From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
March is winging by and bringing spring with it. We had a relatively mild winter, so I won’t complain, but still glad to see warm days, birds returning and crocus popping up. I’m hoping house hunting will also pick up. You know it’s slim pickings when your real estate agent calls to apologize there’s not more to offer.
Despite still having to cook in the postage stamp kitchen, I decided to try something new. I did some research on Irish Soda Bread. I never tried any before, because it always looks dry and then there are those pesky raisins. Raisins only belong in bread if there is a large helping of cinnamon/sugar swirl joining them. At least in my kitchen. But when I went looking for recipes, turns out that the raisin/caraway seed concoction is a strictly American invention.
I did find one that seemed to be more authentic and that’s what I went to bake. Before we get to the recipe, let me say this, I’m not sure this is one I would make again. I think I would rather just bake a nice batch of biscuits. But if you need something to get you through a long, cold winter night, I guess I can see the appeal. Cheap enough to make, heavy enough to fend off starvation. Or as a friend quipped, “Heavy enough to be a weapon if you throw it.”
So why include it tonight? Because you should be unafraid in the kitchen. If a recipe fails or isn’t to your liking, all you’ve done is waste a few ingredients. But if you never try anything new, how will you ever discover that new family favorite? And besides, someone might like this one, even though I didn’t.
I think failure is just part of cooking. I’ve burnt the main course with guests waiting, forgot to add leavening to one cake, added too much leavening to another and my first attempt at corned beef turned out more like beef jerky. One time a friend and I almost set her house on fire trying to grill chicken. How about you, what’s your biggest kitchen disaster? Besides potentially drying out the corned beef, what’s on the menu for the weekend?
For tonight, how about I start out with some recipes that did work:
A bunch of different ways to make Corned Beef and Cabbage can be found here.
JeffreyW makes Guinness Irish Stew (pictured above), photos and recipe here.
Really good Biscuits to go with that stew can be found here.
For the pet lovers, I have three fun things for you: JeffreyW introduces us to the newest nursing home resident (scroll down), Zander poses pretty for me and finally a Bixby update where we tackle the troublesome teens (his look in the top photo is really all you need to know).
The featured recipe tonight is a more traditional Irish Soda Bread. This is a rustic loaf and can be baked in a loaf pan or as a rounded loaf in a cast iron skillet. The key is not to handle the dough a lot, once it forms into a ball, place it in the pan, cut a 1-inch deep X in the top (I did several) and bake. The more it’s handled, the tougher it becomes.
Irish Soda Bread
1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
1-3/4 cups whole wheat flour
4 tbsp toasted wheat germ
3 tbsp old-fashioned oats
2 tbsp (packed) dark brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
8 tbsp buttermilk powder*
2 tbsp chilled butter, cut into pieces
2 cups water (add 1/2 cup at a time, using only what is needed)
loaf pan (I used mini pans), well butteredPreheat oven to 425 degrees F
Whisk together the first 8 ingredients. Add butter and crumble together by hand until all the butter is incorporated. Add water in a bit at a time until it forms a soft dough that holds together. Mine took the full 2 cups. You can smooth it and then add to the loaf pan. I left mine a bit more rustic because I was afraid of over-handling it.
Cut 1-inch deep Xs in the top. This makes sure the dense dough cooks through. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes until a wooden skewer comes out clean.
This is a very moist, if heavy, loaf because of the buttermilk. You can do an all “white” loaf if desired, just substitute all-purpose flour for the whole wheat. I’d leave in the oats and wheat germ for added flavor.
*why buttermilk powder instead of buttermilk? – because you can keep it on hand and it doesn’t go bad (keep in the refrigerator). You can also make your own buttermilk by adding 1 tsp vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk.
That’s it for this week. Probably try for something very spring-like next week. Until then – TaMara
Calouste
What goes best with Irish Stew IMO are Irish soda farl, but they are pretty much unknown in the States unfortunately.
Raisins in soda bread are indeed an American aberration, never seen that in the British isles.
KG
My biggest cooking diaster was trying to make biscuits. Wasn’t thinking and mixed until it was batter rather than dough. They didn’t quite rise properly in the oven.
