I had a really dreadful food disaster recently. I took advantage of one weekend when the Flophousemates were all out of town to throw a dinner party—a little devious but with so many people living here, it's hard to invite people to dinner who aren't them. Anyhow, among the guests were a couple, both of whom were vegetarians, and in trying to juggle a vegetarian entree to go with the meat-centric entree I a) overcooked the risotto and, worse still, b) made a truly inedible bean-mash dumpling. Like, straight up cornstarch-tastic. I didn't taste it before serving but I felt that they were only picking at it during dinner, so I tried one of the leftovers later—it was so dry, it was dehydrating. I don't know what I did wrong, but if you tasted it, you would guess that I sculpted the dumpling out of cornstarch and water.
I did use one of Becks's recipes (for gazpacho) and that was good, so the incident proved to me that I should always do what Becks says.
My general habit when inventing a new recipe is to add all of the flavors that I think might go well together, and then cut back from there. This leads to occasionally memorable (but, I think, instructive) failures.
Most memorably a soup that a made for a sick friend in which I was experimenting with the technique of sauteing ginger separately before adding it to the soup (which, I had been told, makes for a milder flavor). Wanting to make the soup as healthful as possible I ended up adding so much ginger that the resulting soup had to be diluted with water 1:1 otherwise the ginger caused a distinct burning sensation in the mouth and throat.
If you haven't had a few really impressive disasters in the kitchen you're being timid and probably boring.
this is good for hangover
bantan
i ate a lot of it last month coz my niece eats it daily
i just add some black pepper or soy sauce
How old is your niece?!? Does she have a hangover daily?!?
I like the non-specific recipes of websites which actually cater to the ethnic group described at the website, instead of catering to yuppies.
which kind of meat? which kind of spices? Oh, if I don't do it the way the Mongolians do, I won't have Mongolian food, I'll just have boring old american food!
This is old and sort of flatters me but I don't think she'd mind me posting it: A hilarious and true account of mole making gone wrong by Sue and Not U.
boil everything for another while, until the soup is viscid.
Mmm. Viscid. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what viscid means. Thickened?
7: sticky/glutinous
Mole is hard work, and you can't really cut corners successfully. FXcuisine should do one and make pretty pictures.
mole making gone wrong
I just put them on skewers and throw them on the grill.
Good story Stanley. But...the entire bottle of sauce? I wonder if I will ever reach the stage where I am a confident enough cook to throw caution to the winds and make mistakes like that.
A former roommate made a really bad mole, then blamed it on me, and then tried to save it by adding sugar.
shiv tried to make pierogi a couple days ago, and learned that after you make the noodles and turn them into potato pouches, do not lay them on top of each other in a plastic container.
5, 7
1.8 yo, thickened soup like a little bit in kisel, i guess
the entire bottle of sauce?
Yeah. I know. I was emboldened by a previous experience wherein I threw an INSANE amount of garlic into a dish that turned out great, despite the initial doubts of onlookers.
Of course, garlic ≠ salty hot sauce.
I once made a batch of applesauce and mistook a bottle of homemade bacon brine for unfiltered apple cider.
Not good eats.
I made a similar mistake some years back with Chinese black bean sauce, where a whole bottle replaced the dash or so that wisdom or common sense would have decreed.
The good news - it was in/on something less complicated than a stir-fry (maybe ground beef and noodles?), so we were able to rinse the whole dish enough to get rid of 80% of the sauce and eat what was left. Not tasty, but palatable enough.
Not-so-good: this was one of the rare/early occasions on which I was cooking (my wife was out somewhere) for myself and my son, then in elementary school, and he's never forgotten it. Not even after he got his PhD this month.
I cooked ramen noodles yesterday. This was after discovering three days ago that you can't put glass containers on a range.
I figure that cooking ramen is a lot closer to *real* cooking than not cooking at all is. Step at a time, you know.
I think my next project will be finding a way to make canned green beans taste good. My mother used bacon drippings. I shall have to find something else.
13: Yeah, there's really no upper limit on garlic the way there is on salt.
If the problem was stupidity, Stanley, then I'm quite sure you'll outdo yourself.
