Your cooking style/dishes vs. your S.O.'s style

I used to pride myself as a reasonably good cook. I see it as a relaxing way of inventing dishes from the ones I know as a base.

However dearie really can invent things. He invented a wonderful crepe dessert with his own invention of pear-blueberry filling by using up ripe pears, a touch of maple syrup, sour cream, even a bit of ricotta cheese and sprinkled with sliced almonds. Crepes were leftover ones he made a few wks. ago.

He wished we had some cooking wine at home to finish off the dish.

I'm beginning to be intimidated by his creative cooking..:D

But in short, he's better at inventing all sorts of salads, sauces (savoury and dessert sauces), fruit compotes and pureed veggie soups.

Whereas, I'm just stir-frying, sautéing veggies and steaming some dishes. I'm getting boring..:p

My DH is half Chinese and learnt cooking from his Chinese Grandma. I cook European.

Of course there's some things he would like to cook that I don't like and vis versa. So no mac and cheese or stuffed baked potaoes when we are eating togther. And no tripe, minced meat or red bean puddings either!

I cook, he does the dishes.

DBF plans things out. He does things that require a certain set of ingredients, and it's largely things like shepherd's pie, burrito filling, and burgers--things where he doesn't have to do too much work to see if it's done. The man can't tell if chicken's done at all!

I'm usually a "I have X, Y, and Z in the fridge. What do I make?" sort of cook. I do use recipes if it's something I've never tried before, or if it's so good that I don't see a point in tweaking it. Oftentimes, I just make things up. I'm not so good at doing it with desserts yet, but I don't make those very often.

The only things DBF really objects to me making are Thai-style curries (he hates coconut milk, but he'll eat Goan curries, which also use coconut milk), and pumpkin soup. Oh, and coconut-crusted chicken, but I haven't inflicted that on him--there usually isn't enough left!

I love to cook. I cook what my partner likes. She likes simple things. EASY!!

But I do miss making more elaborate dishes, things with mirepoix, simple sauce even like bearnaise, bechamel, hollandaise.

Add bit of zing to bechamel with cayanne, make the sauce thin and use sparingly over steamed broccoli yum. but no.

She does like my grilled fish with mango sauce, diced mango with small amount of minced red onion, and lime juice.

And oh she does like my fish stew with tomato base. closest would be Manhattan style chowder.

I'm far more adventurous about food and different cuisine.

Your style of cooking preference smilingcat is delicious/luxurious. :) He has become especially inventive with bechamel and wine sauce combinations. For instance, he managed to make a delicious light sour cream sauce that had a touch of maple syrup, lemon zest, lemon juice, some fresh herbs over......potato-cheese perogies that we bought frozen from the market. Amazingly lovely dinner dish. He has figured out when to combine fruit juice or even wine without curdling a sauce. I can't do that yet.

It's really effortless for him to invent a dessert wine sauce over fresh stewed fruit, crepes, etc. I need a recipe and effort to memorize, learn the technique before branching off with inventions.

And kiwistoker,

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Of course there's some things he would like to cook that I don't like and vis versa. So no mac and cheese or stuffed baked potaoes when we are eating togther. And no tripe, minced meat or red bean puddings either!

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I ask that he not use much butter. He normally doesn't buy butter for the fridge but some of his dish inventions for special occasions do include butter at times. Otherwise we don't limit certain dishes to one another. It does make it easier that we both don't care for: deep fried foods, tuna casserole-like dishes (it's just not our preference), stuffed potatoes, ground hamburger meat, chips, pop/soft drinks, etc.

He likes to make dressings with a more "bite" or sourness meaning more vinegar taste, whereas I ask that he cut back the amount of vinegar/sour taste. I like /can have/make more strongly spicy-hot-chili tasting dishes.

Since we've known each other, we have influenced each other's style of cooking ....or at least using certain ingredients more often than before: ie. He will naturally toss in more grated ginger root in savoury and sweet dishes.