My sister, however, when in high school tried to unfreeze some Hersey kisses in the microwave, while still in the aluminum wrapping. That was fun
WereBear
While I was in high school, a friend and I decided to make doughnuts.
I think we both put the yeast in. It was summer. In Florida. The dough rose well and quickly. We got snagged on the deep-frying part. We hadn’t realized it took an ungodly amount of oil, and we were debating improvising with a fry pan and flipping them. Perhaps make them smaller? We began shaping the dough.
It was incredibly sticky. It clung to things, and then it got bigger. It was overflowing the bowl. We got a bigger bowl. We tried adding flour to make it easier to work. It sucked up the flour and grew some more.
We were starting to become afraid of it. We gave up on shaping it and cooking it at all. We just wanted to clean up the kitchen. We threw the dough out and started getting it off the counters, drawer pulls, cabinets, bowls, and spoons.
We were starting to make a dent in the mess and opened the trashcan to throw out the paper towels. It had almost reached the top of the can. We put it in a giant leaf bag and dragged it out to the trash.
By the time we heard his mother’s car in the drive we’d made the kitchen look presentable again. We heard her at the back door, asking, “What is in the trash?”
Outside, the growing mass had popped the lid off the trash can and was two feet above the opening.
But then, it stopped.
I haven’t attempted doughnuts since.
WaterGirl
Forget the food – though I did save the mocha cake and the spicy potato soup recipes.
I feel your pain on Bixby. Sorry you suck, that must be as bad as when kids say they hate you. I’m sure the joy outweighs the pain, but some days it’s just hard. But not for long, and you’ve done a fabulous job with him. Repeat after me: I am a great dog mom.
Zander is so gorgeous. Wow!
Where did you get the cool green thing to make mealtime take longer? I am trying the big stainless steel ball in the food bowl, and it’s helping, but the green thing looks awesome.
Phylllis
Putting an entire 12 oz can of chilis in adobo sauce in a batch of chili.
I am planning to cook the Guinness Irish Stew Tuesday.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: What a great story! It reminds me of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. I think that’s the one with the pink stuff that gets everywhere.
Snarki, child of Loki
Soda bread, in Ireland, is awesome. Attempts to make soda bread in the US invariably disappoint. The speculation is that it’s the type/grind of the flour that makes the difference, but beyond that, don’t know.
WaterGirl
My worst food disaster was so bad that even my cocker spaniel wouldn’t eat it, and she never met a food she didn’t like.
So I’m living in my first house after the dorms and I make some kind of broccoli casserole. We only had frozen broccoli spears at my house growing up so I had no understanding of the cooking difference between how frozen broccoli spears and fresh broccoli.
So I put the raw broccoli in my casserole. I can still remember checking it hour after hour after hour all day, waiting for the broccoli to be tender enough to eat. By the end, it was the saddest sickest color green you have ever seen, so I couldn’t even blame my dog when she backed away from it like a human would back away from a steaming pile of poop.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
It reminds me of Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
TaMara (BHF)
@WereBear: OK, I’m dying here. That’s hysterical.
@WaterGirl: Thanks. Today was actually a good day for him.The green thing was a gift, but I think they got it on Amazon. I alternate between that and two different food balls (kong and this purple thing) and a 3 qt square rubbermaid pitcher that he can’t roll, so he has to figure out different ways to get the food out.
I thought he would pick the green thing up and flip it, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to flip it, so it works well.
WaterGirl
I put myself through college working as a cashier at a grocery store. This was pre-microwave and back when frozen bread dough that you could thaw and bake had just come out and was a very big deal.
So one of the baggers (that’s what we called the young guys who bagged the groceries) decides to buy the frozen bread and can’t wait to make it.
He never thawed the dough out, just put it in the oven frozen, and couldn’t figure out why he ended up with a charred log.
NotMax
Hands down best Irish Soda Bread was from a recipe I hastily copied down from a TV cook* many moons ago, sometime around 1976 or ’77. Wish to heck I could find it. Easy-peasy to put together; never came out dry, never came out anything less than heavenly.
*Possibly Graham Kerr, but not totally certain of that.
