I was so happy with my mushroom pasta recently that I was curious to read about dishes my fellow HOs have perfected over the years.
Dishes (mains, sides, what have you) that are so delicious you make them often & they always come out how you like them – whether for yourselves or for company.
If you have a specific recipe you use, feel free to share it as well.
As pour moi, the aforementioned mushroom pasta is always a success (any kind of shrooms or pasta), as is “my” potatoes au gratin, the recipe for which my mom got eons ago from a colleague.
TBH, most pasta is in my wheelhouse - perhaps I was an Italian peasant in a former life 
, and most salads are as well (dietician in a former life? 
)
Smoked pork shoulder with a rub I discovered online, with my only addition being toasted fennel seeds.
My riff on Tuscan soup has also become a recent favorite in our household.
While none of these are particularly fancy or involved, they always make me and my dining companions happy.
Honorable mention: my PIC’s yuvetsi, for it is a masterpiece 
Your format is great! The recipes look good too.
It’s gotta be my Mom’s Lemon Pot Roast, a recipe she pulled from a 1968 Panhellenic Cookbook, compiled from recipe donations from members of all sororities in existence back then. She gave me her tattered copy of that soft cover, spiral-bound cookbook, and then a Kappa friend of hers sent me another one in better condition. But I kept Mom’s because it has notes in her handwriting for some of the recipes she made from it.
I originally posted it back on CH back in 2005, and several Hounds/FB friends made it and really liked it.
Dammit - now I want pot roast. 
Luckily, I have 2 slices in gravy frozen in my upstairs freezer from the last time I made it, so if the hankering is still there once my current leftovers are et, it might be a dinner some time this week!
My other one is a properly roasted whole chicken - what used to be called “Sunday Dinner”. I don’t really follow any particular recipe. Sometimes I let it air-dry for up to 48 hours; sometimes not that long (8 hours at a minimum). I do make sure there’s enough s/p sprinkled on the skin before the air-dry.
Sometimes there’s a lemon tucked into the cavity.
Sometimes there’s an herb-butter tucked until the skin of the breast.
I don’t turn it upside down, then right-side up. I start at a high heat - at least 425°, then turn it down to 350° to finish. All I’m aiming for is crackly skin, and a moist birdy.
Homemade gravy from drippings (if there are any) using a very simple method Mom taught me years and years ago (and my sister insists that I make gravy if she ever roasts chicken at her house). The flour slurry includes s/p, dried thyme, paprika, garlic powder, and flour, with cool water added. Slowly added to homemade chicken stock in the roasting pan, constantly whisking to blend. Once it’s the right gravy consistency, a blup of Gravy Master gets whisked in for a bit more color.
Side dishes? Gotta be sour creamy mashed potatoes - boiled taters, drained, dried in the hot pot, mashed with a hand masher only, then several tabs of buttah added. Mash, mash, mash. What? Needs more buttah? OK. Then some s/p, heavy cream, and after that’s all mashed in, a hefty dollop of sour cream.
Sometimes it gets chives sprinkled on top; but mostly they are nekkid potatoes when plated next to the chicken. Sometimes it gets chicken gravy; sometimes it’s MOAR BUTTAH! Because Butter Lakes are…well, they’re just right.
And alongside those lovely mashies? Peas. Sister hated them growing up and would feed them to the cat OR hide them under her plate OR bury them under a small mound of mashed potatoes and leave the taters on the plate; but they are a MUST. And they stay on the fork if scooped up with the mashed potatoes!
P.S. Sister STILL hates peas. Maybe because my brother dropped them into her glass of milk when we were young and she didn’t know until the milk was almost all gone. Let’s just say the shriek deafened us for for a bit.
This is a favorite recipe of mine … just buy really good chicken breasts from a butcher counter for best result.
I prefer Roland Capers, very small but very hard to find, expensive on Amazon. Recently I found a good price at Costco Business Center in SSF but they now come in a plastic jar instead of glass.
These are my favs… (still glass jars)
Oh, I probably should’ve included that in my OP as well. It’s a favorite at casa lingua, and I make it well 
I absolutely adore the combination of lemon & capers
I’ve posted this on Hungry Onion before, but here it is again:
Shrimp and Crawfish Etouffee
4 oz. neutral oil
4 oz. flour
2 large celery stalks, medium diced
1 large onion, medium diced
2 large green peppers, medium diced
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 t. kosher salt
2 t. black pepper
1.5 t. cayenne
1 T. sweet paprika
1 t. dried thyme
2 T. Mrs. Dash Onion and Herb seasoning (or 1. t each onion and garlic powders)
2 bay leaves
24 oz. beer (nothing too hoppy or malty. Beer flavored beer.)
1 c. shrimp, fish, or chicken stock
2 T. Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. raw shrimp, peeled
1 lb. crawfish tails, peeled (I get mine frozen and I think they may already be cooked)
1 lb. smoked sausage, sliced (Andouille if you have it. Kielbasa works too.)