18: I appreciate your firm backing, ben. You know what wasn't stupid, though? The peppermint patty brownie my co-worker just gave me. Holy crap that was good.
I think my next project will be finding a way to make canned green beans taste good. My mother used bacon drippings. I shall have to find something else.
Dude, no, it can't be done. If you want no-prep green beans, frozen aren't bad. Throw some butter and some slivered almonds on them, and they're edible.
Seriously, pdf. Save yourself from canned green beans. They're as unlike fresh as canned asparagus is unlike fresh. A good flash-frozen green bean is at least edible, though still sorta nasty.
(What, btw, is the argument against fresh? If it's price, I retract all criticism. But blanching fresh green beans is as easy as making ramen noodles and 100 times tastier.)
21 seconded. They can often be had really cheap in season (i.e. now, many places), too.
I think my worst mistake was letting some lamb sit in a soy sauce based marinade for way, way too long--it became inedibly salty.
Most food can be fixed in some way, I've found, so I agree with you that a lot of it is getting a point of confidence where you can wing it.
You can even eat the fresh ones raw! Yum!
For me, fresh green beans were one of those foods I considered a totally different food from its canned version. Mom would announce we were having green beans for dinner, and I'd timidly ask if it was fresh or canned.
It wasn't until a few years ago that I finally had fresh peas. OMG. Fresh peas. I know people say frozen is similar enough, but no no no no no. Fresh goddamn peas. If they didn't cost their weight in gold, I'd eat them every day.
Fresh fava beans too. They are a 100% bitch, unfortunately, if you de-pod AND shell them, but that's pretty much the best lunch I've ever had.
I once made pancakes with two tablespoons of salt instead of sugar. They were the most picture-perfect pancakes you ever saw. Alas, completely inedible.
21 is the sort of comment that makes me wish I knew what things like "blanching" are.
We always had bottled green beans that my grandparents laid in, often with my mom's help when we visited Utah in the summer. I hated green beans when I was a kid.
27: Dunking in boiling water for just a short time.
27: Basically, you do it like pasta. Boil a lot of salty water, throw in the beans, wait until they're done (you can taste-test one every so often), and then drain them. If you want to be fancy about it, it's nice to drain them and throw them into a bowl with some ice cubes to stop the cooking and retain the super-bright green color. Then, if you want to add onions or bacon fat or something, you can throw them in the hot pan for the last minute to warm up and gather the oily flavors.
25: There really aren't many things where the frozen/canned version compares favorably to the fresh one. They sure can compare well to not having it at all, though.
Modern long-distance shipped produce approaches have inverted this for some things by breeding for shelf life and transportability. Really good tomatoes canned at peak season often vastly superior to insipid grocery tomatoes shipped green and forced to semi-ripen. Tomatoes aren't at all alone in this. A real travesty in this is that even in proper tomato season if you aren't careful you'll be offered the same tasteless variatals, because the infrastructure is there.
You're quite right about fresh peas. Yum.
I think my next project will be finding a way to make canned green beans taste good. My mother used bacon drippings. I shall have to find something else.
Not doable, but if you insist on trying and your mother's secret was bacon drippings, try a little olive oil and some variety of seasoned salt or "cajun" seasoning mix (despite most canned green beans being loaded with salt already) and then start in with the black pepper. It won't be the same but it will start to loosely approximate the fatty, savory quality of bacon drippings.
30: shocking (drop in cold water) helps fix the color, true, but you also do it to stop it cooking.
Brock, blanching time is highly variable with food type. From a couple seconds to a few minutes, I'd say.
It's a good idea to do this before freezing, too.
We always had bottled green beans that my grandparents laid in
Mormons develop some weird booze substitutes.
pdf, don't let these food snobs mislead you about canned green beans. Get yourself a can of cream of mushroom soup and some of those crunchy onion things, and go to town.
31: Hell yes. If I were in good standing at the Food Coop, I would be eating gigantic gorgeous blood-red-and-yellow mottled heirloom tomatoes right now, full of tender, steaklike flesh and nearly overwhelmingly rich flavor, but I am not. Tomato sauce these days is, therefore, canned San Marzanos put through the old food mill and heated on low with a splash of olive oil and a single peeled garlic clove. It does the job.