KG
@WereBear: my only attempt a doughnuts has been the cafe du monde beignets, the just add water mix. Those worked well, but I’m afraid to do doughnuts because I have some Homer Simpson qualities that would not end well
RSR
Tonight I’m sipping on a home brewed oat malt stout, brewed with stout malt from the Malting Company of Ireland, and Simpsons naked golden oats (a huskless oat crystal malt).
Didn’t get around to brining my own corned beef for St. Paddy’s this year, but it’s good anytime, so maybe next month.
rikyrah
food looks good.
nothing better than corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots.
WaterGirl
@TaMara (BHF): I searched for green dog good bowl on amazon, and it popped right up! Is it hard to clean? Seems like it would be a real slime catcher.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I had never heard of that, but I added it to me “save for later” cart so I can get it next time I get a book for one of the little guys in my family.
HRA
I guess my first attempt to make spaghetti sauce for dinner would be my big mistake even if others also followed early on in my life. Even following the recipe my Italian mother in law gave me did not deter the spaghetti to float around the dish.
A newly married daughter’s attempt to bake a ham is still a subject of laughter. She called to say she had been looking for the bag of livers and other throwaway parts in the ham for a long time.
Culture of Truth
American tweaks on Irish cooking is not necessarily a bad thing,
TaMara (BHF)
@WaterGirl: It’s been pretty maintenance free. I rinse off all his food ‘toys’ every other day or so and that one stays the cleanest. I think mostly because it’s all about using his tongue, while the other ones he uses his entire mouth to push around.
I will say, it works best on carpet or grass. I have that mat I put on the kitchen floor that keeps him from pushing it around.
Mike in NC
My dad loved that Irish soda bread, which to me tasted like it was made from sawdust. When mom cooked a boiled dinner for Saint Patrick’s Day, it invariably included something inedible called a Daisy Ham.
No doubt many of the Italian-American kids I hung out with back then (60s-70s) were forced to eat canned ravioli and other crud.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: That was one of my favorite books. It led to perhaps one of my mother’s only attempts at mothering, when she tried to work up a “recipe” for oobleck, so I could follow it.
It didn’t work out well.
max
@NotMax: *Possibly Graham Kerr, but not totally certain of that.
Probably not. I taught myself to cook starting in my early teens and my mother (a fairly terrible cook) was always going on about Graham Kerr. So I tried a few of his recipes and boy howdy were those terrible. Several of them made the list of ‘worst kitchen disasters’ but I’ve had a few since then as well, and I’m not sure which one is the worst. I try and blot the memory of that sort of thing out.
At any rate I have a bunch of GK cookbooks that I’ve kept because I just can’t get rid of them. (They were my mom’s! …even though I doubt she’s cracked one since 1975.) Anyways, I just checked and he doesn’t have any soda bread recipes. (He doesn’t seem to have favored bread much at all.) And by 1977, that dude was on the 700 Club preaching the Gospel of some sort. So I’m pretty sure he isn’t it.
max
[‘I have a simple Irish Soda Bread recipe from a UK book featuring pub food. I might try that one.’]
TaMara (BHF)
LOL, My 8 year old niece just sent me a “rant” text, quite eloquent, too, because her parents won’t let her get another kitten (she has a 3 year old male and an 8 month old female). Her friend’s cat is expecting and she wants one, because she wants to “be a crazy cat lady” and mad her parents won’t let her.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
You might want to introduce Bartholomew through the first book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.
Oobleck is a sequel of sorts. They’re both a lot of fun — early, prose Seuss, with intriguing illustrations.
Ruckus
Was once grilling salmon for about 10 people (not at my house) and the new grill (gas) was for natural gas not propane. Of course the fish got all blackened, but not in the proper way, the grill ran way too rich and sooted up the fish. A right disaster. My sister, the chief with a thousand tricks fixed it right up and it turned out delicious.
Soda bread, made properly is great. And as you said if all else fails it makes a good weapon.
raven
St Patricks Day means one thing to me, hoops.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
She probably needed these instructions and video: http://www.instructables.com/id/Oobleck/
Edit: Well, it is a recipe thread!
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
Not in my Scotch/Irish-Sicilian family. There were of course uneatable things served for dinner and threats of child abuse if not eaten. I was once served the same brussel sprouts for dinner, breakfast, and dinner. Don’t know how but I managed to not eat for 2 days. Mom gave in first. Thank FSM.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks, but at that time I think Sir Timothy Berners-Lee was in diapers.
