So, nu, it could always be worse: The kale could have been spoiled too.
You can attribute some of those two hours as R&D costs and amortize them over future meals - the things you know how to make now are in your repertoire in part because you took past risks that sometimes resulted in failure.
You're not just failing to make dinner - you're searching the space of possible dinners, and this is one location you won't visit again.
I always thought colcannon was to be made with cabbage, possibly because of Alton Brown. Anyway, I've never made or eaten it.
I also thought colcannon was made with cabbage.
The recipe said either. My mom used to make it with spinach.
(But my parents eat spinach with every meal in order to stave off macular degeneration and so that may have been her own improvisation.)
This is really making me want mashed potatoes. But I'm too limpy to make it to the store right now.
I'm way too lazy to boil anything tonight, but the frozen ones aren't bad in a pinch.
You're a bit old to be eating mashed potatoes with your fingers, Mobes.
Tonight had mashed potatoes with a celery root boiled with the potatoes. Mashed with butter and sour cream. So, so good.
If you boil milk hard with a brassica it will certainly curdle. However the end product is basically undrained paneer, which is perfectly wholesome. If it tastes unlike milk it's because it's taken up the flavour of the leaf.
That said, I've never heard of boiling the cabbage/kale for colcannon in milk, probably for that reason. Add the milk at the mashing stage.
If you boil milk hard with a brassica it will certainly curdle
13 is true, but it will curdle a damn sight sooner if you put something like green cabbage in it.
I've curdled milk by boiling more times than I'd care to admit. There are lots of things that I make with various dairy, from whole milk to heavy cream, depending on what I have around and how decadent I'm feeling, and when I use milk I'll sometimes absentmindedly treat it as though it were cream.
I had to look up what colcannon is.
I make oatmeal by boiling it in a mixture of water and milk or just milk. I've never curdled it that I've noticed.
you're searching the space of possible dinners, and this is one location you won't visit again.
I usually cut off the search at the earliest possible point. So instead of going to colcannon, the search stops at "unmashed potatoes and broccoli in separate piles." Chez Torrey has zero Michelin stars!
Oh, what a shame. Colcannon made with kale is good and really pretty. If you boil it in salted water, not too long, maybe five minutes? Just enough so it turns bright green and goes limp. And then you chop it pretty fine and mash it in with the potatoes. It averages out to really bright green.
It's good with regular cabbage too, but not nearly as pretty. Don't know about boiling the milk -- I have that in my head under "Just don't", so I don't have any sense of it.
You know what I do with kale and potatoes? Just peel the potatoes and cut them up, wash and chop the kale, then sautee them with onions (and maybe some bacon or spicy sausage) in the bottom of a big pot. Then pour chicken stock over the whole thing, let it simmer for an hour or so, then mmm, yummy soup! Extremely simple -- simplicity is my #1 requirement for cooking.
And then you realized it was all worth it cause you had a good subject for a post!
19: If you can saute in the top of a big pot, that would be something.
No one else is going to share cooking disaster stories?
I had a very frustrating experience making mint ice cream recently. The recipe said to steep mint leaves in a chilled sweet cream mixture for 12 hours, then strain out the leaves and freeze the ice cream. It turns out that soggy mint leaves can get through a hole of basically any size, and the sweet cream mixture will sit placidly in a tea strainer like it doesn't even know it's liquid. I picked little leaf chunks out by hand for ages and there are still a ton of them in the finished product, all fibrous and slimy and icy. So gross.
24 sounds like a job for cheesecloth.
It turns out that soggy mint leaves can get through a hole of basically any size
I would have said that a hand-held strainer/colander would be the right tool, but it sounds like it you tried that.
Next time puree the mint leaves before steeping and then leave them in . . .
Do the other disaster stories also have to involve green leafy material and dairy?
all fibrous and slimy and icy. So gross.
But it tastes good otherwise, I presume?
Peppermint extract would be an easier way to go.
I was a good hand in the kitchen for a while, but I've lost the touch, owing to two wives who wanted to cook more than I didn't want to do the dishes. Is there an online remedial cooking for dudes (given the undudely criterion of pescatarian)? I suppose I could clip Bittman's column in the magazine.
Effortful disasters are the worst. I tried to make pork buns last week, and although it was clear from fairly early on that the recipe wasn't exactly going to enter the regular rotation, there were still hours and hours of work to do (maybe just hour and hour, but still) before the whole disappointing mess could make it to our plates. Probably there were points along the way at which I could have improvised a rescue, but I was too annoyed to see them. Humph.