Rare is the kitchen disaster I create that is also inedible. I tend to make horribly ugly but very tasty baked goods when my original desire was for something cosmetically appealing. My last chocolate cake? Oy. It looked like the cake of the damned but it all got eaten. I once tried to double-batch some cornbread for a big cookout and didn't cook it long enough and only had white corn meal and so on and so forth so that what I got was incredibly tasty mush with bits of crust mixed in. Every time I've tried to recreate it I've made perfect cornbread.
Green beans are good steamed.
A kitchen steamer is, for me, the only gadget I've ever bought that I've really used. We probably use ours three or four times a week and it's usually just a case of washing some veggies and throw in the steamer for 10 minutes while prepping the rest of the meal.
Tomato sauce these days is, therefore, canned San Marzanos put through the old food mill and heated on low with a splash of olive oil and a single peeled garlic clove. It does the job.
Even with canned tomatoes, you can do a sight better than that.
I hope the right amount of contemptuous scorn came through in 40.
40 is incorrect. My method is pretty standard. I have made plenty of over-thought tomato sauces, but that one is best for a nice, simple, flavorful sauce.
42 is correct. With good tomatoes and good olive oil, you don't need much to make a nice sauce. Our canonical quick one is slightly more complex, but not much.
also worth noting, something like what AWB describes is both much better and cheaper than most canned sauces, and hardly any more work.
re: 42
Yeah, but you want to sauté onions and garlic first, right? Before you add the tomatoes?
I agree that a really simple sauce can be nice and sometimes even preferred. But for lots of things there's a nice halfway house between plain and over-complicated. Make a basic soffritto, add a wee splash of white wine, then the tomatoes. Maybe a few herbs.
'course, you can go mental:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6530258
Yeah, but you want to sauté onions and garlic first, right? Before you add the tomatoes?
That's what the aromatics are for, no (I assumed this too)?
We typically throw basil in (from a pot on the balcony), but you can get away with all sorts of things. A little ground pepper & salt.
Also really easy: a variant with olives and feta. or vodka-cream.
We typically throw basil in (from a pot on the balcony)
You must have good aim.
re: 47
Yeah. Basil if we have it.
My favourite is fresh (not dried) oregano, but for some reason it's hard to get regularly here.
The sauce-making is here (and in a different version here).
It's really good!
49: very small apartment.
50: I've got oregano on the balcony too, that usually goes in. The thyme died though.
IME, it's best to warm the tomato puree gently with lots of olive oil, a cut onion and garlic clove that you then remove, then add a little chiffonade of basil and cracked pepper. 47 is right about nice variations. It's a very flexible sauce.
re: 48
His ragu is similar to one I've made.
http://fxcuisine.com/Default.asp?language=2&Display=150&resolution=high
Very nice.
54: Oh, that was the one I was originally looking for. That's a great site.
re: 53
But you don't fry the onions and garlic first? That's crazy talk.
I like to sauté a few anchovies with the garlic before adding the tomatoes. Soooo delicious.
56: I know, I know. My ex was a culinary-school grad, and I wrinkled my nose the first time I saw him make it this way, but my first taste converted me.
Actually, you can make a really good tomato sauce just be simmering tomatoes in butter with a halved onion. Not even sliced up, just resting cut-side-down. Endorsed by Marcella Hazan. Super good!
re: 57
Yeah, that's good. And part of the way to puttanesca.
The amateur gourmet guy seems to have met with a lot of success since I last went to that site.
A kitchen steamer is, for me, the only gadget I've ever bought that I've really used.
I swear by the value of a rice cooker.
Particularly if you're frequently cooking for one, it's really nice to be able to put on rice, not have to worry about watching it or timing it, or have it take up space on stove, and then start to rummage through the fridge/freezer for something to saute up and serve over the rice.
A kitchen steamer is, for me, the only gadget I've ever bought that I've really used.
I swear by the value of a rice cooker.