Mayur
Graham Kerr had a great gig. Getting drunk professionally and getting published books AND TV out of it is pretty awesome.
Sorry, but while the better half (as a Trinity alum and former Dubliner) is a fan, I have no use for Irish “cuisine” given the plethora of alternatives. The day I have a Guinness stew that beats Thomas Keller’s pot-au-feu (same price; the expense in both dishes is the meat) is the day I acknowledge Irish food as a thing.
The fact is that being able to make humble ingredients taste good is a laudatory skill, but trying to make the products of a humble cuisine taste good is just pointless. I might be lucky in this respect (the family is from India and thus our cuisine has niche protection, so to speak) but I just think that I’d be happier eating something French, Italian, Spanish, Sichuan, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese… on St. Patrick’s Day.
Yes this is a bit of a troll but I’ve also been dealing with a colleague (one of the most talented chefs I’ve ever met, and an alumnus of some of the world’s best restaurants) doing an Irish dinner at his restaurant for St. Pat’s that honestly sounds revolting, so I’m a bit tetchy.
raven
@Mayur: It’s ok, I have no use for drunks.
Mayur
@max: Bread soaks up too much of the booze.
pseudonymous in nc
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Going for a soft wheat flour like White Lily (or, better, a good whole wheat pastry flour) will make a difference.
“Wheaten bread” is another place to look for recipes that aren’t raisin’d to death.
mainmata
Being the grandson of Irish immigrants on both sides there was much discussion of Irish soda bread. Neither grandmother used raisins or carroway seeds. Grandmother O’Brown basically swapped out the liquids with 2 cups of Guinness Stout, which worked very well. Didn’t use buttermilk though I live that ingredient.
TaMara (BHF)
@mainmata: In college, we always made Beer Bread for study groups. Easy and fairly foolproof. As I was tasting the soda bread, all I kept thinking was, coulda used beer.
Tommy
Gosh you folks are killing me. My parents tend to buy lot of stuff and then never use it, so often kitchen related stuff ends up in my kitchen. I’ve had a pretty high-end bread maker in my house that has never been used. Been in my house for more than a month and never used it.
I consider myself something of a foodie and pretty good cook, but baking isn’t something I think I am remotely good at. Got to get that darn bread maker out and start using it. I like nice breads and now living in a rural area, I can barely get something that is a step up from Wonder Bread and clearly that isn’t acceptable.
Botsplainer
Biggest kitchen disaster? Got a few.
1. While cutting mushrooms into an artichoke salad for a party, my wife managed to plane off a good chunk of skin into the salad.
2. After chopping and melting down two pounds of high grade cocoa and butter onto a tray for Christmas truffles, while walking the tray to the second fridge to chill, I lost control of it putting it in and it spilled in and out of the fridge.
3. When the kids were little, we had a breadmaker. Wife was in the yard with the kids while the thing was on in the kneading cycle. It walked itself off the counter by vibrating and took a quart of olive oil off with it.
Debbie
@efgoldman:
The only kugel is sweet kugel.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
Go ahead and fire up the bread machine; they produce much better bread than the stuff you’ll get from the store. But if you want to try baking bread but are afraid you’ll mess it up, you owe it to yourself to try Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread. It’s simple enough that it’s hard to get wrong, and you’ll be amazed that you made something that good on your first try.
Violet
@WereBear: That story is hilarious. Thanks for sharing.
My most recent kitchen disaster was some lamb ribs–a rack of them. Bought at a farmer’s market, already in a shrink wrapped package. They went into the freezer and I pulled them out a few months later for some special occasion.
Thawed and seasoned and put them in the oven. Checked on them at some point and thought, “These don’t look right, but I’ll give them a bit longer.” Checked again. Still didn’t look right. On the third check I pulled them out to inspect them only to realize they had also been wrapped in a clear plastic film inside the shrink wrapped package. It was so thin and sheer and was on so tight that it hadn’t been visible during the prep stage, even though multiple people had looked at them.
Frantically pulled off the plastic wrap at that point, but the lamb had kind of steamed inside it. We ended up eating them but they were not nearly as good as they should have been and I wondered what toxins were baked into the meat from the plastic wrap.