I know it's dirtying another pot, which then has to be washed, but boiling the kale in milk sounds odd. One pot for the potatoes (shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes or so); another pot for the kale (boiled for about 15 minutes, then drained, then chopped very fine); and a small saucepan for the milk, which should be gently heated and to which you might add a bit of butter at the end, to be melted into the milk (and maybe also some finely chopped scallions). Mash the potatoes, then stir in the kale and the milk(-butter-scallions).
too limpy
Did Den E Crumb change pseuds again and wasn't Moby Hick taken by some other fellow a while back?
We have kale in the fridge but I am not making colcannon because it's an unappetizing word. It doesn't sound like the name of a delicious food.
Racist! (But I agree. I've never eaten it and don't plan to, food of my people or not.)
Pal Joey is a really weird movie. Like industrial strength weird.
L., your recipe sucks. Steep mint leaves for just a few minutes for mint ice cream, otherwise you get strongly plant-flavored ice cream. Just buy The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.
I am almost certain I have seen Pal Joey but I can't remember a single thing about it so maybe it's just the sort of thing I would have seen.
Weirdly, that ice cream book came up in conversation like three hours ago. Scoop of (cold) shrimp.
Do they make something like a Buchner funnel for kitchen use? I hate waiting for things to filter. I was making watermelon agua fresca this weekend and wanted to try filtering it because it was too thick but it took forever with a gravity filter.
We have kale in the fridge but I am not making colcannon because it's an unappetizing word.
People are fucking weird about food.
38: An Aeropress might work, depending on what you're filtering.
39 gets it right. Call it whatever you want (just don't call it late for dinner).
If you cut it in chunks and fry it you can call it bubble and squeak, which is awesome.
You can also make it with chard, which turns the potatoes pink. Kids love that. Especially girls.
32: I still can't walk right this morning. My ankle is paining me when I walk.
I think I should get some arthrodesis if they can work me in over lunch.
I bet your ass isn't as sore as mine. I don't have that much muscle soreness -- while it was a long ride for me, it was pretty leisurely -- but I am not used to spending that long sitting on a bike seat.
I don't even like spend that long in a chair that doesn't recline.
Now that I'm done with running for a while, I am going to try my new bike out. I could start biking to the bar, but first I want to check if DUI applies for people on bikes.
The worst injury I got in the Peace Corps says that yes, yes it does.
46 Did you wear good quality bike shorts? Oh, and congrats. I should get on my bike and start riding again.
Admittedly, I was riding up a steep, poorly graded dirt road in the pitch dark. And all I really did was skin my knee -- it was the infection afterwards that made it such a hassle.
I was more worried about the police. I assume I'll fall down. I don't need to worry as much about infections because much less of Pennsylvania is alive.
50: Do I know from good quality? They were padded enough to prevent chafing, just not enough to prevent my bones from wearing through my flesh from the inside.
If I have to buy special shorts, shoes with plastic soles, or in general any article of clothing that makes me look like I ride a bike, I'm dumping the bike.
To answer the legal question, I don't know about PA, and I'm not dead sure even about NY (and this is not legal advice and I'm not your lawyer) but I think here DUI would apply to a bicyclist like any other traffic law. You might get more lenient enforcement, of course.
They make padded shorts with respectable looking overshorts. And for distances under ten miles or so, you don't really need anything special at all.
Back when I rode a lot I found that low end road bike shorts sucked, mid range ones worked just fine up to about fifty miles or so and for rides beyond that the high end ones really made a difference. Also that padding made no difference when it came to chafing except in a negative way in really low end shorts, that was the lycra.
Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make
I guess the HPs and Ace won't be singing this song. Maybe that's a good thing.
And for distances under ten miles or so, you don't really need anything special at all.
That's good. I don't really go very far, even by car.
L, others: if you want excellent mint flavor but don't want actual mint leaves, use celestial seasonings peppermint tea (not spearmint which is gross). using 1c water to 1c sugar and 3 tea bags, which you boil briefly and then just allow to cool to room temperature, you can make excellent mint juleps (you still need fresh mint in the glass) or other refreshing drinks, like a southside: mint simple syrup, lime juice, lemon juice, rum, over crushed ice. or just mint soda using the syrup and soda water. with the ice cream you scald the cream with the tea bags in, let it steep, and simply remove the bags. you get very intense mint flavor this way, and no straining necessary. you can color with a few drops of green food coloring if desired, and then I recommend hand-chopping bitter-sweet valhrona...what do they call those things, paillettes, like? they're ovals of varying thickness...sequin-ish I guess. the flavor from the tea bags is more intense than that you can usually get from leaves (barring 12-hour steeping) and they are worth adding as a base in many recipes, even when you are using fresh mint also. I make an astounding mint julep, but ain't nobody ever gets to see the tea bags.
