cdkitchen > feeddaily blog
Dear Food: It's me, not you
by Guest Writer, Valerie Whitmore Do you ever have those days when things just don't quite work right? I don't mean bad days really, just kinda off days. That's how my cooking has been lately. Nothing has turned out quite right.
I'm pretty sure it has to do with motivation. I've been so busy the past few weeks that my mind is definitely elsewhere when I'm cooking. I haven't been excited to cook, and once I start a recipe I find myself dreading any lengthy procedures or time consuming prep. My heart just hasn't been in it.
And it's shown in the results.
Maybe I'm not taking an extra step to make something work, or maybe I'm cutting corners and doing things too quickly, or maybe I'm just not really reading the recipe. I'm not sure which it is, I just know that our recipe testing lately has been a bit lacklustre. And I don't believe it's the fault of the recipes. I mean, I've been testing new recipes daily for 10 years now and I've never had 7 recipes in a row turn out poorly
It's definitely me.
First it was the goat cheese kisses I was going to bring to a friend's house for a little holiday potluck. When I first made them they looked like they belonged in a litterbox. Little pistachio covered turds. Yes, I just said turds. The goat cheese didn't form around the fig quarters nicely and they were oblong shaped. They looked nasty. I chilled them and formed them into little balls and they looked better, but not great. I gave up and brought them to the potluck anyway. Oddly, they went over well. And yes, I did bring other food to the shindig that was less repulsive looking. I do have a reputation to uphold afterall.
Then came Christmas dinner. What a deep fried disaster that was! Brent had requested fried chicken this year. Poor guy loves it and never gets it unless it's on a menu at a restaurant. I love it too, but to make it is messy and it's seriously unhealthy. So it's a special occasion food here.
My menu was probably a little over-ambitious for my tiny deep fryer. It consisted of the fried chicken, fried mashed potato balls, and for dessert: fried ice cream. And yes, we had the cardiologist on speed-dial.
First I made the mashed potato balls. Fresh out of the fryer they were awesome! I put them in the oven to keep warm while I fried the chicken
The chicken required that it be dredged in flour, then dipped in cold water, then repeat several times. O.M.G. what a mess that was. The first piece was a horrible, horrible mess. I decided I would just make the flour mixture into a batter and dip the chicken in. That too created a huge mess but I finally was able to turn it into a usable batter after multiple attempts. I also ended up wearing more of the batter than I think went on the chicken.
So, the chicken gets battered and into the deep fryer it goes. Except, my deep fryer is so tiny that it only holds small batches. It took an hour to get all the chicken browned - not even cooked through, just browned. I had to put it in the oven to finish cooking.
By this time the mashed potato balls were soggy. I figured that turning up the oven heat to finish cooking the chicken would crisp the potato balls up. It did, but it also turned them into balls of flaming hot potato lava. I made the mistake of biting into one first when we finally sat down for dinner. It burned the roof of my mouth so badly I could barely eat the rest of my food. After that they were known as suicide balls.
As I cut into the chicken I realized that despite it being golden brown and registering done on the meat thermometer - it still wasn't actually done. Ew. Seriously, Brent, I'm not trying to poison you
Back into the oven it went, further delaying our Christmas dinner. And just for reference, it's 9pm at this point.
The jalapeno gravy I made to go with the mashed potato balls was tasty, but in the frying frustrations I forgot to thicken it with the cornstarch mixture as directed. I only realized it as we were dishing up our dinner. So it was more of a jalapeno soup.
Speaking of soup, another item on the dinner menu was one of Brent's favorites: acorn squash soup with corned beef and walnuts. Now, I know it doesn't really fit in with the deep-fried goodness of the meal but we didn't really care. Except that for the first time, it didn't turn out. I've made this soup a dozen times. It's one of those few recipes that I repeat. I'm still not sure what went wrong. It was thin and watery and lacked flavor. Maybe I didn't use enough squash. I didn't weigh them when I bought them but I bought the usual size/amount that I have when I've made it before. But being off an ounce or two shouldn't have done it. Maybe I didn't measure something else accurately - being so distracted it's hard to say. All I know is that watery squash is gross
The highlight of the dinner was probably the fried ice cream, but even that wasn't what I'd hoped for. It had a layer of almonds on the ice cream which was then dipped in egg and then in graham cracker crumbs. The recipe ingredient list called for slivered almonds but the directions referred to the ground almonds (ok, so maybe this was more of the recipe's fault than mine). I bought sliced almonds because I couldn't see the chunky slivered almonds working right. I also don't really care for raw almonds. I think they should have been toasted. They just seemed out of place when you took a bite. I was, however, impressed that the ice cream fried up nicely. Oh, and the recipe had a cinnamon chocolate sauce that went with it. Yeah, after the deep fried nightmare leading up to it... Screw it. I just dug out a bottle of Hershey's syrup instead.
And in what is hopefully the last cooking failure of the week, last night I made a salmon stir-fry. I figured after all the less-than-heart-healthy eating we'd been doing it would be a nice change. But, like the rest of my cooking adventures this week I missed a step and didn't stir fry the salmon separately from the vegetables. It made a fishy mess. Flavor-wise it was ok but the texture was less than appealing
As Brent dutifully ate the salmon sludge, he said "maybe I should take over the cooking for a while..."
He never complains, so you know it's bad.