Never seen anything like that. You simply couldn’t tell the plastic wrap was there. Bizarre.
Do not know what the farmer’s market guys were thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: I really on my local Frog run bakery to supply the majority of my bread kneads.
Tommy
Biggest kitchen disaster? Lucky I didn’t burn my house down. I tend to be both OCD and also a person that tends to try to do 3-4 things at the same time. If I start to do this or that and then go to clean or read or work I often can totally lose track of time.
I put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Then went to clean and somehow needed to run out to grab some cleaner. Then out my OCD clicked in and I started to do other things.
Came home to find I had burned through a pretty nice steel pot. I can’t believe it didn’t start a fire.
I was lucky, lucky, lucky.
Oh and I had a potato peeler and finger problem where I took off way more skin than I care to admit.
Steeplejack
@TaMara:
This is so true. I’m an okay cook, self-taught, better at some things than others. I have realized that occasionally I balk at trying something new because it feels too far out of my comfort zone. And I have to explicitly remind myself, What’s the worst that could happen? You make a mess and waste a few ingredients. No big deal. And after a few tries I usually get the hang of it.
I was thinking about this the other day because I wanted to try something like, but not exactly the same as, what Rachel Khoo did on one of her shows. She has two currently on the Cooking Channel: The Little Paris Kitchen (9:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday) and Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook: London (9:00 a.m. EDT Saturday). She does some interesting things, but I particularly like that she cooks in a real (and tiny!) kitchen with a few scruffy pots and pans and sketchy appliances definitely not on loan from Viking. I can’t remember what the specific thing was that I wanted to do a variation of, but I remember thinking, Gee, I’d like to find a recipe for that, followed by, Just start with her recipe and play around with it. But it’s an effort sometimes to fight the fear of “doing it wrong” or “making a mistake.”
One thing I definitely have learned is that the time to roll the dice and do the experimenting is not when the pressure’s on—“event” dinner, formal guests, etc.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: Yeah you gave me that link before I think. Thanks for posting it again. And I think Raven might have been the person when I was talking about the bread maker and starting to use it, he said if you have two hands you have a bread maker. I might just be strange but always felt that was one of the better comments to anything I’ve posted here.
Omnes Omnibus
One of my favorite scenes from one of my fav. Brit-coms.
jl
I love good Irish soda bread, and glad to hear that the raisins are some American gimmick. I like it plan better.
There is a good Irish bakery near my work, so will have to check out their version next week.
As for my biggest kitchen disaster? I’ll have to go check my files. Been so many.
Edit: Problem with my kitchen disasters, is that I feel obligated to eat them, if that is at all possible and safe. Not sure why. Puritan upbringing, maybe.
max
@Mayur: Bread soaks up too much of the booze.
Good point. The giant book he put out in 1972 is gorgeous. One of the most well-made modern publishing products I’ve ever seen. Lots of pictures, plenty of great design ideas, tremendously elastic spine, impressed cover, one of the largest and heaviest books I’ve ever seen. I think if they made a book of the same quality it’d retail for 500 pounds. (It’s a UK edition.)
The recipes are absolutely bloody horrid, and I have to say, I’d take plain Irish food over Graham Kerr any day.
max
[‘Oh my god.’]
Violet
@Tommy: The bread maker should come with a small recipe book in the box. It’ll work better with bread flour, but that’s readily available at most supermarkets. It’s easy to use, although I find mine chops up thing you add, like raisins, too much and it messes up the bread. I followed the instructions on when to add them and then my mom’s suggestions and now I take the bread out and hand knead those things in. This is for a Christmas bread that is full of fruit stuff, so it might work better with just one thing added.
The consistency of the bread isn’t quite the same as high end bread but it beats the store bought stuff. If you want something fancy like a baguette you’ll need to buy a baguette pan to get the proper crust.
TaMara (BHF)
@Omnes Omnibus: I love Chef!. First season was perfection.
Tommy
@jl:
I don’t have a Puritan upbringing but I am not sure I can recall the last time I didn’t eat most if not all of my kitchen disasters. Mom taught me this. She cooked three meals a day. Not the most wonderful chef in the world but we didn’t eat out of a microwave nor fast food. Mom spent a lot of time in the kitchen and I would ask to cook to be around her. I cooked the most messed up shit, never listening to her.