59: To be precise about my own experience, my commute is between thirteen and fourteen miles one way. I don't notice real bike shorts making a difference in how sore/chafed I am unless I'm doing round trips on successive days.
No need for that level of precision. Unless I start biking for the sake of biking, everywhere I go is within six or so miles of my house.
The recipe was from this book, which has been good to me otherwise. The mint ice cream does taste kind of weird apart from the slime chunks but not in a way that I would describe as excessively planty. Might be spearmint vs. peppermint?
Oh, jeez, you could do six miles in a tux.
I own a tux but doing the tie right would be more trouble than the shoes for the pedals that people call "clipless" despite the fact that there is a literal, very obvious, clip on them.
I'd never heard of colcannon before. It sounds like it might be good.
Boiling the greens in milk, on the other hand, just sounds strange. What's wrong with plain old water?
65: would you like somebody to explain that etymology to you in tiresome detail? I'm sure there are several commenters who would happily volunteer to do that.
65: Clipless shoes, clip-on tie, and you're good to go.
67: No. I want somebody to change the lexicon.
You're going to need to get a lexicon wrench for that.
70: I call a foul. If you're going to make that joke you need to employ either the sneering condescension of the purist or the proselytizing ebullience of the missionary.
There is no in-between.
CA has lower fines/penalties for *BUI.
I don't know who Emoji is. I do have a small leather pouch with some wrenches that hangs on the back of my bike seat. I'll probably have to take it off so I can park the bike. It's from before stealing stuff was invented.
During undergrad, I got "pulled over" while riding a bike home from a theater rehearsal at like 4am. I think the cop suspected a BUI, but I was thoroughly sober, so he said he stopped me for having insufficient safety lights or something. What I'm saying, Moby, is, just put on as many safety lights as possible, and you'll be good.
Lights are good for other reasons, I've heard. But I don't own any.
I want Chinese food for lunch, but am incapable of walking that far without undo pain. Stupid ankle.
37: Frank Sinatra plays Frank Sinatra, with Rita Hayworth & Kim Novak. The beginning is pretty good, ie dark and scuzzy, but things go seriously awry at a pet store and continue haring off in ill advised directions from there, culminating in a disastrously bad "happy ending."
but AMAZING color footage of San Francisco in the fifties. Also Rita Hayworth has the world's most astonishing shower. And fantastic line about Fresno. So an enjoyable evening's weird entertainment.
I would boil the potatoes while washing the greens, and then boil the greens in the same water to bright green while the potatoes were cooling a bit, and then mash them all together with the milk. One pan, one bowl, yum.
The Dwarf Lord prefers his cabbage treated like noodles -- boiled in a lot of water until beginning to go transparent -- which isn't *dreadful*, if you never reheat it, but I think is only explainable by a Boston Irish mother.
I've generally avoided cooking disasters in recent years, but just a few weeks ago I was infuriated by an artichoke recipe that was an utter disaster. It wasn't terribly fussy, but more or less any fuss would have been too much for that outcome. Every once in awhile, Cooks' Illustrated completely botches it, and I'm always shocked by it.
79: add value, JRoth: which recipe should we avoid?
I'm a big fan of BUI - I find that the ride is super-invigorating, and the sluggishness that makes DUI* so obviously foolish goes away. There's obviously still impaired reactions, but most streets at midnight (or whatever) don't requiter a lot of quick reactions, and of course you're going half the speed that a car does, with infinitely shorter braking distances, so it's mostly good.
*I've only driven drunk perhaps 3-5 times, although there've probably been a few more times when it was unwise. But those 3-5 times, I knew it was a bad idea while I was doing it (I actually only recall 2 times, but I'm sure there've been a couple others somewhere along the way).
80: Roasted artichokes, I believe from the current (May/June) issue of CI.
I want to make my stuffed artichokes with my grandmother's recipe, but I don't have the recipe. Or any artichokes.
Are you selling artichokes by the road?
About what to wear while biking, the location and time of year makes a huge difference. I find that this is the perfect time to bike. In the winter I have to bundle up and it's still uncomfortable, especially if it's windy, whereas in the summer I'd work up a sweat no matter how I dress so I have to change clothes, but these days I can get off my bike and go straight to my desk.
As for DUI/BUI, I don't think I've ever biked drunk. I've really driven drunk once when I definitely shouldn't have, but fairly often I've driven after a beer or two, spread out over as many hours, on a full stomach... I wouldn't be surprised if that's legally drunk, but it didn't leave me feeling impaired.
