One overall tip that I can give is to always use good water in food and especially drinks. Some places may have good water right out of the tap, but here in South Texas we have dirty river water to drink and you need basically an RO (reverse osmosis) system to get usable water. Using good water will make a big difference in your kitchen, and maybe in your health!
Ingredients: Cerrano peppers tomatoes onion lime juice salt
Lots of people just throw the first three ingredients in the blender with enough water to support them and apply power for a few seconds. My personal feeling is that the result of this tastes like mush. I prefer to cut them up into pieces roughly 1/8" to 3/16" in size, cleaning the seeds out of the peppers, the goo out of the tomatoes, and the skins off of the onions. Meanwhile, I keep everything as dry as possible. I probably use 1 part of peppers to 2 parts of tomatoes and 2 parts of onions.
I put on enough lime juice to keep things a little wet and enough salt to season to taste. I think that if you prepare it this way you can still taste the individual ingredients and it keeps fine in the fridge for a day or two.
Ingredients: rice (white is fine although any kind should do) cooking oil tomato sauce salt
Cooking with gas is preferred; if you must use an electric stove, then the thicker the pan you can use the better probably.
Put a cup of rice in the pan and then add enough cooking oil so that the rice will settle into a fairly smooth layer when shaken back and forth at room temperature. The oil will get a little bit looser when heat is applied, of course, but here we're just going for enough to brown the rice without demanding too much attention and stirring. Too much oil won't hurt, but I guess it can't be that good for you either.
Apply medium heat and stir plenty. I use a spatula actually. If you burn a few pieces that won't kill you, but of course you want to achieve a uniform brown color. It should take maybe 5 minutes to brown the rice, so if it's taking a long time then turn up the heat a bit.
When the rice is good and brown, either turn off the stove or put the heat on low for now. For each part of rice (here, one cup) add 2 parts of good water to the oil/rice mixture. Because this mixture is hotter than the temperature of boiling water, this can cause boiling and burns; I recommend holding the pan at an angle and sloshing all of the rice into one side of it, then pouring the water slowly into the middle of the rice while shaking the pan a bit. Once you've got the whole thing below the boiling point of water you can just add the rest of the water. If you just pour the water in the middle of the rice you will eventually crack the bottom of the pan.
At this point put the whole thing back on the stove and crank up the heat to high. While you're waiting for the water to boil, add 1-2 of those little 6 or 8 once cans of tomato sauce, to taste. Adding salt at this point couldn't hurt either; just don't add too much!
When the water boils, lower the heat to simmer -- to the point where the water is just barely boiling and making bubbles. Cover the pan and set a timer for exactly 17 minutes! This may seem like an odd number but it does work for me. :-)
After the timer goes off, turn off the heat and wait for another 10-15 minutes. This time is just as important to me as the cooking, as the rice is probably still "cooking" anyway. Besides, it's too hot to eat right away!
Ingredients: 1 cup light cream (or Half-And-Half) 14 oz sweetened condensed milk 2/3 cup Irish whiskey 1 teaspoon instant coffee 2 tablespoons chocolate syrup (I use Hershey's) 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
I searched about the internet for a bit to find out how to make a passable Irish Cream. There were a couple of widely varying recipies, but this one, with this list of ingredients, seemed to be the most popular one and seemed to most closely resemble what one might find in the real thing. I modified it a little bit and I think it comes out very well.
I bought a bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey for $19, and it seemed expensive but good. I don't think that such a quality whiskey is necessary for our purposes, but I can certainly tell you that it must be _Irish_ whiskey. I tried a bit of Jim Beam, and as much as I like it with Coca-Cola, it's pretty bad for this recipe. :-)
The original recipe had full teaspoons of the vanilla and almond extract, but I found that the result really tasted overly harsh. Cutting down on these ingredients seemed to give a pretty faithful copy of Bailey's.
Mix the ingredients for a bit, but don't blend them or get air in them or the like. Probably the cleaner and colder you keep the mix the longer it'll last. Rumor has it that it will last as long as the cream alone would last, and cream lasts a good deal longer than regular milk does, for maybe 3-4 weeks in the refrigerator, so your Irish Cream should have about this lifetime. You'll probably like it too much for it to last that long, though. :-)
This stuff goes pretty well on ice cream. I prefer chocolate, of course.