Parsley and scallions, chopped (for garnish)
Cooked white rice (for serving)
Ok, with the caveat that I am a Northerner, the first thing I do is brown the sausage, remove from the pan, and make a roux with the oil and flour. I do this in a 350F oven, stirring every 30 minutes, a la Alton Brown. Usually 90 minutes gets me to a rusty roux bordering on milk chocolate, but sometimes I will go for 120 minutes. If you have a stovetop roux method you like, feel free to use it here. Aim for a milk chocolate roux.
When the roux is ready, move back to the stovetop and add the celery, onion, and green pepper. Cook over medium heat until the onion goes translucent and begins to soften. Then add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. The garlic will become fragrant. Avoid browning the garlic. Add all the salt (I did use the 2 t. last time I made this. Your tolerance for salt may vary.), pepper, and spices/herbs and cook for another minute or two to bloom a bit. Add the beer, stock, and 1 T. Worcestershire. Stir thoroughly and then bring to a boil (keep stirring) until the liquid thickens. Add the sausage and reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes. Add the shrimp and crawfish and simmer for another 5-10 minutes, until the shrimp are cooked through and the crawfish have reheated. Taste and adjust your seasonings. Add the other tablespoon of Worcestershire if you think it needs it.
Serve over white rice with parsley and scallions on top.
If you asked Sunshine, she’ll tell you my home made Chocolate Peanut Butter Rolls (candy) are my best “anything”. She said they call to her while she is watching TV in the evenings – similar to the “Siren’s Song”.
When I was cooking for my neighbor, she loved my home made spinach pasta. I can’t take credit for it, as I modified a “Food Wishes” (youtube) recipe and my Kitchen Aid pasta attachment did most of the work.
Any chance on getting the aforementioned mushroom pasta recipe?
Unfortunately, I don’t ‘do’ recipes, and there’s really no magic ingredient to it.
I sauté a finely diced shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic (crushed) in olive oil and sometimes another fat source like bacon fat or ghee. I add a generous amount of aleppo pepper or RPF bc I like a bit of a kick with this dish, but it is not essential by any means.
Throw in whichever shrooms you love (I like a mix of maitake, KOS, regular oyster shrooms when in the US, and absolutely go bonkers in Berlin during chanterelle & porcini season), salt generously, cover. I like the shrooms to release their liquor, which makes up most of the sauce. You can also leave uncovered, let them brown, then deglaze with whichever wine you have open (red will give the sauce a deeper, richer flavor than rosé or white, natch). You’ll get the caramelization, but not the shroom juice
Meanwhile boil whichever pasta you love - I prefer long strand like pappardelle, fettuccine or tagliatelle, but cavatappi work just as well, as do paccheri. It’s mostly about your personal pref/availability (I’m a pasta hoarder so I usually have choices 
).
I add some of the pasta water to the sauce, and eventually add a splash of heavy cream and fresh chopped parsley. I finish the pasta in the mushroom sauce & serve it straight from the pot.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s almost impossible to mess up (unless you under- or overcook the pasta).
I should add ‘my’ tuna salad, which I just made for my PIC’s lunches. I use the Genova brand yellowfin in olive oil, drain, and add to a mixing bowl. I then add a generous shake of celery salt (natch), a splash of RWV, Worcestershire, and lemon juice, mayo, smashed capers, and finely chopped celery.
I don’t cook much for us anymore, I’ve had a very lousy almost decade long slog through breast cancer treatments and don’t have the stamina to spend as much time in the kitchen as I once did. My DH has stepped in and has become a very good cook (with coaching from me). He tends to make things in big batches that feed the freezer after a couple of initial meals - meatloaf, chili, stews and soups. When I cook, I generally do a sheet pan supper or a simple roast chicken with a green veg and a starch. I did surprise both of us and made a giant batch of baked ziti last Friday. It was a Chef John recipe that I’ve made before.
That is one of my absolute favorite meals. Love etouffee.
Passed from mom would be Polish chop suey, pot roast, pork schnitzel, white chicken chili, tetrazzini, among some others I’m sure I’m forgetting.
I make a mean enchilada (any kind) spicy rice, meanass Mexican beans, chilaquiles, corn casserole, arepas, empanadas, papusas, sopas, Ecuadoran fritada, pork chile verde. Honest to God, though, the one thing everyone expects and loves when they come over is homemade salsa and chips. It’s to the point where I sigh at the thought; but , lust like in the mexican resto, they gobble down so many tortillas and chips, they barely have room for the rest.
Re: Salsa
It’s not that great ½ the year when tasty tomatoes aren’t available, right?
Do you use canned?
I find that the flavor bombs or sweet bombs cherry/small grape tomatoes that are available year round are quite flavorful. I buy them all the time for my salads, though they’d be a bit of a PITA to turn into salsa, for sure.
Yeah… they make great salsa year round. It is also a great use of them when they start to prune up a bit.
I do mine in the blender… I halve the tomatoes and they go in first along with peeled lime wedges and quartered jalapeno/serrano peppers. Then one inch chunks of onion and a handful of cilantro. I then pulse it a few times while pressing the onions/cilantro to the bottom with the tamper, then season to taste… comes out perfect every time. You can use a FP as well but I struggled getting the right/even texture.
