it's not the what, it's the how. It's some kind of complex sauce or stew, served over some kind of rustic carb that will soak up the sauce. I adjust the spices in the sauce/stew as I go along and get inspired, but I do stick to some basics/fundamentals, like garlic, oregano, olive oil, tomatoes, cumin and sometimes, cinnamon.

Lamb. Its not rare but its unusual around here (and cheaper than beef) so it feels posh and fancy to most people.
Serve it with some roasted diced potatoes and some sort of sauteed greens and it looks like you're spending big bucks and big effort on a meal.

Also having drink varieties is a huge plus.

For dinner, anything from Alison Roman. For dessert, anything from Claire Saffitz. It's a pretty basic take but their recipes are simple and incredibly tasty.

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

Lasagna. It takes a while to do the Bolognese so everyone gets impressed but the dish is so easy to actually make. Plus it's delicious

Spanikopita

I used to try some fancy dishes, nowadays I go for the simplest stuff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa_amb_tomàquet?wprov=sfla1

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

Cheese... Fondue, raclette, tartiflette....

Usually food.

I love cheese fondue, such a great low effort meal. Put the cheese in the pot, the bread in the oven ... wait a bit, done!

tomato aspic

This made me realize that I last cooked for someone, other than my immediate family, probably 10 years ago or more. 😅

Honestly, I’d go for make-your-own burrito bowls. It sounds boring, but with good quality ingredients, and several options, it makes for a good meal. Be sure to make it with rice (we use jasmine).

I think my best bet is just buying something expensive lol

Make sure there are marshmallows and 7-Up in it.

Albany style steamed hams usually do well

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.

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.

Not sure I completely agree haha, it's not a complicated recipe but it's kind of a skill and some elbow grease to execute it just right. I'm talking starting from real cheese not a premade industrial paste. There's a figure 8 movement to master along with proportions and timing to get it to the perfect consistency.

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

Oh, I love having those with the Aurora Borealis.

I just made it for the first time this week, plus dairy free. After giving my daughter maybes when she'd ask because I thought it would be harder.

I used premade pasta and sauce though, which made it even easier. Browned some ground meat, set it aside to saute some celery, onions, and carrots for a bit, then re-added the meat, then the sauce, simmered for a bit, then built the lasagna layers. Normally I'm not a fan of that dairy free cheese, but it turned out pretty good overall.

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.

Mine's been basically dairy free for a while. My wife is allergic to cow dairy so I use a bechamel made with oat milk. I do sprinkle in some pecorino but I bet I could get the exact same salty umami notes with msg or something.

Glad you finally embraced the lasagna. Keep layering

Best part is tonight we can have leftovers. As much as I love cooking, I also love not cooking.

But I just remembered I took some stewing beef out of the freezer the other day, so I should probably use that.

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.

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.

This is the best flan we've ever had. It's also the best our friends in Mexico have ever tasted. They had thirds.

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.

Heck, if I invited people over and told them I was going to cook them a meal, their heads might explode. The "what" would be entirely incidental.

But it would probably be a Sunday dinner. Beef, pork or lamb.

And I'd probably have to borrow someone else's house for it or set up a tent in the back yard because there's barely room to swing a cat in here.

Carbonara. Easy as hell to make, delicious and sounds way fancier than it is.

With me its more like what do I do if I don't want to embarras myself. The answer is grill. My wife has a thing about greek salad though and after seeing her I might throw that in. Super easy just buy things and put them together in a bowl and wallah. but looks super great and much harder than it is.

It depends on the person. Homemade curry and naan is a good option. I make a hell of a baked ziti. But also if you make pizza with dough from scratch basically everyone is always happy and impressed.

Before I married someone who doesn't like seafood I used linguine in clam sauce as my flirtatious dinner for early dates. Delicious, leaves enough wine for two to have few inhibitions, but still be present, feels fancier than it is, and it's innuendo.

Shakshuka, Japanese curry, misir wot (ethiopian spicy red lentils). to name a few

I legitimately think the best lasagna is leftover lasagna. Throw in in the oven for a little while, maybe under the broiler for a bit, and I think it's better than fresh.

A pie (or tart), or a dirty beans.

