Food Glorious Food!

[wildeabandon]

You know, I don't think I've talked about food on here for a while, at least not more than in passing. That can't possibly be right. Talk to me about food, people! Actually, I know, I can have a poll - not only will it allow me to indulge my curiosity, but I can use it for reference when you come to dinner.

[Poll #1161910]

And finally, if you're so inclined, give me your favourite recipes, tell me about wonderful meals or give me anecdotes about hilarious food mishaps.

Comments

[kotenok.livejournal.com]

One of the best recent food mishaps was the night of my 10-strong dinner party back in November, where I'd asked my kitchen-helper to put the beans on to cook, and hadn't put any water in the pan (and they hadn't realised)

Ten or so minutes later we had some rather charred beans!

[numberland.livejournal.com]

The last partly because it might help with getting food into me when that's hard, otherwise toss up.

[emperor]

How much I cook depends on how often atreic is home - typically she cooks and I wash up on work-nights (because she hates having to load the dishwasher after dinner). When cooking for myself I tend to be very perfunctory about it (this is something I should probably fix), but I like cooking for other people.

I'm not a great eater of puddings, but I make a fair range of them, and really like making them. My tiramisu is a thing of joy. Sadly, this has rather turned me into a pudding snob - I'm more likely to be disappointed by a restaurant pudding than any other part of a meal.

I like sharing meals with friends, and don't really care what they cook for me - I'd rather a dinner host cooked something they liked cooking rather than trying hard to do something they think I'll like. I appreciate this may be a little paradoxical :) I think this may be a hangover from the fact that my parents didn't cook very much at all, so "proper" meals still seem like a bit of a treat!

My LJ has "food" tagged entries as appropriate. My most embarrasing cooking blind spot is white sauces, which I just can't do. Sometime I should spend an afternoon conquering them.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Can I add "sakē" to your list of matched drinks? Important for good Japanese food and surprisingly good for dim sum.

[ninevrise.livejournal.com]

Made "collard greens" the other day -- soooo good. I used spring greens, 'cause I could find them here. Bacon (or other pork meat) browned in the bottom of a large pot; a little bit of sliced onion, sauteed until transparent; add chopped garlic clove; greens removed from the stem and cut into slices, then thrown into the pot immediately after the garlic, with a dash or two of vinegar, a dash of salt, a dash of sugar, and a sprinkling of Tabasco. Put the lid on and wait for the greens to become mostly tender, stirring occasionally. To be served with Tabasco to taste.

OMG greeeeeeens.

[simont]

I feel as if I cheated on the last question.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Once we (Laura, Liz and me) made this cake that wanted whipped egg whites in it to hold it up. Only, the recipe didn't say at the start "the main thing giving the texture of this cake is whipped egg white", it just had a list of steps. So not realising how critically important it was, I gave the egg yolks to Laura to whip by the time honoured method of putting fork and jug in her hand and saying "X's testicles*" whenever she stopped. (This was before I got my mixer.) It was not actually as flat as one might have expected...

*where X is somebody heartily disliked by her and many others

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

What goes wrong with them?

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

Mm, me too. If I had to give up faculties in order everything would go before sight adequate to read and the rudiments of cognition, but since "touch" was included in the second option I wrote it off with barely a thought. Not that one could really appreciate food without being able to register its consistency, but still.

[emperor]

I think I've had most of the possible failure modes (burned, lumpy, fails to thicken), but TBPH I've mostly just avoided them as "hard, avoid" for the last 3 or 4 years. It doesn't help that our scales are rubbish, especially for small quantities.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Hilarious cooking mishap wasn't one of mine, but one of my exes poisoned me on Valentine's Day by cooking a chilli without sufficiently soaking the kidney beans (he stopped eating after a mouthful because it "taste[d] funny"; I kept going out of politeness).

[alcina2.livejournal.com]

A recipe that doesn't sound as if it is at all nice but is surprisingly wonderful. It is also the most tiem consuming and fiddly thing in the world:

1) Get a leg of lamb, a large one. Peel some garlic and cut each clove longways into about 3 strips. The get a long, thin knife and stab the leg of lamb. Insert one strip of garlic into the whole so it's completely hiddden. Repeat until the whole leg of lamb has had garlic added. This usually takes 1-2 bulbs of garlic in 100+ little holes.

2) Roast the leg of lamb as per usual.

3) Chop a massive pile of peeled mushrooms very fine 1-2 large supermarket containers full. This is very tedious and it's amazing how mush chooped mushrrom results; make sure you have a damn big bowl!

