real estate adviser: How to Cook Fancy Restaurant Dishes at Home

To Becoming Someone Who Cooks Fancy Restaurant Dishes at Home

Mariana Gonzalez,
Food & Drink Email Editor

I'm a nice dinner kind of girl. I'll take an enticing menu, dark, moody lighting, and good drinks over pretty much any other kind of outing. The sound of endless, unintelligible conversations, that first bite of a dish you know will keep you coming back, sharing all of that with someone whose company brings you joy: I really can't think of a better kind of sensory experience.

Still. I want to dine at "nice" restaurants less this year. For lots of reasons: I want to save more money. I want to be safer. Also, the pandemic burst a bubble I didn't know I lived in. The restaurant industry doesn't care about its workers enough, and the things I've read about these past couple of years have forever soured the way I think of the experience.

Instead, I want to cook at home with good, quality ingredients. I want to learn new cooking techniques, and I want to learn them well. My eyes always lock on some kind of seafood on menus, so I want to make fish that's not salmon, perfect scallops, and octopus (something I've never cooked before). I want to learn to cook duck and better steak. I want to have elevated versions of things I cook all the time, like this mushroom swiss burger with truffle aioli.

Cheers to new habits in 2022.

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