Dinner ideas to wow the ladies and otherwise be tasty.

My roommate deserves a good meal.

Steak Is off the board, as I've cooked it for her before and I don't want to be a one-trick pony.

I thought about using the ground beef I have to make stroganoff but I've never done that before so I'm not sure.

I'm trying to avoid Italian since we've had Italian for the last three nights. Granted even though we probably could both live on it.

I'm also trying to avoid anything stir fry or Asian because I do tha for myself a lot and again don't want to seem like a one-trick pony.

And although it is technically an option with what I have in the house, I do not want to do a white-guy taco night. (You know it's a thing)

So, in a nutshell, what are your relatively easy meals that you prep to impress the ladies?

 

I know you said not Asian, but a faux Phở is easy. I don't know all of the ingredients you have or have access to. But essentially, 4 pieces of star anise, 3 cloves, one onion quartered, 3 cloves of garlic rough chopped, a cinnamon stick, and some beef or vegetable broth. You cook it to a boil, then lower the temp and cover for 20 minutes. Meanwhile make some medium rice noodles, chop some vegetables, tofu if you like, and cut up your steak into thin strips. Super simple, or you can buy Campbell's Phở broth.

Ramen can be done similarly, boil an egg in there, cut up some vegetables, steam some like broccoli, bok choy, throw in some snow peas, purple onion, carrots slices, whatever you like. Feel free to add the steak as well.

If you're looking for a western dish, with your ground beef specifically, stroganoff is good and easy, brown your beef, cook your noodles, chop some mushrooms and onions, fry them in butter, add more butter, add some flour until its a thick paste, then add some hot broth, beef or vegetable would be best, once it's gravy add your beef, then mix it in to your noodles. Add some garlic bread to the side.

"Shepherds" Pie- in this case because you're using beef and not lamb, it would be Ranchers Pie, but that's pedantics. Mashed potatoes, browned beef, gravy as described above. Some peas carrots and corn, chopped asparagusif you're feeling it. Beef and Gravy on the bottom layer, vegetables, and then mashed potatoes on top with a bit of the gravy mixed in to the potatoes. If you really want to Americanize it, add cheese on top, throw the oven on broil and let the cheese melt.

 

As I've only had pho once, after boiling all that together I'm assuming you separate it and the noodles go with the broth and the onions and garlic?

 

Sorry chop the garlic, but you basically are going to want to separate the onions, cloves, cinnamon and anise from the broth once you are ready to serve. You can keep the onions, but they will be pretty mushy. Thinly slice some more onion. Go nuts with the vegetables, broccoli, bean sprouts, baby corn, mushrooms, any type, sautéed yellow onion, fresh red onion, bok choy, tomatoes slices, peppers, cucumber slices on top, carrots cilantro if you like it, if not leave it out. Really the more vegetables you have the better it gets, steamed sautéed, boiled all good. Then pour the broth over the noodles, add your vegetables, make the plating visually interesting, Keep your purples together, your greens together, your oranges and yellows together, with your beef in the middle. Chop some chives or green onion, and sprinkle on top. Traditionally the broth would cook the noodles and beef, but I find it is better to just cook the noodles separately, they don't take long, and the beef depends on you, if you don't like the red meat to be red, you can precook it.

Get some Hoison and Sriracha. If you like, add peanut butter to the bottom of the bowl, mix it with a little broth, for an easy peanut sate.

 

Who knew that Bowser was a Cordon Bleu Chef between defending castles from Mario! Nice one matey.

 

Hahaha! Hardly a quality chef, but I could be an okay line cook.

When you have a kid and a bunch of teenagers running around the castle, you blow through a budget real quick if you try to do take away every night. And with some dietary restrictions in the house, you have to learn a few new tricks and quick meals that everyone can eat.

 

Awesome.

 

Yea, the hurdles I have to overcome here are mainly dietary in nature. Guests have known restrictions like:

no green pepper, orange pepper occasionally is cool.
no peas
light cheese in most situations (except italian.)
spice in terms of heat factor needs to be low level.
of the main starches, rice is an every so often thing.

which tears me up because I have a banging recipe for buffalo chicken dip and also various levels of indian food. all the recipes i know I'm good at, and I'm hamstrung.

 

A yellow Dahl on quinoa might be good, pretty low spice, quinoa instead of rice, probably red or yellow Dahl are my favorite of the Indian foods, with pekoras and samosas of course. Or Palak Paneer, no spice really, a somewhat light cheese.

I find the best for guests is an appy night. A bunch of appetizers, get some chicken wings, and ranch powder. Cook the wings throw them in a bowl shake on the ranch powder and shake up the bowl to coat the wings. Do the same with some good hot sauce, for the people who can have spice. Cut up some garlic sausage, various cheeses, vegetables like carrots, cucumber, celery, pickles, etc. Put out some cherry tomatoes, grapes and strawberries. Fry up some spring rolls, samosas, gyoza, make some garlic bread, and Nachos. For vegans and vegetarians slice up some smoked tofu into squares, some Violife cheese slices cut up into squares and put out some crackers.
Whatever appys you like. Lots of food, everyone can eat, and lots of choices, and every one can control their portion sizes.

 

Hmm. I can think of a couple options, depending on how fancy and complicated you want to go.

Option 1: Pepsi Pot Roast
Take 1 2-3 lb beef roast, place it in a crock pot. Cover it with a can of cream of mushroom soup, a packet of dried onion soup mix, and a 16 oz bottle of pepsi. Slow cook on high for 6 hours. Pair with your favorite starch and a microwave bag of vegetables.

The other two favorites, Chile Verde and Irish Stew and Soda Bread will have to wait until I get home to look at my recipe books.

 

This thread is a great example of why I love LO.

 

How did the dinner go? What did you end up making?

 

ooh soda bread.

I need to dust off the bread maker one of these days in between print cycles

 

Chicken with wine sauce, roasted asparagus with roasted garlic and parmesan, and boxed potatoes au gratin with extra Parm on top.

She enjoyed it. Which has redoubled my enthusiasm to cook a dish that causes a "wow" reaction.

 

Looks amazing!

 

It was pretty decent.

Boxed potatoes, even with the Parm, was as you would expect. Might mix in something different next time if I use them again.

Chicken did not capture the flavor of the wine sauce well, but still was seasoned appropriately and when paired with the sauce was very good.

Asparagus was very tasty.

 

I'd like to keep this thread open, for the general sharing of recipes and food banter. What say ye, gentle-frogs?

 

Sounds good.

I think you did a great job of cooking there.

 

I'm open to leaving it open. I'll try to get a couple more recipes posted tomorrow.