Tomorrow we start a new batch of recipes, so here's hoping that my cooking mojo returns and I have nothing but happy food stories to report.
I'm pretty sure it has to do with motivation. I've been so busy the past few weeks that my mind is definitely elsewhere when I'm cooking. I haven't been excited to cook, and once I start a recipe I find myself dreading any lengthy procedures or time consuming prep. My heart just hasn't been in it.
And it's shown in the results.
Maybe I'm not taking an extra step to make something work, or maybe I'm cutting corners and doing things too quickly, or maybe I'm just not really reading the recipe. I'm not sure which it is, I just know that our recipe testing lately has been a bit lacklustre. And I don't believe it's the fault of the recipes. I mean, I've been testing new recipes daily for 10 years now and I've never had 7 recipes in a row turn out poorly
It's definitely me.
First it was the goat cheese kisses I was going to bring to a friend's house for a little holiday potluck. When I first made them they looked like they belonged in a litterbox. Little pistachio covered turds. Yes, I just said turds. The goat cheese didn't form around the fig quarters nicely and they were oblong shaped. They looked nasty. I chilled them and formed them into little balls and they looked better, but not great. I gave up and brought them to the potluck anyway. Oddly, they went over well. And yes, I did bring other food to the shindig that was less repulsive looking. I do have a reputation to uphold afterall.
Then came Christmas dinner. What a deep fried disaster that was! Brent had requested fried chicken this year. Poor guy loves it and never gets it unless it's on a menu at a restaurant. I love it too, but to make it is messy and it's seriously unhealthy. So it's a special occasion food here.
My menu was probably a little over-ambitious for my tiny deep fryer. It consisted of the fried chicken, fried mashed potato balls, and for dessert: fried ice cream. And yes, we had the cardiologist on speed-dial.
First I made the mashed potato balls. Fresh out of the fryer they were awesome! I put them in the oven to keep warm while I fried the chicken
The chicken required that it be dredged in flour, then dipped in cold water, then repeat several times. O.M.G. what a mess that was. The first piece was a horrible, horrible mess. I decided I would just make the flour mixture into a batter and dip the chicken in. That too created a huge mess but I finally was able to turn it into a usable batter after multiple attempts. I also ended up wearing more of the batter than I think went on the chicken.
So, the chicken gets battered and into the deep fryer it goes. Except, my deep fryer is so tiny that it only holds small batches. It took an hour to get all the chicken browned - not even cooked through, just browned. I had to put it in the oven to finish cooking.
By this time the mashed potato balls were soggy. I figured that turning up the oven heat to finish cooking the chicken would crisp the potato balls up. It did, but it also turned them into balls of flaming hot potato lava. I made the mistake of biting into one first when we finally sat down for dinner. It burned the roof of my mouth so badly I could barely eat the rest of my food. After that they were known as suicide balls.
As I cut into the chicken I realized that despite it being golden brown and registering done on the meat thermometer - it still wasn't actually done. Ew. Seriously, Brent, I'm not trying to poison you
Back into the oven it went, further delaying our Christmas dinner. And just for reference, it's 9pm at this point.
The jalapeno gravy I made to go with the mashed potato balls was tasty, but in the frying frustrations I forgot to thicken it with the cornstarch mixture as directed. I only realized it as we were dishing up our dinner. So it was more of a jalapeno soup.
Speaking of soup, another item on the dinner menu was one of Brent's favorites: acorn squash soup with corned beef and walnuts. Now, I know it doesn't really fit in with the deep-fried goodness of the meal but we didn't really care. Except that for the first time, it didn't turn out. I've made this soup a dozen times. It's one of those few recipes that I repeat. I'm still not sure what went wrong. It was thin and watery and lacked flavor. Maybe I didn't use enough squash. I didn't weigh them when I bought them but I bought the usual size/amount that I have when I've made it before. But being off an ounce or two shouldn't have done it. Maybe I didn't measure something else accurately - being so distracted it's hard to say. All I know is that watery squash is gross
The highlight of the dinner was probably the fried ice cream, but even that wasn't what I'd hoped for. It had a layer of almonds on the ice cream which was then dipped in egg and then in graham cracker crumbs. The recipe ingredient list called for slivered almonds but the directions referred to the ground almonds (ok, so maybe this was more of the recipe's fault than mine). I bought sliced almonds because I couldn't see the chunky slivered almonds working right. I also don't really care for raw almonds. I think they should have been toasted. They just seemed out of place when you took a bite. I was, however, impressed that the ice cream fried up nicely. Oh, and the recipe had a cinnamon chocolate sauce that went with it. Yeah, after the deep fried nightmare leading up to it... Screw it. I just dug out a bottle of Hershey's syrup instead.
And in what is hopefully the last cooking failure of the week, last night I made a salmon stir-fry. I figured after all the less-than-heart-healthy eating we'd been doing it would be a nice change. But, like the rest of my cooking adventures this week I missed a step and didn't stir fry the salmon separately from the vegetables. It made a fishy mess. Flavor-wise it was ok but the texture was less than appealing
As Brent dutifully ate the salmon sludge, he said "maybe I should take over the cooking for a while..."
He never complains, so you know it's bad.
Tomorrow we start a new batch of recipes, so here's hoping that my cooking mojo returns and I have nothing but happy food stories to report.