4) Put a LOT of butter (3 ounces or so) in a flying pan. Chop 3 shallots finely and fry lightly. Start adding the mushrooms. That huge heap of mushrooms WILL fit in the frying pan once cooked, as they shrink enormously. You will almost certainly need to add butter. Keep stirring all the time and don't turn the heat too high.

5) Put your mushroom mix to cool down. Ditto your leg of cooked lamb.

6) Put the leg of lamb so the side with most meat is uppermost. Cut several straight, deep cuts across, then pack each one with the mushroom-mix.

7) Grate half a pound of parmesan (just when you thought you'd done the tedious bits!). Melt 3 ounces of butter in a pan and then turn off the heat and mix in the parmesan to make a paste. Spread this paste over the lamb.

8) Return to the oven to brown the cheese mix slightly anhd heat the lamb up

Serve with the left over mushroom mix and some very bland vegs and carbs (plain boiled potatoes or mash is best) because the main is so rich you'll be sick otherwise.

Although this dish is a LOT of work, it has one brilliant advantage for dinner parties: it is essentially a ready meal. You have to do steps 6 and 7 while it is cool, and then put it in the oven to heat it up. This measn you can get it ready before your guests arrive and have no real work to do one they are here.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

It doesn't help that our scales are rubbish, especially for small quantities.

Gosh, I don't think I've ever used scales for a white sauce. Once you've got the amount of butter the other things are just "add until the consistency is right". Occasionally this means I misjudge the amount of butter, and end up with too much cheese sauce, but y'know, I find it hard to see that as a problem. Mmmm, cheese.

[alcina2.livejournal.com]

To answer your poll question about the best meal I ever ate, see this post http://alcina2.livejournal.com/223358.html?mode=reply for the details. The recipe above was the main meat course.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

But I only make much effort if I'm cooking for other people.

There's a basic level of caringness about cooking which generally takes place regardless (unless I'm pushed for time) which is sufficiently internalised that I characterise it as minimal effort. Making more effort when cooking for other people characterises itself as changes in presentation, addition of deserts and starters and more considered ingredients rather than changing the attention paid to the main course.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I'd happily lose touch.

My second best meal was in a restaurant in France in Fontevrault. Just an average looking place, but I had guinea fowl that simply melted off the bone. Fantastic.

I love food, and I love having it cooked for me, and cooking it. I'm best at cakes and pastry. I was going to say 'gourmet' food, but then I love a proper squishy burger and slightly crispy chips, which isn't exactly poncy. I don't really have the money to eat out a lot, but I love to cook for people!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Scales are nothing to do with it. The problems you've got are all from the root that you don't stir it enough. You have to stand there and stirstirstir until it's homogeneous after each small addition of milk, otherwise the flour doesn't come out of the lumps and thicken it, and the bottom burns. Once you start adding milk you don't do anything else until you've got it to the right consistency.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Oh my - that does sound fabulous, and I shall definitely try the lamb recipe - it sound delicious.

I love cooking ridiculous multi-course meals. I don't think I'm going to go higher than ten again, as by that point it becomes almost impossible to eat, but I did manage 14 once. With veggie alternatives for all the meat and fish courses.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

*grin* I did think of you as I wrote it.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Alcohol with a meal has a lot to do with relaxation for me, which means tea makes a good substitute :-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Worse than that, if you lost your sense of touch you would bite through your tongue because you couldn't tell where it was, and burn your hands and break your toes without noticing and get gangrene, and be unable to do any personal hygiene whatsoever properly - all the things that happen to people with leprosy.

I don't know what I would choose. My hearing is nearly useless in a crowd, but I wouldn't want to lose music. I couldn't lose sight because I would be unable to do anything, likewise touch. I like tasting my food a lot, but smell is also important so I can tell when something is unsafe to eat, or when there's a gas leak or a fire. I think I would lose taste because it's the least dangerous.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I couldn't lose touch; I like sex about exactly as much as I like food, and would feel similarly bereft without it. It would be hearing for me, as although I enjoy it, I don't get nearly as much out of music as most people appear to.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Puddings are the bits that I'm not terribly good at. I can bake reasonably well, but don't do it nearly often enough.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Omnomnomnomnom.

I usually do greens stir-fried with a mixture of garlic and fresh ginger and a dash of soy sauce, but I shall have to try that.

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

Nah, sex is all in the mind for me. I doubt I'd enjoy it appreciably less if my sense of touch vanished.