Your Culinary Nemesis in the Kitchen

[bleudauvergne]

I was afraid of pie crusts until my husband said: "Are you going to make the crust? It's so much better home made." I had never done it, because the store bought crusts here (especially the all butter ones) taste great to me.

Julia's recipe said "liquid" instead of water so I used cold chicken stock (it was to make a crust for some stuffed chicken breasts). Um... It was so easy, melt in your mouth delicious and cheaper than store bought that I will never go back. But you must let the dough rest.

As for my nemesis - I always manage to screw up creme brulee. It just won't set right. I've screwed it up on countless occaisions. My recipe must be wrong, or something. I don't have a blow torch, either, you're supposed to be able to brown the top under the broiler, though. I've never reached that point though.

And fois gras is beginning to challenge me. It's impossible to serve an overcooked foie gras, because an overcooked foie gras is simply fat in the bottom of the pan. It wants to melt.

We are having a first attempt at pasta making tonight. We got the European version of the Acme hand crank type like in the classes. So I will let you know if that is one of my nemesis' too. (will be putting foie gras in to challenge myself)

-Lucy

[ellencho]

I actually ENJOY making pie crust/pastries. My personal nemesis is any sort of Indian cuisine. I can take the world's finest Indian ingredients and turn them into a big unappetizing mess.

[JennotJenn]

I can't bake! Bread. Pies. Cakes. Cookies. Anything.

Oh, I can cover the entire kitchen and myself in flour. I can knead, punch down, let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, pull, push, feed yeast, chill dough, preheat oven, etc., but I cannot turn out a single edible baked product!

Grrrr! It's all the more vexing since my mother, her mother and her sisters were/are all excellent bakers!

Squeat

Oh, one thing I do do right: biscuits. But that's it.

I'll trade ya a bread/cookie/cake lesson for a biscuit lesson.

I should be able to make them, but I can't seem to get it right. They're either flat or dry or both. And yes, I've tried White Lily, though my grandmas said something was off about the last couple of bags they've bought.

I've tried Crisco. I've tried butter. I guess all that's left is to give lard go. Which is fine by me...just wish I could find the real, old timey lard and not the hydrogenated crap. Now, my mom's mom swears by mayonaise in her biscuit dough, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I know it's just egg and oil. I make it from time to time because I don't keep any in the house, not even for guests, so when someone comes over and wants mayo on their sandwich, I have to make it. But I can't stand the stuff. Smells like Elmer's glue. So the thought of putting it in biscuit dough willingly is something I just can't wrap my mind around it.

So, there you go. Biscuits are my nemisis. Oh, can't make their relative the scone either.

[ellencho]

Hey JennotJenn I used to be a hopeless biscuit maker but then I found some recipes that work for me from Cook's Illustrated. Email me if you'd like them. Oh and their scone recipe is pretty good too.

Edited April 8, 2004 by ellencho (log)

[curlywurlyfi]

meringues. summer is approaching (YES, EVEN IN LONDON) and with it the weeping meringue disaster looms. It should all be so perfect! made mayonnaise to go with the cold poached salmon? use the egg whites for meringues - cream + fresh strawberries - perfect English summer meal on the green lawn, girls in cotton print dresses, the soft clip of tennis balls from the bottom of the garden...

until I get my hands on the egg whites and turn them into nothing more appetizing than sticky flaccid balloons leaking clear sugar.

bah.

but I can do piecrust?

[JPW]

My nemesis is sauteeing garlic. I could put garlic in oil in a cold pan on the countertop, and I'd still find a way to burn it.

[Anna N]

My nemesis is sauteeing garlic. I could put garlic in oil in a cold pan on the countertop, and I'd still find a way to burn it.

Me too!

[markf424]

French fries. I do the double fry, I soak the starch off of them, I do it all, but they're never crispy and delicious like I desire. I've actually given up.

[Ladybug]

Buttermilk biscuits - I've yearned to master these as long as I've been cooking and I've never managed it. I've tried lots of different recipes and have actually turned out some nice biscuits - but none of them were what I was after - tall, fluffy, very buttermilky-tasting cut out biscuits with craggy tops. Hardees makes a better biscuit than I do and that smarts.

[bigwino]

Pad thai. I still can't quite get the one I want. Either the flavor balance isn't quite there or the rice sticks are too soft and fall apart during the cooking.

[eunny jang]

Anything deep-fried. I always burn something, spill something, forget to pat something dry, knock over each and every one of the dishes holding the components of a bound breading, leaving a big sticky wad of eggs, flour and breadcrumbs on my floors. My apartment gets cloudy with oil, to boot.

bah. I think I'll go to Popeye's.

[JennotJenn]

Anything deep-fried. I always burn something, spill something, forget to pat something dry, knock over each and every one of the dishes holding the components of a bound breading, leaving a big sticky wad of eggs, flour and breadcrumbs on my floors. My apartment gets cloudy with oil, to boot.

bah. I think I'll go to Popeye's.

Oh yeah. I forgot about deep frying. Also my nemisis.

markf424, maybe your oil is too new (just read frying chapter in How to Read a French Fry...knowledge is only academic at this point, since I haven't tried to fry anything since reading it).

[Toliver]

I can't make Milk Gravy.

Mine tastes like...nothing.

And who wants to eat chicken fried steak without a good milk gravy?

Still waiting for this to come up in the eGCI....

