I’ll make something that goes well with homemade bread. And make a rustic loaf or some dinner rolls to go with it. Homemade bread adds a lot to a soup or pasta dish.

Most anything, home made, not from a box or frozen, just do a good job. People are not used to well prepared home cooked food.

However, these always work well:

Sous vide salmon, pan seared, with asparagus and hollandaise. If you can’t sous vide, a good pan sear is still amazing.

Beef Bourguignon.

Shrimp Étouffée, rice, and corn bread.

Pan seared, oven finished steak or loin of some sort. Pork loin works well. Home made skin-on mashed potato and pan roasted bacon parmesan brussels sprouts.

All of these are relatively easy to make, and if done well, go over fantastic.

Want to really wow them? Bake a cheesecake for dessert, especially with a fruit topping.

Itzakaya Yakitory/ton/kushiyaki smoked and grilled on a woodfire. Little skewers of chicken, beef or pork, with bits of onion in between. (Green, red onions) in a marinade of soy, mirin, brown sugar and sake. Then mix it up with chilli, mustard or oyster sauce for variety. Served with grilled vegetables and a selection of fine beers.

Real crowd pleaser. Easier than it sounds and forgiving.

This is the best flan our friends in Mexico had ever tasted. They had thirds.

I’d probably do a red thai curry. So tasty but also pretty easy. Thai curry paste needs to be used up within a week of opening it, so when I do open one, I get a lot of practice. Even the ones that turned out not so great were still delicious (one time I used a bag of frozen seafood that had a strong fishy flavour, another time I burnt it a bit before adding the coconut milk and deglazed the burnt stuff instead of switching to a new pan, both of those ended up being “delicious curry plus kinda offputting extra thing”).

If you do try making a thai curry, IMO the critical ingredients are the curry paste, coconut milk, and carrots. First two more essential than the last, but it’s just not the same without carrots.

Also, learn how to balance the flavour groups. Even just making sure they are all present to some degree will enhance your cooking results, for curries and everything else. It’s the thing that has transformed a lot of “it’s alright I guess” dishes into “this is really good”.

Downside of learning how to balance flavours is that you’ll notice it when restaurants fail to do so. But plus side is you can just do it yourself with salt, sugar, vinegar/lemon juice, and soy sauce, which many restaurants will bring you if you ask. Just taste it before adding anything or you’re not balancing but just adding seasonings to something that may or may not need it.

Pizza. fr its better than the average you get delivered.

For meat eaters, probably sous vide steak with a mayo sear on cast iron, with mashed potatoes (using a ricer to make it 100% smooth) with butter and cream that’s had a bunch of herbs simmering in it (inside a tea steeper so it can all be removed), I also sometimes add flour to the dairy to make a roux or bechamel to kind of follow the Julia Child’s recipe.

Or perhaps spaghetti carbonara with diced pancetta (it might be the oil from the pancetta or the egg/dairy but this can upset stomachs, but the sauce ends up being very creamy and delicious)

For seafood lovers, I love to make creamy New England style clam chowder in my instant pot, which I add fish sauce, soy sauce, old bay, and paprika to, as well as bacon bits if they can have pork. I usually make it thick by mashing the potato bits until it’s about right, and leave the rest of the potatoes as bite sized pieces. This recipe is a mashup of a bunch of clam chowder recipes, trying to find the best unique parts of each one I could find and adding it if it makes mine taste better.

Albany style steamed hams usually do well

i buy milk, flour and vitamins and boil them down to little energy balls

Usually food.

I can cook for myself alright, but I don’t impress people with my culinary skills. I’m not a fan of cooking.

When I need to save face because there are guests, (rarely happens but it does) I do pan fried salmon and steamed vegetables. It’s very difficult to get it wrong. It’s easy to season. Looks presentable. I learned to cook the salmon from a short Gordon Ramsay video that you can find on YouTube. Practically foolproof

Toasted pasta Mac and cheese. • Put butter or olive oil in a PAN and let it get hot. •add some garlic and onion in to get roasty • put dry pasta in and toast it for a bit. • cover it with beef or vegetable broth (JUST ENOUGH TO COVER THE NOODLES) • turn heat down and cover noodles with lid. wait for about 10-15 mins. • at about 8 mins in add cheese and fold in.
• when timer ends mix it up to completely cover noodles in cheese. • top with crunchy red pepper flakes in oil (the stuff in the little red jar at Chinese restaurants) and serve.

10/10 every time.

Spanikopita