DH and I have the same taste in food; it didn't used to be this way. DH ate more junk food. We never cook fried foods and if we were doing things like hollandaise, crepes, and bechamel, we'd be huge! Those are very special occasion foods for us.
The biggest difference between DH and I is that he has to follow a recipe exactly! He's improved a very teeny bit on this, but it really stresses him out if we are missing an ingredient because he doesn't think in terms of how he could substitute. We sit down before grocery shopping and pick 3-5 main dishes/sides from our collection of cookbooks and recipes I've taken from Cooking Light. Planning what we are going to eat helps us maintain our weight. We also have a good deal of "staple" things in the house and probably could have a week's worth of dinners that would be fine, but simple.
When I went back to school, DH started cooking 1-2 nights a week, because then and now, I get home much later than I did when I was teaching, like between 5:30 and 7:30. I leave the recipe for him and he's on his own. Mostly, I've been the cook, and now it's a little more even. But, there are things that he's always done, like Thanksgiving turkey. I don't even know how to do that.

Brewer cooks; I eat.

I make a few things, pizza dough and mayonnaise being my chief responsibilities. He takes requests too, and tries to accommodate my ever decreasing tolerance for capsaicin.

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Originally Posted by Irulan

I cook, he does the dishes.

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ha ha, same with us. He'll cook if he HAS to (which has only been twice so far), but otherwise I do the cooking. At least he'll eat anything I put in front of him, and he'll do the dishes.

I don't enjoy cooking much, but I hate it less than he does.

My spouse always cooked. He is vegetarian and Hindu and there is a religious component to how he eats. He is a superb cook. He is the master of the soup.

I like meat but I don't eat it at home. We spend three to six months apart each year. When I now cook I keep it pretty simple. Fish, especially salmon. Shrimp. Precooked chicken. Eggs. Milk. Lots of fruit. A fair amount of vegetables, mostly raw. Too much cheese.

DH cooks, I do dishes. Cooking is his creative outlet, and he's much better at it than I am.

I have a few things I do pretty well that he does not. He doesn't bake, for one. And when he does steak I'm in charge of the creamed spinach. When I cook it's usually an all-day thing that's meant to have leftovers and frozen portions for later. He usually does the day-to-day cooking and has a lot more down in terms of different techniques for getting the best out of different cuts of meat.

Neither of us much like cooking, but I'm getting more into it since changing our diets at the end of the summer. We cook almost everything from scratch now, and I'm really learning to branch out with spices and things that I'd never bothered with before. My H pretty much only cooks if I leave him the ingredients and the recipe and even then, he tends to skip steps or leave out ingredients.

I typically opt to cook most of the time because I am more efficient and make less of a mess. Since I clean up no matter who cooks, sometimes it's just easier if I do it all. ;)

I'm the one that does the cooking, DH will do a bunch of grilling during the warmer months. However, if it's not seafood or Italian I'm pretty lost at trying to cook. I never bothered to learn until after I got married. Didn't need to at home (my mom is a really good cook). When I first moved out it was just me and I can easily live on pasta which is the only thing I learned how to cook before I got married. Even though Italian is about all I can cook I am not Italian in anyway. Go figure, I just love Italian food. (Also grew up in a fairly Italian area in Ohio, and when I moved discovered how lucky I was to have so many really good Italian restaurants. There aren't any good ones here, other than Olive Garden which is alright, but not what I'm used to).

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Originally Posted by Koronin

I'm the one that does the cooking, DH will do a bunch of grilling during the warmer months. However, if it's not seafood or Italian I'm pretty lost at trying to cook. I never bothered to learn until after I got married. Didn't need to at home (my mom is a really good cook). When I first moved out it was just me and I can easily live on pasta which is the only thing I learned how to cook before I got married. Even though Italian is about all I can cook I am not Italian in anyway. Go figure, I just love Italian food. (Also grew up in a fairly Italian area in Ohio, and when I moved discovered how lucky I was to have so many really good Italian restaurants. There aren't any good ones here, other than Olive Garden which is alright, but not what I'm used to).

