinds I haven't tried before. If anybody has any great recipes that are vegan, I would love to share.

You probably know the drill, but in case not - you get an unlimited supply of one specific beer to drink when marooned on an island - presumably til death.

I love California blondes. I want to try some others that ~ loves, and thought other folks might like to do the same.

Firestone Walker 805 for me. You?

edit: just to say, oops, not dessert...desert.

I went to the local farmers' market on Saturday and was impressed by both the mushroom guy and the stand selling venison. I've only been able to find venison a few times (don't have any hunter friends), and the times I've made it before, it's gone into chili. So, I bought a pound of stew meat, a half pint of Cinnamon Cap Chestnut mushrooms, and some produce to finish out a stew. I braised it all up last night in some beef broth and red wine. That may have been a mistake, as the venison basically came out tasting like stew beef. Process went a little like this:

• chop up the venison into bite-sized chunks
• brown the venison in a bit of butter
• add more butter and some flour to make roux
• add a splash of red wine and about a carton of beef broth
• add mushrooms, potatoes, garlic
• realize I'm out of onions, so add onion powder
• reduce until gravy-like

All in all, it was tasty (the mushrooms were great!), but the venison was basically very tender, $9 / lb stew beef. Did I treat it wrong by using beef broth, or is that just the way it tastes?

Quite a lot of us will have them. They are pretty damn useful, and make for decent lazy meals.

Apart from stock, here is one of the recipes I really like for the IP.

https://www.justonecookbook.com/pressure-cooker-pork-belly-kakuni/

Japanese pork belly slices. Works brilliantly and stunning flavour. In fact Just One Cookbook is generally a great site, but this was the first of theirs I tried. I make it every time my wife goes away as it's not her thing, but I love it.

Interested in your favourites!

New group, new topics, this is all so exciting. I'm a chef myself and enjoy discussing the business and philosophies of what I do. I'm wondering if other people in the industry have found their way unto Tildes at this point.