Particularly if you're frequently cooking for one, it's really nice to be able to put on rice, not have to worry about watching it or timing it, or have it take up space on stove, and then start to rummage through the fridge/freezer for something to saute up and serve over the rice.
re: 58 and 59
Hmm, I'll have to try that. I like eating onion, though. It's not just in the sauce to flavour the tomatoes. But it's worth a go.
hmmph. I even check the main page to make sure that my fist comment hadn't gone through before re-posting.
fist comments belong in one of the sex threads, NickS
My only useful gadget is my food mill. I love my food mill. Butternut squash? Food mill. Celeriac? Food mill. Sweet potatoes? Beets? Tomatoes? Turnips? Food mill.
I was raised on food-milled homemade baby food.
garlic clove that you then remove
!!! UR DOIN IT RONG.
As I understand it, Italian-American food has popularized the idea that everything Italian has to have tons and tons of garlic in it. But I've never personally been to Italy, so all my information is second-hand research.
i microwave water, that's all cooking i do
hmmph. I even check the main page to make sure that my fist comment hadn't gone through before re-posting.
The main page won't rebuild if the cycle stalls, which generally happens after the comment enters the database, so that's not a useful method. The tried and true method is to hit Back, then Preview. It will show up at the bottom of the thread.
72: Don't be silly, apo. Double-commenting is another example of our quirky unfogged folkways.
People keep telling me not to be silly. Do you all tell the wind not to blow, or flowers not to bloom?
re: 70
The food I had in Rome was pretty garlicky.
That said, I was there a week, and of the 9 or 10 meals I ate in restaurants, only 3 were actually good. The rest, I'd definitely get better going to an Italian restaurant in Glasgow.
Butternut squash? Totally minging.Celeriac? Borderline mingingSweet potatoes?Borderline minging.
I'm not big on those kinds of vegetables. That sort of purée gives me the boak. Potatoes and turnips all respond nicely to mashing, but those more 'velvety' vegetables are nauseating when minced like that. Bah.
re: rice cookers. The steamer we have makes great rice. And it's handy for exactly the reasons you cite.
i microwave water, that's all cooking i do
Mongolian soup is the boringest.
That said, I was there a week, and of the 9 or 10 meals I ate in restaurants, only 3 were actually good.
And of those three, a couple were really really excellent, it has to be said.
No seriously, AWB is right. One my my standby emergency tomato sauces is just a big can of diced tomatoes with a few cloves of garlic, simmered, and hit with a stick blender. I guess sometimes I do saute the garlic first, but sometimes I like the raw punchy flavor.
My recent cooking disaster was like the one Cala described in 11. My homemade raviolis all stuck together, but the resulting noodle pile was still delicious.
My homemade raviolis all stuck together, but the resulting noodle pile was still delicious
Ooh, I saw those on flickr. I was thinking, "That looks delicious. What on earth is it?"
Potatoes and turnips all respond nicely to roasting, it should be said.
I guess sometimes I do saute the garlic first, but sometimes I like the raw punchy flavor.
When garlic is in season I like to toss raw diced garlic with the noodles and sauce, and let the heat of the noddles cook it just slightly.
Back to an earlier thread, that is one of the reasons I like the music variety of garlic -- it has a very pleasant flavor lightly cooked. Making pesto last weekend, I used a spanish roja garlic, because I wanted more bite to balance the basil.
re: 80
Heh. Only potatoes.
Turnips, parsnips and, to a slightly lesser extent, carrots all go too sweet for me if roasted. I know that for a lot of people the sweetness of roasted root vegetables is a plus, but for me, not.
82: I can see that. I'll only do carrots and neeps along with potatoes.
Italian-American food has popularized the idea that everything Italian has to have tons and tons of garlic in it.
Look, if they're in the habit of waving garlic at their sauces, they may be authentic, but they're wrong.
That is not to say that a tomato sauce requires much effort. I use canned tomatoes and tomato paste! I add some salt, pepper, basil, olive oil, and green onion! While they simmer, I roast some garlic (like 6-8 cloves. Or maybe more. ) Add the roasted garlic to the the sauce. Goosh up the sauce. Simmer some more. mmmm. Do not fear the garlic! (One can also mince up two cloves, saute them in the olive oil, and let the whole thing simmer, but roasted garlic is awesome.)
re: 83
I prefer both of them boiled and mashed together with some butter and epic quantities of black pepper.
Which is, of course, the one-true-way when accompanied by haggis.