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What area are you from, if you don't mind me asking? I went to college within spitting distance of Little Italy (in Cleveland), and I very much miss the cheapish and tasty Italian food. And the gelato...especially the gelato...

Before I met DH I didn't cook much and I generally found it intimidating. I started cooking more when we both decided that we didn't enjoy eating out all the time. Now I love to cook! DH cooks some, but most of it falls to me. He takes care of a lot of other things around the house, and I take a fair amount of pride in providing us home cooked food. I try to make two big dishes a week, one vegetarian and the other a meat dish. We then get several dinners and often some lunches from that. He generally likes just about everything I make, but we usually agree on what dishes make it into the regular rotation. I read a lot if recipes and make an effort to keep things generally pretty healthy minus a handful of dishes. We eat a lot of soup in the winter and we grill out a lot in the summer (he does the grilling). He also makes a mean chili!

Tonight we had a frittata with spinach, potato, onion, and lean ham, served with a spring green salad dressed in homemade vinaigrette. It was yummy. I also made black bean soup so that we have something fir lunch this week.

It's always good to know how to cook some stuff decently for meals. After all our S.O., will not always be around on earth or vice versa.

To me...it's a life skill, in some cases, a survival skill.

He's making herbed spaetzle here (a German side dish). His is kind of lumpy since we just haven't invested in a spaetzle-making instrument. All the stuff on the counter is actually very well-organized with chopped up ingredients for various dishes, etc. That's his style. I'm more messy.

He taught his ex-wife how to cook better (her mom died when she was a teen) who is originally from England (Traditional Brit cooking is not known to be gourmet, if we subtract Britain's former colonies, India, even Hong Kong, etc.).

His mother was a terrific cook and gourmet baker..she did have a personal gentle style that made any teen/kid interested in seeing how she prepared some of their favourite dishes. So that's how he learned.

His son is a sous chef at a restaurant in downtown Toronto and was recently reviewed by local press. It's a Jamie Olivier type of restaurant...you know take in hard-to-employ youth and give them skills. The restaurant is part of the City of Toronto's services, a non-profit effort. So this culinary skill stuff is being passed down naturally to whoever, is interested through his family. He and his son, naturally and occasionally talk about certain dishes and preparation techniques. ie. he learned from his son how to prepare bison in a great way.

The funniest thing one time, was when his son prepared an 8-course meal for him. (No way, he was going to turn that down. He only sees his son once annually...living thousands of km. away.) Dearie then biked 16 km. to join my family's barbecue ..where he politely ate abit more.

He was very stuffed. :p

At university, I cooked my own meals from scratch. To me, it was therapeutic fun -- from studying. It never took me ages to prepare dinner anyway.

Also curbed homesickness at that time, since I often prepared dishes that my mother taught me. And yea, it was healthy cooking, only because I didn't know anything different than what I learned from mother and I didn't make much effort to find recipes during studies.

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Originally Posted by Owlie

What area are you from, if you don't mind me asking? I went to college within spitting distance of Little Italy (in Cleveland), and I very much miss the cheapish and tasty Italian food. And the gelato...especially the gelato...

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I'm originally from Warren, Ohio. It's probably an hour and a half or so south to south east of Cleveland. Basically it's right between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, PA. My family still lives there.

Taking out stress from cooking.

First and foremost. One of the first classes in cooking school, besides learning about knife safety, is "Mise en Place".

Have all your ingredients ready to go. Measured out, chopped, minced, sliced, marinating. all the ingredients are placed in its own plate or bowl. You only turn on the stove when all the ingredients are prepped. This will make your cooking a lot less stressful.

Another important thing. A honest to goodness recipe should list out the order of ingredients in order of use. It should not be by volume or by weight. Look carefully at even Betty Crocker cookbook. It will list the ingredients in order of use.

So when you get your ingredient prepped, order them according to the recipe.

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