Simple yet impressive - any suggestions?

[jim]

Right, so first thing's first - I'm fairly inept when it comes to cooking. Obviously it's not that hard to cook something and make it taste okay, but I only understand a few cooking concepts - so anything unusual I probably haven't heard of. I probably also don't have any unusual cooking implements, such as sharp knives - in fact I think we're down to our very last sharp knife, and it isn't that sharp. It's used for things like veg chopping, cake slicing, meat carving, and knowing my mum, opening tins of Dulux.

So, my girlfriend has asked me (repeatedly) to cook her a meal sometime, and since it's now 2.5 years since we started going out I thought it might be something to consider actually doing... bearing in mind that I'm hopeless, useless and clueless, is there anything that springs to mind that I could cook? Ideally it would be fairly impressive, but secretly quite easy to put together.

I'm happy to take a bit of time over it, but I just think it would be pretty awesome if I could do something other than a stir-fry, and make it impressive

Hexus.hotpotters, I place my faith in you

[Syd]

Does your g/f like THai food?
A Green Curry is pretty easy but with fresh ingrediants tastes amazing!!

Ace with Chicken or Large prawns, i prefer chicken though, this is what you need, you can get most of it from Sainsburys or a local indian/thai deli:

lemongrass stalks
medium-hot green chillies
garlic
piece of galangal or ginger
shallots
4 tbsp chopped coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chopped lime zest
Thai fish sauce
ground black peppercorns

Best bit it only takes about 1/2 hour to cook!!

[jim]

That sounds excellent actually, she's never had any Thai dishes before but I keep pestering her to go to a Thai restaurant because it's far and away my favourite food. Would be great to see if I can make something myself, as good as I've had before.

Are those ingredients you've put up there from the BBC recipe?

[Lucio]

That sounds excellent actually, she's never had any Thai dishes before but I keep pestering her to go to a Thai restaurant because it's far and away my favourite food. Would be great to see if I can make something myself, as good as I've had before.

Are those ingredients you've put up there from the BBC recipe?

In all honesty, my tip is if you're not 100% sure on cooking is to take advantage of preprepared ingredients and sauces.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Steak, everyone loves meat.

Served with some fried potatoes and a green vegetable like green beans cooked with some garlic.

[dirky]

thai food is always a winner, remember you need to cook out the paste.
also its best to do a test run a few days before to know how hot to make it!