Curious 4 (Who here enjoys the art of cooking?)

@RetroExcellent That's really nice. Very proud of ya for overcoming that. You sir, have my respect. I apologize if I came off as anything other than that. You might like game making school though too! I did, a lot. Though--I never went directly into the field personally... worked freelance for a while.

At least now, I can finally make a game, and talk about food with all of y'all!

Edit: Oh yeah--I suppose Texans and the Dutch are very similar... in fact--I suppose everyone on this green Earth can appreciate a good bbq.

That reminds me--I should scrape my pit and fire it up for Thanksgiving. My girl doesn't like turkey so I suppose I'll find something else.

Well, we don't have your summers or the weather on our side in general so... haha but when possible, yeah BBQ rules haha
Turkey is my traditional christmas dish with a load of garlic that'll make you cry haha Yummy!

Oh--I can withstand a heavy amount of garlic. I love the stuff. My girl does too... I still haven't had the chance to ask her yet what Dutch dish she knows, I enjoy life and rather not lose it just yet.

Yeah, garlic is great haha (unless you're a vampire I guess lol)
Haha yeah... angry German girlfriend... bad idea lol That too would be a blitzkrieg :p;):guffaw:

She's trying to remember now--but she said that when you go to a (for instance) hamburger restaurant in the Netherlands, you get a burger, fries and vegetables!?

I want that out here!

Yeah you can get vegetables with your hamburger and fries (depends a bit on the restaurant and the exact dish you order but yeah)

What kinda vegetables? I like to make myself some crispy baked asparagus with garlic as a substitute for fries with my burgers sometimes.

That sounds nice--lately (well--for a while now) I substitute fries for a baked potato. Straight hot sauce, nothing else... not sure if that's just me or a Texan thing.

Heard ranch and pizza was a Texan thing, but I have no idea if it is or not.

@Philosophus Vagus well it's not as a substitute for your fries but dependend on the restaurant you can order pretty much any vegetable with it.
Vegetables with a beer-based-crust (really don't know how to call it in english lol) are popular though as are sweetend carrots (for some reason) but basicly anything is possible here in the right restaurant

Alabamians definitely do both hot sauce on baked potatoes (well, everything really) and ranch on pizza. Might be a southern thing but definitely not just a Texan thing.

dumping everything imaginable on your pizza has certainly crossed over to this side of the ocean...
spinach on pizza, sausage in the pizza crust, mashed potatoes on pizza, the list goes on and on

Sausage in the crust? I've never seen that one before but it has made my list of things to try out. Not sure how I feel about mashed potatoes on a pizza though, just sounds needlessly messy.

Yeah, we're at a point in time where the things getting dumped on a pizza are becomming a bit silly, imo. Don't really like it to much either haha

Latest thing is having a pizza with no crust instead having a bottom of fried chicken

Not sure if that's good... or deadly. Either way--wanna try that at least once.

I used to hate cooking, but I enjoy eating tasty stuff so I started really learning this year. I took up grilling during summer, and fell in love with it. I wouldn't say I'm great at it, but I liked what I made and didn't give myself food poisoning so I consider it a success.

Desserts are a favorite of mine, so I also took up baking (since I'm gluten intolerant I'm doing baking on hard mode :guffaw:). I've learned to make quite a few things, though right now I've been working with cakes and cookies that use almond flour (macarons aren't nearly as difficult as I first thought).

Hmmm--I remember--I used to have a great recipe for (okay--it might sound weird...) black bean brownies.

Uses black beans as the base rather than flour; I have to say--it was actually really amazing and caught me completely off guard. I'll have to search for it. Only made it once as a recommendation--but really flavorful.

I have to grill something soon now, I miss the smell of burning mesquite or applewood and the sizzle of a nice cut of ribeye or salmon. Grilled fish is totally one of my absolute favorites--though, I think I should try some better wood. Not fond of gas grilling--always afraid it might explode. I know it's a very low chance--but still makes me think twice.

@hiddenone not getting food poisoning is certainly a plus :D

I like cooking too, I think I'm a decent cook. I actually won an amicale dessert contest at work last week with my Kouign Amann. It's a traditional breton butter cake. It looks fancy but really it's a poor guy's recipe and not very complicated. But really though dessert's are not usually my thing, I'm not much of a desserts guy. I doN't know that I have one favorite recipe though. Maybe breton galette? It a kind of very thin, folded buckwheat pancake with (traditionally) eggs, ham and cheese in it. But really I like to improvise a lot.

My main flaw as a cook is that I just always make way too much, haha. The proportions are right but I always see how there's so little of that thing, and then end up scaling everything up, and am unable to see the end result in terms of quantity.

I love cooking, especially pastry and desserts.. Plus I cook everyday for my food coz I live alone, mostly

@LaFlibuste zomg--I have not had kouign amann in a very long long time. So good. There's a place out here one of my ex's loved, was a French restaurant she found for us; very "hole in the wall" kinda place. She could speak French so well, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't one of the reasons I loved her so badly hee hee.

I really enjoy French cooking, I think it is my favorite style of all time, but very easy to ruin (at least to me.)

To all my pals that enjoy pastry and dessert cooking; do any of you have or know a good recipe for pineapple upside down cake? It's probably one of my favorite cakes. I have never even attempted to make one.