How can I forget frito misto, calamari and shrimp with marinara sauce, heaven!

1. I do a wonderful popcorn.
2. My Grandmother made a marvelous Hasenpfeffer.
3. Salade de gésiers or Cassoulet

1. Anything involving a skillet turns out great. It's when I involve the oven that things go sideways.

2. Mom makes really good homemade pies and old fashioned turkey stuffing. I can't get crust or stuffing right. Ovens are evil. Dad can't operate the microwave and we've no proof that he knows how to open the fridge and make a sandwich, yet his BBQ chicken always turns out perfect.

3. Hm. I don't know if I order anything consistently. Maybe fresh seafood. But otherwise I like the above response: "anything pasta"

1 Barbecue pork ribs.

2 Banana muffins

3 Bratwurst in Thuringen

I'm a very simple eater

My best dish--short ribs

Husband's best dish--meatloaf

Mother's best dish--milk chicken

best restaurant dish--oysters or ceviche

Gwendolyn: Vietnamese where? The ones I've tried have all seemed kind of mediocre but I know there are some reportedly good ones that have opened in the past year..


Do love duck confit myself but do not make it. But this year have had great luck with magret on the grill outside.

1. I don't cook much
2. My Mom cooks nutritious wholesome balanced meals nothing fancy
3. When I'm out I prefer to order something complicated that I couldn't fix for myself (Thai, Mexican, Indian not broiled salmon, for example)

Lots of dishes I had never heard of - very glad of all ther answers !
I should make a list and test when I travel in these strange countries where they eat these strange things ;-)

French cdn ragout, it's made with onions, potatoes, porc hocks, porc meatballs and chicken. The flour for the sauce is browned in the oven.

Mom's Apple pie

Pasta

1. I make a better ossobuco than Whathello's wife does. (Just kidding, what! We'll have to have a contest.) I also make a damn good vincisgrassi, the marchigiano (better) version of lasagne. Not to mention my coniglio in potacchio.

2. My mother was Irish; she made great boiled potatoes, when she remembered to turn them off before the water boiled away. My husband is an Italian man. He can fry an egg, if absolutely necessary. He can also boil pasta, which he dresses with butter and parmigiano reggiano. It's amazing how many pots he can dirty doing this.

3. In a <b>good</b> restaurant, I often order a crème brûlée, just to see if it's better than mine. Occasionally it is, so I keep trying to improve.

bvlenci, I think you need to share your ossobucu recipe.

ekscrunchy....probably nothing special , but it's the local neighborhood place.
Vietnaam on 2nd and 88th. My cooking days are basically over and I find Vietnamese more palatable than most other neighborhood offerings. They have a duck confit salad that isn't all that bad. I used to buy duck confit at Eli's Vinegar Factory... good, but, of course, being Eli astronomically priced. I've been tempted to order D'Artagnan's..... maybe if I win the lottery.

Whathello I'm curious about what you haven't heard of before, many of the dishes mentioned are European in origin...maybe pies??

Sundrie... here is my list to test ...
Maybe there are some things lost in translation...
For example Hasepfeffer is easy to translate but I've never had one I think.
But here it is, I have to google it all !

stuffed milkfish
sensational latkes.
Chicken Piccata
tomkatsu.
tom kha gai
Seafood Gumbo
jambalaya
grandmother's pelmeni
Hasenpfeffer.
vincisgrassi,

And my wife had cooked an ossobucco whilst I was in Paris... Hmmm I opened a Montecucco. 2008. $hitty year. .

You never heard of seafood gumbo or chicken piccata?

Jambalaya is a specialty of New Orleans, which derives from the Spanish paella, brought to Louisiana when the Spanish were the colonizers. (later came the French.) It usually has both chicken and shrimp, and rice is added near the end of the cooking.

It's funny, just the other day I was thinking of making jambalaya. I promised a priest in our town that I would prepare him a traditional "American" meal that was both authentic and delicious. He was under the impression that it was all hamburgers.

Gumbo is similar, but the word "gumbo" means there's okra in it. It's an African name for okra, in fact. I suppose seafood gumbo wouldn't have chicken in it. Usually gumbo, like jambalaya, has both chicken and shrimp (or crayfish).

Latkes are Jewish potato pancakes. My daughter once came home from elementary school and told me she had promised her teacher I would make latkes for the class. I had no idea how to make latkes and asked my daughter why she had volunteered me. She said, "The teacher said Passover is coming soon, and asked for someone whose mother was Jewish." I replied, "But I'm not Jewish!" "What are you, then?" "Irish!". "Isn't that the same as Jewish?" So I called the teacher and said that St. Patrick's day was also coming soon, and I would be happy to make Irish soda bread, but she'd have to find someone else for the latkes.

Vincisgrassi is like lasagne. The pasta is rolled very fine. I learned it from our housekeeper, who told me you had to be able to read a newspaper through the pasta after it was rolled out (before cooking). The pasta is layered with a marchigiano-style ragù and a beschiamella (béchamel) sauce, with each layer sprinkled with grated cheese. The marchigiano ragù is made with a stewing hen, meaty beef bones, tomatoes, and tomato sauce, cooked for a long time with an onion, a carrot and a stalk of celery. When done, the meat is removed from the bones and cut into small pieces, but not ground.

I loved your story about Irish/Jewish !

Yhanks for the explanations. less to google ;-)

I don't really have a recipe for ossobuco. I may have had one long ago. The key is in good quality marrow bones, and in slow cooking. You lightly flour the marrow bones, and slowly cook them in a little olive oil, with some onion. When they're browned, you add white wine and let it cook off. Then you add a good meat broth, cover it, and cook it slowly, adding more broth as necessary. (You should always make your own meat broth; it's a great thing to have in the freezer.) You garnish the dish with grated lemon peel and chopped parsley. In Milan, it's usually served with Milanese risotto. My husband went to university in Milan, and acquired a taste for ossobuco. But I used to make it when I lived in the US, too, before I met my husband. (That's not why he married me!)

lol Irish...Jewish they both end in ish. Vincisgrassi sounds delish!

<grandmother's pelmeni>

Pelmeni are Russian dumplings, made with a thin dough (thinner than ravioli) and filled with a little meatball. They're small, smaller than a ravioli, and sort of round and irregular in shape. They're usually served in chicken broth, with a dollop of sour cream and some black pepper. Because my grandmother lived in China for many years, she liked hers with soy sauce and hot mustard; all the Russians we knew who had lived in China did, too.

Making them was an assembly line affair that took up the whole kitchen--I guess all dumpling making is like that, and just about every culture has a dumpling, doesn't it? So she didn't do it often, and made enough to freeze bags and bags of pelmeni.

I no longer eat meat or chicken, but if my grandmother were to rise from the dead and make me some pelmeni, I would make an exception.