Pie made with ready made pie crust. Throw in some bell pepper, ham slices, zucchini, chili, garlic (or basically whatever seems like would taste good together). Mix cream cheese and an egg, pour over the fillings, top with some pizza cheese. Once cooked, sprinkle with some herb that fits the filling or spring onion.

Dirty beans is lightly cooking a bit of onion, chili, garlic, whatever beans (in water) I happen to have, tomato sauce, ton of cumin, some other spices that seem like a good idea, topped with some sour-ish, runny cheese or feta. To make it go from basic to fancy, I use Crème fraîche instead of cheese and fresh cilantro.

Appreciate everyone who actually gave the recipe!!

I don't cook, but I bake. Banana bread, brownies, Cinnamon coffeecake, Cornbread, etc.

The most fancy dish I can make is a vegan "goulash" served with potato dumplings and red cabbage.

The most effort goes into the potato dumplings, because the best quality requires mixing packaged potato dough with shredded potatoes, that had their water squeezed out. On non-Christmas occasions we just have cooked potatoes or knedlíky.

Usually something super complicated that has caught my fancy but I have never tried before. Lol.

Still more hits than misses. Most people can’t cook these days and I’m pretty comfortable in the kitchen. I can pump out delicious food with basically whatever. But for an occasion I’ll put in the couple days to really do something up.

Himalayans. Lot of work to get them, but worth it, because the ice keeps them fresh, and other types of meat are expensive.

Not meats and ferments

When I have guests I’m usually not trying to impress them but feed them so I go for something like a large ziti with summer squash and sweet onion for the side and some fresh made bread with olive oil for dipping.

It depends on who is coming over, I more usually impress with cocktails & make food to satisfy people not impress them. Gumbo, I have had people say best they ever tasted. Lamb for my mother-in-law, slow cooked 4 hours in the oven with fennel and apricots and harissa. Sourdough baguette one year at Thanksgiving, those were chowed down on. Vegan kid is impressed when I nail a dessert for her. I do grow some of what we eat, feel like that is sort of impressive I guess.

But cocktails is where I get the most compliments - I made the

https://imbibemagazine.com/recipe/friend-zone-a-zero-proof-strawberry-drink/

With some really nice spiced strawberry fermented soda I made, with the goop from the strawberry syrup like she uses in the recipe, but also the tops and leaves.
It doesn't even have alcohol, my heavy drinking ex brother outlaw could not understand how it could be so good. "What's in this?" "Tepache de fresa" "No, I mean what is the booze?" "None." "See, THAT is why you are the best. How is this so good?"

You have to know your audience to have it be well received. There's no one dish that is going to universally be magic.

If you are cooking for me, gumbo or a soup with an amazing broth. Or a really good sandwich. I love a good sandwich.

Chicken Parmas with chips, veg and gravy

Really hits the spot 8 beers in

According to my husband, anything with garlic, onion, and sautéed those both in butter smells very fancy.

If I had time to plan though, I'd make ravioli and freeze them and make sauce when they came over.

Elk Osso Buco - Beyond The Chicken Coop https://www.beyondthechickencoop.com/elk-osso-buco/

saw a meme recently with some kind of aspic 'salad' that you covered in mayo afterward.

it had olives.

man the drugs in the 70s that fueled that craze must have been mindboggling

It depends on if I like the guest or secretly wish they were dead. if it's the former I order takeout. if it's the latter... I cook.

now baking on the other hand... I always bake from scratch. and never give my cookies to people I hate.

It's not the dish that impresses, but the preparation.

One year, my family and I were at my middle brother's house for a summer time visit. He had a party and grilled chicken. My brother never really learned how to cook and it showed. People barely touched it and there was a ton of it left over.

Fast forward another year and he wants to do the same thing. I offer to cook so he can attend to other more important party affairs. The only thing I did differently was I started with fresh good quality chicken and not mass frozen bagged stuff from Tyson. I also brought my instant read thermometer. Otherwise it was just salt and pepper on the chicken, although I used a ton more than he did.

Same number of people, same amount of chicken... There were NO left overs. I also made my cubed potatoes, those were gone too.

It was all technique. I used virtually the same ingredients he had the year prior.

That primarily depends on the guest. There is no one size fits all dish.

What i can do to impress is that I ask the guest to name three ingredients, and I cook something using those.