What to Cook When You Want to Impress Your Date But Don’t Really Know How to Cook

BEGINNER You haven’t really cooked much before but you have access to a kitchen and some basic tools and you’re very willing to try new things in an effort to impress your person.

To Start

I think starting with nibble-ly things is the best way to go – you don’t have to worry about timing or whether or not your food is hot, which is a big bonus in my eyes.This little bite is perfect if you don’t have a lot of cooking skills, but want to impress. All you need to do for this Japanese-inspired avocado toast is know how to cut an avocado without hurting yourself. From there, it’s just a question of assembling all of the ingredients that you’ve bought from the Asian grocery store (drive to the Asian grocery store, it’s worth it!) Thin and crispy toast is topped with roasted seaweed, baby arugula (or baby greens of choice), thinly sliced avocado, toasted sesame seeds and ikura. They sell ikura (salmon roe/caviar) at most Asian grocery stores or you can hop on over to your favorite sushi joint to see if they’ll sell you a tiny amount. You don’t need a lot of it, but it adds an awesome pop of flavor.

Main

There’s nothing quite like a bowl of fluffy rice and some tender, super flavorful slow braised Japanese chashu pork. The pork is easy: everything is essentially put into a pot, brought to a gentle simmer, then finished off in the oven for about 6 hours. It’s hands off which gives you lots of time to figure out how to make rice. Oh, and bonus, you can make it the night before (it’s always good to test drive recipes when you’re a beginner cook) and then just reheat gently on the stove in the sauce when it’s time to eat.

How to make rice: take 1 cup of rice (I prefer short grain, Japanese rice), and place it in a pot (2-3 quarts, must have a lid, heavy-bottomed preferred) with 1.25 cups of water. Bring the pot of rice and water to a boil over high heat. When it’s boiling, pop the lid on, then turn the heat to low. Cook, without peeking, for 17 minutes. When the time is up, remove the pot from the heat source, and let it sit, with the lid on, for another 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes are up, it’s time to fluff! You just made the perfect pot of rice 🙂

Pop the rice into a bowl, top with some of the pork and braising liquid and you’ve got yourself a cozy bowl of comfort. For bonus points, throw a soft boiled egg and some sliced green onions on it.

By the way, cooking is supposed to be fun. So even if you mess up, it’s no big deal. And if your date makes a big deal out of it, it’s not worth it anyway – you want your person to be chill and fun, just like this chashu rice bowl.

Dessert

No one can say no to a warm chocolate chip cookie, especially when it’s topped with ice cream. Make these guys the night before and cover them with plastic wrap. When it’s time for dessert, heat up the oven, bake them off and prepare yourself for all the “mmmmmmmms.” Pro tip: if you don’t have mini skillets (and why would you if you don’t cook much), make this recipe in a regular skillet and pull out two spoons to share because sharing is caring. Also pro tip, if you want to make regular chocolate chip cookies, that would go over well too. Nothing says love like a warm chocolate chip cookie. This recipe is my favorite, just make the dough the night before, scoop out the cookies, cover them, put them in the fridge, and bake off as needed.

 

Credit – http://iamafoodblog.com

More Info – https://food52.com/tags/what-to-cook