I was told you cook it you eat it. Still do that to this day …..
Culture of Truth
I decded to make pea soup in the slow cooker. But I used whole peas, not split peas. Two days of 8 hours each of slow cooking later, it still didn’t look like split pea soup. It tasted good, but it was better described as whole pea soup.
Culture of Truth
My other kitchen disaster was home made pizza. It was nothing like the real thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@TaMara (BHF):
It really was.
Violet
@Culture of Truth: Ovens usually aren’t hot enough.
Tommy
@Violet: My parents got the bread maker for a steal and it doesn’t include any recipe book or documentation. Of course I found it online, but not printed it because it is 180+ pages.
Interesting, I would not have thought of that. I want multiple grain bread where it is filling and will take a humus spread when toasted and not really any fruit added. Just not my cup of tea.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: I’ve never spread humus on my bread. But then again I’m not from the midwest.
Tommy
@Violet: I think I now know my problem with baking. I have a Magic Chef gas stove from the 70s. I flipping love the thing. Since buying my house I have upgraded everything in the kitchen but that stove.
On one of the geeky websites I visit they had a laser detector temperature gauge a few months ago. It was $12 with free shipping. I found the temp in my oven was off my 25-30 degrees (on the high-end).
Thinking that is more than a little of the problem I was having, stuff either way undercooked or overcooked.
Culture of Truth
@Violet: Yeah, it’s too bad. I was looking forward to it and it was inedible. Being hungry and anticipating pizza and having nothing to eat is the worst.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I am. And there is an argument that pita is a form of bread.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t think it is a midwest thing:). Pretty sure I might be around the only person in this part of the country that does it. Started it when I lived in DC and did most of my shopping at Eastern Market.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: So you go for that earthy flavor, then?
Culture of Truth
Now THIS is a cook who knows how to improvise:
http://ktla.com/2015/03/13/active-meth-lab-discovered-inside-wal-mart-restroom-in-indiana/
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I wouldn’t, unless plastered, put hummus on multigrain bread.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, well, I see that attempt at humor was way too subtle for a Friday night.
Humus=compost.
Hummus=ground chickpeas.
Time for bed.
Culture of Truth
Cooking Disasters: The Sorrow and the Pita
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: Why is that? I am not concerned trolling I am really curious.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I have a cold.
@Tommy: Juxtaposition of flavors and textures is one thing, but I cannot imagine that one working.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus:
I totally get what you are saying but at lease try, you might be surprised. All our tastes are different. You might hate it but I feel like we are 50/50 you might not find that.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
” Juxtaposition of flavors and textures is one thing, but I cannot imagine that one working. ”
You need to YOLO more.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy: I prefer not to.
Violet
@Tommy: You should be able to find a bread maker recipe book at used book stores. Or just look online and give it a go. It’s super easy but the breadmakers often offer loaf size choices and darkness-of-crust options so you need to try it out to see what works for each recipe.
Any bread maker should be able to bake a basic enough loaf where you can spread hummus on a slice. Not that hard.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: I’ve YOLOed a bit. But I have standards.
ETA: Life’s too short to eat crap food.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: OK another question. How do you use Hummus? What is the correct way?
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
phhht… a very little bit… it sounds like…
Even though you have a cold, you are a lawyer, and should be able to do logic.
Those kinds of food combinations remain edible for a reason.
QED
Put your gourmand on, and try it, man!
cckids
@TaMara (BHF):
Love it. I’m quite proud of my son’s resisting the urge to get a cat while he’s in college. His apartment allows them, but he has an unreliable roommate & really can’t afford the whole package a pet comes with. He feeds some ferals that hang around the complex & goes at least once a month to the shelter to play with the long-term residents there. A tough but responsible decision, because under his “cool” exterior he is a big softy who misses his kittys terribly.
cckids
@Mayur: I have a Guinness beef stew that is amazing, but I’m not sure how Irish it is.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Might depend on what flavor of hummus. The pre-made ones come in so many flavors there might be one that would work with multigrain bread. Like the Figs, Pepitas, and Smoked Paprika hummus, maybe.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: @Tommy: I tend to stay within vaguely Mediterranean themes….