About cooking, the biggest flop that comes to mind is a stew my mother-in-law made us. I'm sure the recipe was fine, but she was trying to use our new slow-cooker no one had used before, and didn't set it right. I think she was aiming for three hours but actually set it for 30. We tried to turn it to the maximum temperature so it would be edible before midnight, and that made the potatoes no longer crunchy, but still wasn't nearly as good as anyone expected.
No aspersions about her cooking in general intended. I've screwed up plenty, but I think I've had fewer interesting disasters because I'm less ambitious about new recipes and stuff.
86.2: The rule of thumb is that an adult male under typical circumstances (healthy, non-empty belly, BMI in the median 50%, regular drinker) can have a drink an hour* with virtually no impairment at all. I think even 2 drinks/hour doesn't get you to 0.08% BAL. So it doesn't sound like you've edged anywhere near DUI.
*I think at some point metabolization falls behind; 5 drinks in 5 hours probably gets you impaired, if not legally drunk
Wouldn't it be easiest to let the kale wilt in a pan, maybe with some oil instead of boiling it?
88: But if you're already boiling water for the potatoes, wilting the kale doesn't really save any effort. Especially since the goal is a fairly tender kale, not the sort of tender-crisp thing you'd typically get from a wilt.
Or so it seems to me. I've never made colcannon, and I've mostly known it as a cabbage dish.
So JRoth, An Iliad was great - thanks for the prodding. A little screamy at points, but very engaging.
Aside from mashing the stupid potatoes, the recipe would have been super easy if I'd just boiled the kale in water.
91: What was difficult about mashing the potatoes? I find it much easier to use a pastry blender rather than a typical potato masher, though maybe that's deprecated for some culinary reason I'm not privy to.
63: if it tastes minty but "off" then it was spearmint. the tell should be, does it kinda taste like wrigley's doublemint gum? well, or wrigley's spearmint gum obvs. there's a reason everybody likes the white packet, you know? but truly, to munch on raw or even to have in a julep or sweet tea spearmint is OK (thought not my fave) but in any food applications such as ice cream or even a pointlessly non-flavor-related garnish on a chocolate ganache whatsit then spearmint tastes kind of soapy or something. off. IMInfalliblyCorrectO
92: not all of them were fully cooked, the handle on our masher sucks, I have puny muscles, etc.
there's a reason everybody likes the white packet, you know?
I was always a JuicyFruit fan myself.
94.last is not the best endorsement of CrossFit.
92: not all of them were fully cooked, the handle on our masher sucks, I have puny muscles, etc.
I'm not one for useless gadgets that take up valuable kitchen real estate without earning their rent, but if you do a lot of potatoes, I highly recommend a potato ricer. It eliminates the need for muscle power; it makes it easy-peasy to mash. You won't even need a masher if you push your cooked potatoes through a ricer: you'll just whip them up nicely with a wooden spoon (never a metal spoon, if you please).
Also, though the trend today is to minimize the amount of water used (just a sprinkling of moisture: we need to keep the goodness of the vegetables from evaporating), when it comes to taters, I think you need to ignore the health imperatives. The potatoes should be cut into fairly uniform pieces, and the water, well-salted, should rise above the level of the potato pieces by about 2 inches, and then just boil the hell out of them. Yes, really.
(My mother and my grandmother taught me how to cook potatoes, and their mashed potatoes were so ridiculously delicious, it was to weep...).
90: Oh good. Agree on the screaming, but that seems hard to avoid these days.
I endorse 97, except for the weird spoon fetish.
Hey, Heebs, what kind of potatoes did you use? Idaho/russet, white, red, Yukon gold?
Also, though the trend today is to minimize the amount of water used (just a sprinkling of moisture: we need to keep the goodness of the vegetables from evaporating), when it comes to taters, I think you need to ignore the health imperatives
Huh?
I endorse 97, except for the weird spoon fetish.
I'm glad you mentioned that. I was going to google to see if there was some strange potato-steel reaction I hadn't heard of. But then, I'd never heard of a wooden potato masher.
100: I think blue potatoes are the hip thing.
But we never mashed red potatoes. Those were for roasting or pan frying.
100: Moby is right. Red potatoes are not ideal for mashing* - better are Yukon golds or Idaho/russets.
*obviously any potato *can* be mashed, but reds don't get that fluffy texture, because they don't have a lot of starch and were bred to withstand cooking without falling apart. They are good for smashed potatoes, where you add other ingredients (e.g. sour cream and cheddar) and the goal is to have chunks of potato left in the dish.
Yuken Gold wasn't a thing I was aware of growing up. The internet says that was because it wasn't released until 1980. The internet also says it was invented in Canada. I don't know why they didn't call it Canato.
That's a brand name for canned tomatoes.