Dinner II: The Gallery of Regrettable Foods (Part 2)

[rotuts]

might be good 

 

'Toasty'

 

sorry you left the CSB to freeze to Death in the Great North

 

just say ing

 

[Anna N]

So I know I am not the only one who has kitchen disasters. Am I the only one brave enough to share?

This may be ugly on the outside but I'm betting it will be quite satisfactory on the inside. It is another iteration of the King Arthur no-knead harvest bread. This time I replaced the whole wheat flour with spelt flour and I chopped up some dried apricots to replace the Craisins. I baked it in a knockoff Romertopf. It rose higher than expected and sealed the lid to the base of the baker. Prying them apart did nothing to improve the beauty of the loaf. Still it was a lesson worth learning.

[Tri2Cook]

So I know I am not the only one who has kitchen disasters. Am I the only one brave enough to share?

Unfortunately, my problem isn't a lack of bravery in sharing my disasters... my problem is that I haven't done enough cooking outside of work lately to have the opportunity for disasters. I'm not proud of that.

 

[Smithy]

OK, I'll share.  

 

This meal actually tasted good, except that the meatballs were overdone. (Look for the blackest, roundest chunks to find them. )  The photo suggests otherwise, however!

 

 

Merguez-seasoned lamb meatballs and vegetables, grilled over a campfire.

 

 

Doused chicken and asparagus with an orange vinaigrette sauce, looking like something the dog ate and didn't like.  It tasted better than it looks, but wasn't one of my better efforts.  The idea of this dish is to grill chunks of chicken over a hot fire, then douse them with a dressing.  I generally use a lemon vinaigrette similar to my standard salad dressing.  This time I tried a few things different on my erstwhile reliable dinner. The sauce was much too runny.  I'm glad we didn't have company!

 

[Anna N]

Bravo, Smithy. That is my saving grace -- that there are no guests! And as you say many of these "dogs dinners" are quite delicious despite their appearance.

[ElsieD]

So tonight I thought I'd whip up some corn cookies from the Momofuke Milk Bar Cookbook. I beat the sugar and butter together, added the egg and beat that for 8 more minutes. Added the dry ingredients, mixed, portioned out the dough, rolled them, flattened the balls, put 1 sheet pan in the fridge to rest for the obligatory hour prior to baking, and the rest on their pans went into the freezer. At this point, my sciatica nerve starting acting up so I left the kitchen in it's mess and sat down in the living room. A little while later hubby decides to clean up the kitchen. I hear "what is on the scale"? Turns out the baking powder, baking soda and salt were in the little bowl and did not make it into the dough. Big oops. Out came the dough from the freezer which had started to freeze and out came the tray from the fridge. My husband worked the rest of the ingredients into the dough, brought it out to me and I, in my chair, reshaped, rerolled and reflattened the cookie dough. The trays are now back where they were. I don't know if you can overwork cookie dough but I am about to find out. Must be something about this recipe - the last time I left out the corn flour!

[Okanagancook]

ElsieD, reminds me of the time I left the flour out of a cookie dough recipe. After about five minutes in the oven my little piles of gooey dough had all joined together and covered the whole cookie sheet. I think I said something like, 'oh, musta forgotten an ingredient. No wonder I never bake.'

[Smithy]

I posted about this dish here, but the photo of dinner really belongs in this topic.

 

 

Pork roast, potatoes and sauerkraut.  A truly excellent dinner.  A truly regrettable photo. 

[liuzhou]

No picture for reasons which will become apparent very soon. Perhaps not 'gallery' material, but certainly' regrettable'.

 

I got back late from a job after sitting in traffic jam forever. The journey which usually takes 40 minutes stretched to 2½ hours.  Amused I was not.

 

I had a plan for dinner - one of my go to faves. 

 

Without going into particulars, it requires a lemon and a tomato among other things. 

 

I got home and found the other things, but the lemon which I was convinced I had, had disappeared and there was only one very sad unusable tomato where I thought I had a fresh bunch of four. 

 

I am developing a theory that The Borrowers have moved into my place and are fond of lemons and tomatoes. 

 

Dinner plan had to be abandoned, and I threw together an uninspired, uninteresting egg fried rice with mushrooms and a bit of ham. Not what I had spent 2½ hours in a traffic jam dreaming about.

 

Ah well, there is tomorrow.

Edited March 20, 2015 by liuzhou (log)

[Anna N]

No picture for reasons which will become apparent very soon. Perhaps not 'gallery' material, but certainly' regrettable'.

 

I got back late from a job after sitting in traffic jam forever. The journey which usually takes 40 minutes stretched to 2½ hours.  Amused I was not.

 

I had a plan for dinner - one of my go to faves. 

 

Without going into particulars, it requires a lemon and a tomato among other things. 

 

I got home and found the other things, but the lemon which I was convinced I had, had disappeared and there was only one very sad unusable tomato where I thought I had a fresh bunch of four. 