@jl: I should try the inedible, why?
cckids
@Tommy: The problem I always had with a bread machine was the baking part. So I would use it to mix & knead dough, then bake it like a normal person. It was a nice shortcut.
But when it died, I didn’t replace it.
Mike in NC
Kitchen disasters: once tried to microwave a lobster.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: I remain iffy. I have a few food prejudices. You may disagree with them, but I still maintain them. You may judge me if you choose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: FTW!
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s inedible and then there’s food that is not to your particular taste. Hummus on multigrain bread is not inedible. Plenty of people eat it all the time. It’s just something you don’t like.
cckids
@Tommy: My mom (well, technically she’s my stepmom) acquired a 3, 4, & 5 year old when she married my dad, and over the next 4 years had 3 more kids (it was the 60’s). So she was cooking while frazzled at times.
Once, for some reason, she was making us pancakes for lunch. I have no idea what happened, but we ended up with something she called “scrambled pancakes”, (looked like scrambled eggs), which we all doused with syrup & LOVED. We talked about how awesome those were for years & wondered why she never made them again.
When we were grown (and cooking) we asked her & she admitted it had been a huge screw-up, but she just was NOT making lunch again. Still one of our favorite memories.
jl
@cckids:
“scrambled pancakes”
Sounds like something I could do well. I will try to make some.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
.
They do? ::/side eye::
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: No judging. We all have preferences.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Mom, Tommy started it….
cckids
My personal worst cooking disaster was with mashed potatoes, of all things. I’d cooked the potatoes, but something came up & we decided to mash & eat them the next night. My spouse drained the water & stuck them in the refrigerator. Next day I attempted to heat them, added the milk & butter as usual, but they’d developed a “skin” or something, and the texture was just indescribable.
ETA: My kids still refer to them as “monkey brain” potatoes, from the scene in the 2nd Indiana Jones movie.
Yuck.
There was also the time when I used mayo instead of sour cream in a chocolate cake, but I was just 13. We don’t talk about it.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: They do. There’s a great big world out there. Crazy stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@cckids:
Let us never mention it again.
cckids
@jl: Yep. Now that I actually cook, I realize they started with stuck pancakes, just stirred together, probably with the rest of the pancake batter. Make like eggs. I am positive they are NOT as awesome as they seemed when I was 8.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: I’d eat grilled brains in a bile reduction before I ate hummus on mulitgrain bread. But then, I am intolerant.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: Ha. Well, you couldn’t pay me enough to eat liver. In fact I pretty much can’t. I’ve tried it again recently as an adult and even though it goes down, it comes right back up. My body apparently rejects it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
:P
Mayur
@max: Yeah. I love Graham Kerr, but as entertainment not cooking instruction. Apropos my earlier comment, if I had a temporal incident that pushed me back to 1970 I would absolutely get some sideburns, a blowout, and a wide-ass tie going and provide random cooking instructions while blitzed out of my mind and mixing the cocktails required to keep me that blitzed. Good gig I say.
@Omnes: My friends and I quote that show all the time and I am sad to say that most of my younger friends in F&B are totally unaware of it.
Violet
I can’t believe I’m in this food thread when I’m sick with some kind of stomach virus. Apparently it’s going around. I’m better tonight but the day wasn’t so good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mayur: Chef? Lovely show…. You can find eps on YouTube.
jl
@Violet:
” though it goes down, it comes right back up. My body apparently rejects it. ”
Liver and certain other organs in its general vicinity do the same thing with me. I do not know how normal people like us ended up in a world with so many strange mutants with such bizarre digestive systems.
Edit: Some dishes with liver in them seem nice. I like and can eat pate with no liver in it. So sometimes I will try, but no luck. I think it is some real rejection issue because a couple of times I tried things that had liver in them without knowing it. Tasted OK, but then they were, let us say, suddenly and rapidly rejected.
Lips that touch kidney pie will never touch mine!
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Something ugly hit me about midnight last night. It seemed to subside only a half hour ago…. Does it come with a dry cough as well? The cough has stayed.
cckids
@Violet:
Happens to my husband with curry. He loves it, but it does not return the emotion. Cannot keep it down.
So weird.