Turns out the bottle was sixty servings.
After three bags of IV fluids were administered, Stanley took eekbeat to Burger King.
I guess food isn't more fun to talk about than politicians or peak oil. ah well
I made perfect couscous yesterday!
89: Yay! Haven't had that for a while. Do you mean the from-scratch variety (if so, a ton of work as I understand it). I had some of that at a friends wedding (Morrocan) and it was unbelievable.
roasted garlic is awesome
Amen. I roast several heads at a time and then freeze two or three cloves together in foil. My tomato sauce is like AWB's - I add one of these packets of roasted garlic, olive oil, and salt and that's it.
I tried the Marcella Hazan butter and onion method, but I didn't really like it. The butter didn't taste as good as olive oil, to me anyway.
That's a really good idea for cutting down on prep time for roasted garlic, pasdquoi.
90: "From scratch" as in I made the little semolina balls myself? Hell no. And I don't have a proper couscousiere, either, but my ex's upstairs tenant was Moroccan, and he explained the process to me enough that I've been somewhat able to recreate it in a pot, without too much labor. I've had proper couscous in a few restaurants several times, and this isn't as good, but it's pretty tasty.
Have people here tried preserved lemons for tagines at all? We always wind up just tossing on fresh lemon slices, which isn't as good.
93: Yeah, that `from scratch' is what I meant. I don't know how to do it (and don't have the thingy, either). Can you share your `somewhat recreate' tricks? Sounds good!
Roasted garlic is great. I have a roasted garlic/white bean/olive oil `hummous' that's pretty amazing.
I wish it was easier to get more garlic varieties than the usual silverskin whatever one, more places.
94: Yes, they're delicious. You can buy them, but I hear they're fun to make, if you're into canning.
95: Make a beautiful broth. This is key. I have advice for making beautiful broths on the food wiki under "winter soup primer." Bring it to a simmer.
Meanwhile, gently heat a teaspoon of good olive oil. Toss 1 c. couscous in the olive oil over medium heat. Stir for a few minutes, just until a few grains start to look a tad toasty. Turn the heat down and toss in a third of a c. or so of the broth, stirring it all around quickly while it steams into the couscous. When it's absorbed, toss in another t. of olive oil and distribute well. Add another good splash of broth, then another t. of olive oil. In all, this method should use a total of about 1 T olive oil and 1 2/3 c. or more of broth. When you add the last splash of broth, stir it in, cover the pot, and walk away for seven minutes. Open the pot and fluff.
My own variation is that I like to add a few spices to the oil in the first step. I like cayenne, white pepper, and fenugreek.
thanks. I've got a few good broths --- will have to try this.
some butter and epic quantities of black pepper.
You mean "some black pepper and epic quantities of butter", I hope.
I made a celeriac/rutabaga puree (copied from sis) with epic quantities of butter that was pretty good.
Which is, of course, the one-true-way when accompanied by haggis.
ZOMG haggis. I love it so much.
Oh, by the way, Stanley: "Szechuan", not "Schezuan".
i'm picking the fingernail-big scales from my knee
i got some abrasion after falling after some party
it's strange to think that this scale is dead me
Sichuan, not Szechuan.
Either is acceptable when referring to the cuisine.
re: 100
Yeah, me too. My wife loves veggie haggis, she doesn't really like the lamb taste in real haggis.
Chip-shop haggis -- deep fried in batter -- is delicious, too.
re: 98
'ish. I don't go overboard on the butter with carrots and turnip. If I'm going to load up mash with butter I'll load the potatoes with it. I prefer the carrots and turnip to be a bit drier and less rich.
Preserved lemons are nice, but I've never really made good use of them. They're great in tagines I've had in restaurants, but when I've made them myself I don't really think I'd miss the preserved lemon [especially if I can just grate a bit of zest in].
One of the best -- really all time best ever -- meals I ever had was in a Moroccan place in Amsterdam. The tagine and couscous was perfect.
re: couscous
I've noticed it's much better if you can steam it in some muslin or other cloth. Making it in a pan with some stock is OK, or just letting it soak in a bowl with some boiling water, but steaming is definitely the way to go.
"Szechuan", not "Schezuan"
Prescriptivist!