 

I am developing a theory that The Borrowers have moved into my place and are fond of lemons and tomatoes. 

 

Dinner plan had to be abandoned, and I threw together an uninspired, uninteresting egg fried rice with mushrooms and a bit of ham. Not what I had spent 2½ hours in a traffic jam dreaming about.

 

Ah well, there is tomorrow.

Well that explains a lot of things. Did you know The Borrowers have been known to return things? It happens in my house quite frequently. I will decide to make some dish or another only to realize that I do not have a key ingredient. I will abandon the idea only to discover at least three units of the required ingredient in various different places a short time later.

[liuzhou]

 

Well that explains a lot of things. Did you know The Borrowers have been known to return things? It happens in my house quite frequently. I will decide to make some dish or another only to realize that I do not have a key ingredient. I will abandon the idea only to discover at least three units of the required ingredient in various different places a short time later.

 

Haha! I'll check the fridge in the morning for returns!

[ElsieD]

Which is why I now have 4 cans of pickled jalapenos.

[liuzhou]

With people like me around, this topic will never die.

 

There is a back story to this, but the image is shocking enough without boring you witless. The end result of frustrating day yesterday was that I set out to cook not what I had planned, but instead use up a few leftovers. Very responsible food-waste-wise and all that.

 

I had some cooked turmeric rice, a few mushrooms and a duck breast. For reasons totally under my control, but idiotic, I decided on duck fried rice with mushrooms. I've never even heard of duck fried rice. Garlic, Sichuan peppercorns, red and green chilli peppers, fermented black beans and Shaoxing wine marinade for the slivered duck meat.  Fried up with the rice, the sliced mushrooms and one miserable scallion which was begging for release from the vicissitudes of life.

 

 

It tasted much as it looks. Dark and ominous. Forking my way into that was like walking into a dark alley on the wrong side of town at midnight, with the wind howling in my ears and shadows leaping at me while threatening whispers of impending doom crushed my will to live.

The beer was OK, though.
 

[liuzhou]

 

A friend (Chinese) sent me this urging me to share. This is what the average restaurateur in China thinks a first class steak dinner looks like and happily serves it to their Chinese clientèle who immediately announce that western food is excrement.

 

Bon appetit!

Edited June 18, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[Thanks for the Crepes]

5 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

A friend (Chinese) sent me this urging me to share. This is what the average restaurateur in China thinks a first class steak dinner looks like and happily serves it to their Chinese clientèle who immediately announce that western food is excrement.

 

Bon appetit!

 

 

Ai ya ya! Please tell me that isn't tomato ketchup squirted on top of that "steak"? No wonder they think we are barbarians. 

 

[liuzhou]

52 minutes ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

Ai ya ya! Please tell me that isn't tomato ketchup squirted on top of that "steak"? No wonder they think we are barbarians. 

 

 

OK. That isn't tomato ketchup squirted on top of that "steak".

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but it is

[IowaDee]

If I'm not mistaken that is what is served in the White House quite often right now.  Must be hell to be a chef there right now.

[Shelby]

10 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

A friend (Chinese) sent me this urging me to share. This is what the average restaurateur in China thinks a first class steak dinner looks like and happily serves it to their Chinese clientèle who immediately announce that western food is excrement.

 

Bon appetit!

 

Is the meat ground up?  Like a hamburger steak?  

[liuzhou]

13 minutes ago, Shelby said:

Is the meat ground up?  Like a hamburger steak?  

No. It's a random slice of meat from somewhere on a cow (or a water buffalo).

[Shelby]

2 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

No. It's a random slice of meat from somewhere on a cow (or a water buffalo).

[HungryChris]

25 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

No. It's a random slice of meat from somewhere on a cow (or a water buffalo).

So, they don't make it a practice to break down the primals into categories? Not a judgment, just curious.

HC

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, HungryChris said:

So, they don't make it a practice to break down the primals into categories? Not a judgment, just curious.

HC

 

They label them in categories, but again apparently at random. Chinese meat butchery is, to say the least, odd. I can accept that American, English and French cuts are different and make sense of it. But Chinese cuts vary depending on which assistant serves you.

[HungryChris]

7 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

They label them in categories, but again apparently at random. Chinese meat butchery is, to say the least, odd. I can accept that American, English and French cuts are different and make sense of it. But Chinese cuts vary depending on which assistant serves you.

That is very interesting. I wonder if that will change any time soon.

HC

[liuzhou]

2 minutes ago, HungryChris said:

That is very interesting. I wonder if that will change any time soon.

HC

 

I doubt it. Beef is still a very low priority meat in China. My local market has around 25 pork vendors and one beef vendor. My nearest supermarket doesn't carry beef at all.

[Anna N]

If there is no tradition of home ovens or Sunday roasts then I'm guessing the butchery tradition will follow a very different track.