The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Have you tried toast?

Ooh, not yet. Toast as in, just toast, or toast as in, french toast?

Haha. Real suggestions:
1. get access to a crock pot
2. season liberally

Also, pasta sauce is easy. Find a good recipe using tomato sauce, paste, crushed tomatoes, etc... Then premade noodles. But sauce from scratch is easy and tasty... You can even do it in that crock pot I mentioned...

In general, I'm a huge fan of Plated when it comes to learning new recipes and techniques. It requires basic skills in the kitchen so isn't for complete beginners... http://www.plated.com

Damn, that is a WICKED-cool website. Thanks so much Double, I'll be checking this place out for the next week or two.

Stir fry is easy to learn and tasty. You'll get to play around with spices and stuff, which is good experience to have. You can also just think in terms of meat-veggies-starches and see how you can play around with that. Look up recipes for certain cuts of meat and stuff.

Yeah. They give you step by step instructions, with pictures, and the full recipe. They include all the ingredients you need (sometimes you have to provide your own oil or butter or something, gasp). That said, don't rely on it for all your stuff because they are expensive (moreso than just buying the ingredients yourself). BUT, for learning new techniques and dishes it's great. You get the menu card to go shopping again to make the same dish if you want in the future too. If anyone wants to order from there, let me know. My wife may have a referral code somewhere that will give us both discounts on the next order.

So last Sunday (two days ago) I learned how to properly take apart a chicken and remove its bones with a boning knife, and how to make curry. Curry takes for freaking ever if you make your own stock from scratch. Like four hours. The actual curry itself, with the chicken, onions, carrots and potatoes doesn't take all that long to cook. But yeah, at first when I grabbed the chicken - remember, I'm a dude who's never cooked before in his life - I'm just touching it like, "Maaaan... It's all sticky and slimy and stuff, this is so weird." So there was some hesitation there. Towards the end though, I was snapping joints, stripping skin/fat and chopping stuff up like a ninja, so that's awesome.

I also learned how to make rice in a pot properly. Gotta wash it first, a few times to get rid of the excess starch, pouring out water from the pot every time until it's not perfectly clear, but the water's not so murky that you can't see through it. Then it just comes down to high heat, not taking the lid off NO MATTER WHAT UNTIL IT'S DONE, and once the water boils/steam starts coming out, bring the heat down to like 3 or 4 and let it sit for 8 to 10 minutes. My friend explained it to me nicely by saying, "You're not boiling it, you actually want to be steaming it." So that makes sense.

Next week I'll try to learn stir-fry, as per Phi's suggestion. I often hear that it's easy. If it is, I'll also see if I can make some kind of sweet/dessert tofu, since that same friend who told me about the rice says that's pretty easy too.

PROGRESS!
- Pancakes
- Plain Rice
- Chicken Curry
- Eggs (Boiled, Fried/Scrambled)

wait, you should wash rice beforehand?
i just tend to take a bunch of rice in a pot, fill it with roughly twice as much water and then turn on the heat until they're soft.

It's a subject of much debate. This excerpt from "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook" provides some good guidelines:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/21/AR200810...

When they say "domestic" they mean US and Canada. Imported means from India and east Asia. I'm not sure what types of rice are available in Europe.

I always rinse plain rice, but not glutinous rice (which I use for desserts sometimes).

What I learned was from a guy who is a chef in a restaurant, teaching me hands-on as I stood right beside him, so I think I'll trust him. ALSO, I just did it! By myself, with no supervision, like a few minutes ago. I cooked rice. And it actually came out perfectly! I am... Un.. STOPPABLE!

here's something that's quick and easy to make and is real good. i believe it's not really well known/popular outside of Sweden.
Sausage Stroganoff.

take a big sausage. (this is usually done with Falukorv Sausage, but you might not have an equivalent available) and cut it up in to small shreds.
and cut up a bit of onion, maybe some garlic if you wish, and put all of that in a frying pan until the sausage gets just a little bit of colour.

now put in a lot of Crushed Tomatoes. you may have to move it all to a cooking pot if you're doing a lot.
now stir in some...i don't know the english word, but we call it (roughly translated) "cooking cream" milk might work too but it might be a bit more runny.

and let that boil. season to your hearts content. great with rice.
http://static-cdn.kokaihop.se/recipe/large/9133570-9133599.jpg

it takes just as much time to make a lot as it does to make a little, so whenever i do it, i make enough so it can last for a few days, which is alright by me cause i love that shit.

I bet you like stroganoff your sausage.

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Now that the easy joke is out of the way, I loved stroganoff growing up... but it didn't look like that. it was always served over wide egg noodles and had mushrooms in it (not tomatoes).

yours looks a lot less like vomit than this one though... http://chaosinthekitchen.com/images/beefstroganoff.jpg

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Try making smashed potatoes: cut some baby red potatoes in half (leave the skin on), boil until you can easy put a fork in it, drain, add equal parts olive oil and butter (not a ton though), add salt and pepper (maybe some scallions thinly sliced if you want), then just smash it all up in a bowl together until the pieces are small. you're looking for a chunky mashed potato consistency, not a silky smooth one. if you want smoother mashed potatoes (not smashed), the sub in some butter/cream/sour cream instead of oil and mash a bit more or use an electric hand mixer.

Stabguy's in Hawaii, all his recipes will involve Spam and pineapple.... like this Spam/pineapple cheesecake (that I really wish I didn't know was a thing): http://www.spam.com/recipes/SPAM-Cheesecake

That's another thing about rice. Hawaiians prefer two scoops of "sticky rice" with their plate lunch (the official state meal. See also: fruit punch). The rice really does stick together. I don't know what the trick is to make it sticky but I don't think it has anything to do with whether the rice is rinsed or not.

The local news interviewed some students who had just returned from their first trip to the mainland. When asked what was different, one boy said, "I went to eat Chinese food and all the rice fell off my fork!"

That is curious - I'm wondering how to make rice sticky as well.
EDIT: Found this; http://www.tablespoon.com/posts/how-to-make-sticky-rice-at-home/8109b0e4...

Heavy cream is the word you're looking for.

sticky rice is a different kind of rice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice

unless hawaiians somehow make all their rice sticky...

Using a fork for chinese food? for shame!

Have I been holding them wrong all this time??

I LAUGHED SO HARD.