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


snowangel

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  • 2 months later...

Tonight, I offer you a Tomato-Lemon Tart from the Sept 2017 Bon Appétit. Puff pastry gets brushed with garlic-olive oil, then topped with thin slices of lemon, torn basil, sliced heirloom tomatoes, sea salt, pepper and olive oil. 

59c32b7f2ed08_IMG_6131(1).thumb.jpg.1ca5cbccc0fa8139206475f896599b9e.jpg

The lemon slices (I cut them as thin as I could with a mandoline, as per the recipe) are overwhelmingly bitter and make this inedible.  

Maybe it would work better with Meyer lemons, but I'm not wasting 3 more lovely heirloom tomatoes to find out xD.

 

Embarrassingly, I gave a visiting neighbor a few slices to take home BEFORE I'd actually tasted it.  I had to text her to tell her not to eat it but she'd already tried it :$.

Lesson learned!

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1 hour ago, blue_dolphin said:

Tonight, I offer you a Tomato-Lemon Tart from the Sept 2017 Bon Appétit. Puff pastry gets brushed with garlic-olive oil, then topped with thin slices of lemon, torn basil, sliced heirloom tomatoes, sea salt, pepper and olive oil. 

59c32b7f2ed08_IMG_6131(1).thumb.jpg.1ca5cbccc0fa8139206475f896599b9e.jpg

The lemon slices (I cut them as thin as I could with a mandoline, as per the recipe) are overwhelmingly bitter and make this inedible.  

Maybe it would work better with Meyer lemons, but I'm not wasting 3 more lovely heirloom tomatoes to find out xD.

 

Embarrassingly, I gave a visiting neighbor a few slices to take home BEFORE I'd actually tasted it.  I had to text her to tell her not to eat it but she'd already tried it :$.

Lesson learned!

 

Could you pick the lemons off? The rest of it looks like it would be very good. Sad about those end of season tomatoes. They are like gold this time of year.

 

Edit: What was I thinking? Good tomatoes are like culinary gold any time you can get your hands on them!

Edited by Thanks for the Crepes (log)
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> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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Just now, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

Could you pick the lemons off? The rest of it looks like it would be very good. Sad about those end of season tomatoes. They are like gold this time of year.

The lemon slices were under the tomatoes and they were really paper thin so it would be a pain to get them out.

We should have decent tomatoes for another couple of months here but the heirloom varieties are expensive and I hate to waste them. 

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  • 5 months later...

987C3542-EA9B-4AE2-AC7E-965218194FBE.thumb.jpeg.740193385f885a1c918ca6d6f0b5e659.jpeg

 

Not a Cornish Pasty. 

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

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  • 3 weeks later...

This has to be my most heart-breaking epic fail in a long time.

 

IMG_2956.thumb.jpg.216ea2f29ec8c01bc28272335070e47b.jpg

 

That is suppose to be consomme. It cost me $40 in ingredients and two days to make.

 

And it still doesn't taste as good as Better Than Bouillon, which I can buy for $6 a jar at Costco.

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

This has to be my most heart-breaking epic fail in a long time.

 

IMG_2956.thumb.jpg.216ea2f29ec8c01bc28272335070e47b.jpg

 

That is suppose to be consomme. It cost me $40 in ingredients and two days to make.

 

And it still doesn't taste as good as Better Than Bouillon, which I can buy for $6 a jar at Costco.

 

 

Have you tried adding a crap load of salt?

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I have had such a terrible day. I will edit and add a photo later if I can stomach it. I'm using this as some kind of catharsis - as my husband said I have been a right B---- since it happened - and he is right! 

I wanted to make a curry, a Lamb Rogan Josh, as it is his favourite. I went out and tracked down the correct ingredients, Saffron, Kashmiri Chili powder, Mace (couldn't find Asafoetida for love nor money - perhaps that was my down fall?. I bought a leg of lamb, boned, defatted cubed it, marinated in the richest Greek yogurt I could find. I don't have a coffee grinder so I pounded the cinnamon bark and cardamon all by hand to make my spice mix. I followed the recipe to a tee and got... 

A purpley grey mess that looked so unappetising and so far removed from the picture on the website that I was legitimately scared to test it. But we did, and as Hub said - "how can something you put so many spices in taste of ... nothing". 

 

Now if I am being really honest, this wasn't even today's only failure. I tried to make him Naan Bread. I don't know why, I avoid anything bread like - I know I am terrible at it no matter how closely I follow instructions. It is my kryptonite. I am assuming that today issues were caused by my oven not being hot enough, not stretching the breads out enough and maybe overworking when incorporating the Ghee. 