[Brad Ballinger]

Sauerbraten. There's such a small window for optimum marinating time so it doesn't end up too tough or too dry. It's easily the worst thing I've ever made -- twice.

[foodie52]

I was given an Asian rice cooker. That took care of the rice problem. Makes perfect rice every time. Also I've found some rices that cook better than others. I use true Indian Basmati for the fluffiest rice around. It just cooks up fluffy every time.

I'm nervous around fresh, expensive tuna steaks. I almost always overcook them so I've given up on them. Total waste of money! When they are overcooked...well, you might as well open a can of tuna....same texture. Ick.

[adoxograph]

Oh, I'm so glad I am not the only one with a culinary nemesis. Pie crusts, fine, rice, no problem, biscuits are great thanks to my sister, breads, garlic....

I can't make Nestle's Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies.

I mean it, it's completely ridiculous. My coworkers love my cakes, my experiments in tarts, my SO gets excited when I tell him "I don't know" is for dinner. Chocolate chip cookies? Bad news - too hard, way undercooked, burnt yet raw, you name it. The SO, who cannot cook, of course makes them perfectly.

Interestingly enough, if I vary from the recipe far enough that it becomes a cookie with chocolate chips, rather than a chocolate chip cookie, I'm usually OK.

So, Doctor, can you help me? :)

[balmagowry]

So, Doctor, can you help me? :)

Nope, nobody can. That's the point - one also missed by Mayhaw Man in his remarks about pie crust up-thread. See, these nemeses have nothing to do with skill or knowledge or lack of either; they're Bad Juju, is what they are. Your ability to make the cookies under a different name and assumption is a case in point; so is my second-chance-perfect pie crust. I'm no fatalist, as a rule, but some things are meant to be and others ain't, is what I figure.

(But I still like to tell myself that if I made pie every day I'd make a perfect crust every tiime....)

Edited April 8, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[Carolyn Tillie]

Okay all you pie-crust dweebs - have I ever got news for you! On June 18th the ever-so-fabulous eGullet Culinary Institute will be having its first pie-crust class!

Mark your calendars! Get your rolling pins ready! You will be taught!

[saffron]

It's sushi nori rolls for me. No matter how much effort I've put into it - I can't enjoy it. It's like tea for me - it only tastes great if someone else makes it for me. And I can never get the rice at the edges just right. You know how they say the sign of a good sushi maker is that the edges are even and that you don't have it even the edges with a knife. Not me. Sigh.

[lleechef]

Sourdough bread. Made my own starter from scratch, left it out, covered with cheesecloth to capture the wild yeast. After 2 weeks it looked like gloppy glue. Used it anyway. Made the sponge, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, put in oven set at 250 (it was a cold chilly day) to help it along. A friend stops by for a drink.......plastic melted onto the bowl and the sponge. Discard and start again.

Next day made three loaves. After 35 min. of baking they were as white as aspirin tablets......very unappetizing. I brushed the tops with butter and put them back and turned the broiler on (electric, which I had NEVER used). 60 secs. later all three loaves were on fire and burnt black. The smoke detectors all went off.

The starter went into the trash in disgust and I went back to my regular Italian loaf.

[Toliver]

...Chocolate chip cookies? Bad news...

So, Doctor, can you help me? :)

Perhaps "Dr." Alton Brown can.

Here (click) is the transcript for his "Good Eats" show on three ways to make a chocolate chip cookie: Thin, Chewy or Puffy. He also explains why the cookies are the way they are, how changing ingredients and ratios changes the type of cookie you get.

I have tried the "Chewy" recipe to great success. Click here for the recipe. At the bottom of the recipe are links to the recipes for the other 2 types of cookies.

Also note that the type of cookie sheet you use will also impact how your cookies turn out. Dark brown cookie sheets are great for baking crisp cookies and the "silverish/grayish" air-cushion kind of cookie sheets are great for baking chewy or puffy cookies.

I say as long as you have an office full of people who will eat anything (or is that my work place?) try your hand at Alton's recipes and take the disasters (if any) in to work.

[ejebud]

I'm a garden variety screwer upper!! there isn't one thing, but anything I cook is subject to a screw up!! I must say that MOST things I make come out ok but sometimes the simplest thing gets screwed up if I'm not "in the groove"

[NeroW]

I am really bad at making wontons and rolling spring rolls and anything like that.

[Knicke]

Icing cakes.

I think there are various issues involved here - icing that's too thick/not the proper consistancy, cake that's too crumbly/warm/stubborn, impatience and lack of finesse on my part...if I can manage to keep it together and keep the crumbs out of the icing, it still ends up looking like it's been spackled by a mentally ill chimpanzee...

Which is why I stick to un-iced cakes, thin glazes, and light dustings of powdered sugar for decoration. Who needs mortar-like buttercream anyhow?

[GG Mora]

Piping. Oh, I can get nice consistent curliqueus and what-have-you. The problem is my hands. Hot hands. The icing in the bag quickly turns to something resembling mayonnaise. Ever try piping mayonnaise? And I used to have a small side-business making wedding cakes (I'll still do them for friends and family).

I tried everything. I'd keep two bags going at once and swap them out, letting one rest in a cold water bath when off duty. All kinds of machinations. Last summer, I finally hit on a solution (at 3 in the morning before the wedding, having scraped off the piping for the second time). I slipped on a pair of Thinsulate-lined black leather gloves (normally reserved for driving on frigid winter days). Hah! It's a little fetishy, but it works.