I don't care about restaurants or the best foods in the area - I mostly eat in the school cafeteria. But I have decided that I like cooking. One is passive consumption, the other is active creation. I want to host dinner parties later to make friends in a new environment.

(Assume you got sugar, salt, and cooking oil.)

Quesadilla 🇲🇽

What you need

• Tortillas
• Grated Cheese
• Meat: Chicken breast or sliced ham
• Veggies: Onions, pepper, tomatoes
• Seasonings: Cumin powder, chili powder

How to make the food (very easy)

• You first cook some meat and veggies (onions, tomatoes) and throw away the water.
• Then you put some grated cheese on the the tortilla and the meat and veggies on top of the cheese, wait for the cheese to start melting (small or medium fire), then fold the tortilla in half. You can flip the tortilla to cook both sides. Then the Quesadilla is ready.

Oladushki 🇷🇺

I heard about the food from a song

Нам бабушка оладушек (Grandma will bake us oladushki )
С присказками русскими чудными (Telling wondrous Russian tales)
Будут они с костяникой очень вкусные (With wild berries, they'll be so delicious.)

(А река течёт, Любэ, And the River Flows, Lubeh)

What you need

• Kefir (it's like yogurt)
• All-purpose flour, baking soda, egg
• Sauce: Sour cream, jam

How to make the food (medium)

• Warm the kefir in a bowl (microwave), add the flour, soda, a little sugar and salt, and an egg in. (a lot of flour so it would get very thick) Stir, but don't stir too much (because it pops the bubbles). Wait for 20 minutes. (do not stir after)
• Get a spoonful of the mix into the pan and flatten it out. (small or medium fire) Serve with sour cream and jam.

Draniki 🇧🇾

What you need

• All-purpose flour, egg
• Veggies: Russet potatoes, onion
• Seasoning: Black pepper
• Sauce: Sour cream

How to make the food (easy to medium)

• Grate the onion and the potatoes, then squeeze out the water. (don't hurt your knuckles, use a fork while grating) Make the batter: put the vegetable mixture in a bowl, add the egg, flour, salt, black pepper.
• Heat the oil and scope the mixture into the pan (medium fire), flatten it, then flip and cook both sides. Serve with cold sour cream.

I actually used yellow potatoes for this one. It looks like Oladushki, but it's salty and has potatoes.

Hamburger 🇺🇸

What you need

• Hamburger buns
• Cheese slices
• Meat: Pork chop or chicken thigh
• Veggies: Tomato slices, lettuce
• Seasoning: Mayonnaise

How to make the food (easy, I am lazy)

• First cook the meat chop
• Cut the hamburger in half (if it the hamburger bun isn't already cut), better keep the back connected. Stuff the hamburger with cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise, and put the meat in the middle. Cook the hamburger (low fire) until the bread turns slightly black and the cheese starts to melt

Pyttipanna 🇸🇪

What you need

• Butter, egg
• Meat: Bacon
• Veggies: Yellow Potatoes, onions
• Seasoning: Black pepper

How to make the food (easy)

• Cut the potatoes into small pieces (so they cook evenly) and fry them until golden brown (basically slightly tender fried potatoes)
• Cut the onion and meat into small pieces, cook with butter until the meat is done. Then add the potatoes and seasoning to the pan.
• Fry a sunny-side up egg, and serve it on top of the dish

Actually I don't "get" the food, it's basically frying this, frying that, then mixing everything together. I didn't manage to cook a sunny egg here though.

How to cook a sunny egg

Another attempt

Final attempt: Pick out the egg yolk into a different bowl with a spoon carefully, and cook the yolk first. It was decent.

Lu Rou Fan 🇹🇼🇨🇳

What you need

• Red shallots ("hong cong tou" in Chinese, it's like onions)
• Pork belly with skin
• Steamed rice
• Seasonings: Light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, ginger, garlic, rock sugar, rice wine, five-spice powder ("wu xiang fen" in Chinese), pepper powder, 1-2 pieces of star anises

How to make the food (very difficult)

• First prepare the red shallots. Cut the onions into small pieces, put them into a cold pan, and fry on medium heat until shallots are golden.

Crispy Shallots

Shallot Oil (you can make scallion oil noodles with it, or you can just use it with the meat directly)

• Cut the pork belly into small, thin strips. (it's hard to cut, so you can first fry it for a while and then cut it. Yonghe Dawang uses machine-sliced pork, so it turns into mush. When you actually cook you are using proper chunks)
• Fry the meat and add the light soy sauce, dark soy sauce (for coloar), ginger (don't cut them too small, you need to pick them out), garlic, rock sugar, rice wine, five-spice powder, pepper. Fry for several minutes.
• Add warm water, crispy shallots, star anise to the pot and cook for 1 hour in the lowest heat. Skim off any foam.
• Throw out the ginger slices and star anise. Turn the heat high to boil down the liquid, but don't cook it completely dry. You should be left with the meat and some slightly thickened liquid. The liquid is a rice-mixing sauce.

Put the meat and the sauce on rice. The meat tastes tender and a little sweet, while the shallots (onions) have completely melted. It is very tasty!