 

On hearing my swearing, my husband came to investigate and well - he P***ed himself laughing. His exact words "Well - we still need to finish the retaining wall... please don't hit me with one I'll die". 

 

I'm going back to my slump. It's cheaper. :$9_9

 

Such High Hopes20180324_165805.thumb.jpg.fb0db26f70fe0f3be64f923cfeb370a3.jpg

 

Such Effort

20180325_141024.thumb.jpg.8d8782c665bc63d88cacbbceaf333c0a.jpg

 

Such DogFood!

The 3 hours in the fridge have not helped - it appears to have ... solidified. 

 

20180325_185028.thumb.jpg.eefc2c0de0c8b8e0e8f09de0af012a8a.jpg

 

I have opened prettier tins for the puppers. xD

 

Curry from scratch is back on the Can't Cook Shouldn't Try list. 

 

Edited by CantCookStillTry (log)
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I had to pull my fridge away from the wall today for technical reasons and found this fellow down the back. No idea how it got there. I don't keep onions anywhere near the fridge. I'm guessing he can't have been there too long. He was in a plastic bag so the shoots couldn't grow straight.

 

20180324_153356.thumb.jpg.9d84be6ed61abd6685fdf70838fa32bd.jpg

 

The bulb is obviously a bit shrivelled, but the roots and shoots look healthy. I've potted it on my balcony just to see what happens.

 

20180324_173857.thumb.jpg.1029b4d3cc8b0c602ac0cfa2ba722e79.jpg

Edited by liuzhou (log)
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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

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11 hours ago, CantCookStillTry said:

...(couldn't find Asafoetida for love nor money - perhaps that was my down fall?

 

 

Did you try looking under the name of "hing"?

 

Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've been experimenting with using a stir-fry pan for cooking steak.  Stir-fry pan is what William Sonoma calls it.  You might think of it as a stainless steel flat bottom wok.  I find the generous sides of the pan reduce splatter significantly.  Plus I can turn off the smoke alarm* and get the pan smoking hot.  The first attempt was not half bad.  The outside was a little charred and there was a hint of gray, but the rest was a lovely pink medium rare.

 

Last night I tried again.  I probably got the pan even hotter and I reduced the already very short time.  The crust was overdone.  The inside was what one might charitably call "blue".  I would call it raw.

 

I couldn't chew it.  I would masticate a mouthful as best I could to extract some flavor and then had to spit it out and try again.  But there was no gray!

 

@CantCookStillTry any luck finding hing where you are?

 

 

*not to make light of tragedy a house in the neighborhood burned down this weekend.

 

Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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On 26/03/2018 at 5:38 AM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Did you try looking under the name of "hing"?

 

 

Not as of yet @JoNorvelleWalker but to be honest, I haven't been back to the Asian Grocery in the big town, which is the only place I would have a chance to find it. Since my last disaster I have lacked the need/desire/courage/confidence! 

Your steak sounds like the last ones I have tried to cook. I shelled out on the weekend and purchased some of suitable thickness to hopefully remedy my woes, cost me around $20 a kilo extra though! So I better not mess it up! You will see my results either here or hopefully in the dinner thread soon! 

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Cantcookstilltry: We make Rogan Josh from a recipe in Clifford Wright's "Real Stew" once every couple months or whenever local butcher gets local lamb at a reasonable price. Pretty dependable results from everything we've tried in there actually. Give it a go.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It has been a wretchedly cold day, and a good candidate for beans.  I made a batch of Georgian lobio -- beans stewed with herbs.  But then I got to egulletting and they burnt.  I ate them, mind you, I've had worse.  But the leftovers didn't go to the refrigerator.  Bar Keepers Friend is my friend.

 

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Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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6 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

It has been a wretchedly cold day, and a good candidate for beans.

 

 

It was like that here yesterday.  I watched a repeat of an Ina Garten show wherein she made Winter Minestrone.  

It looked SO good that I'm dying to make it now.

(I suppose I really should have posted the recipe in the Soup Topic.)

Edited by lindag (log)
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  • 11 months later...

Smoked cauliflower.  I cooked on the Weber on high, indirect heat with lump charcoal and pecan. It took forever so I pulled it and finished it off using the steam function in the IP. It was awful. Too much smoke and bitter. Might be better with a shorter time in the smoke. 

 

A friend said that the pic looks like a white plate with a hole in it.

20190427_222536.jpg

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That's the thing about opposum inerds, they's just as tasty the next day.

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