Violet
@jl: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of any of them but liver is the worst. The taste is horrendous but the texture is what really puts me off. I just can’t.
I was such a good eater as a kid. Ate almost everything I was given. Never balked at vegetables or much of anything else. But liver? No. Could not. I’d try and try and it would come up. Just vile stuff.
Joseph Nobles
I’ve finally found a stovetop popcorn recipe. Pretty dang easy, actually. Dutch oven, 1/4 cup canola or coconut oil. Heat it covered over med-high heat with 3 popcorn kernels. When the three kernels all pop, pull it off the eye, grab those popped kernels out, pour in 2/3 cup of kernels, cover again, and leave off the eye for 30 seconds. That’s CRUCIAL. Then slide it back onto the eye and heat until it starts popping. Shake the pot every now and then. 2 minutes after putting it back on the eye, take the lid off and let the steam escape (that keeps the kernels crisp). Once it’s done, pull it off and add your butter and/or seasonings. The recipe recommended 3 Tbls melted unsalted butter, 2 Tbls honey, and sea salt to taste. Crikey.
Mayur
@cckids: There is a somewhat annoying but pretty awesomely foolproof way to avoid the mashed potatoes problem. Heat your potatoes through at 65 C / 149 F (anywhere between 140-160 F is fine if you don’t have a sufficient means of temperature control), shock them in ice water, and then make mashed potatoes as normal (boil or steam potatoes, mash with milk/cream and butter over low heat, serve). Starch retrogradation does a lot to ensure excellent texture.
Mayur
@Omnes Omnibus: I own the DVDs actually… ;) I really wish Season 3 weren’t such a waste of time. I hope Lenny Henry got paid big bucks for that turkey.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: No cough. Rumbly stomach for the last day. Woke up very early this morning and knew something was off. Spent significant time in the bathroom. Couldn’t figure out anything to eat that didn’t set it all off again. Finally had scrambled egg tonight and it seems to have settled okay. Maybe I’m over the worst.
Two friends have had it. One missed three days of work. Both had fevers. I’m hoping I’m avoiding that.
jl
@Violet: Same here. My gourmand eating slogan is ‘Food is edible for a reason’. I like almost anything. Except liver and kidney.
Thought I didn’t like beets for a long time, but after I learned how to prepare them in freshly cooked beet salad land (Baltics and Nordic countries) I love them prepared that way. Still dislike the canned versions most common over here.
Thanks for sharing your food experiences. I don’t feel… so alone (sniff sniff) anymore.
jl
@cckids:
” I am positive they are NOT as awesome as they seemed when I was 8. ”
No problem here. When it comes to pancakes and waffles, I will be 8 years old until the day I die.
Violet
@jl: Nice to meet a someone with the same experience!
My mom used to dice beets and steam them. Then I’d eat them loaded with butter. Good lord, they’re good. The sugar in the beets and the butter added in. It was like dessert but it counted as a vegetable! You might give that a try.
KS in MA
@Tommy:
Once, I put a turkey carcass in a Dutch oven to boil down for broth one Saturday morning. Friend called and said let’s go out for coffee. Did that, of course intending to be out for half an hour, then ran into another friend, etc., etc.–came home to find the carcass boiled down to what can only be described as tar–and a lovely thin coating of the same tar on every horizontal and vertical surface in my entire kitchen, including the ceiling. Let’s say it took a while to clean up. Ever since, I check the stove burners before I leave the house.
BruceFromOhio
@jl: This, times sixteen jillion.
BruceFromOhio
@efgoldman: Better to sautee it like a normal person, with a little salt and olive oil.
Downside, you have to use a *really* big skillet.
Steeplejack
@KS in MA:
One reason I became a big fan of timers. Even if it’s something I have done a hundred times, I’ll set a timer—on the microwave, on my cell phone, on a digital watch, whatever—because experience has taught me that it’s all too easy for me to “go do something for a few minutes while x is finishing,” get engrossed and completely forget about what is happening in the kitchen. The timer brings me back and prevents disaster.
jl
@Violet:
I will check whether I have a long lost cousin named Violet.
@efgoldman:
” They are just one of several excellent excuses to slather something with butter and (always real!) maple syrup.
Oatmeal is another excellent excuse. ”
My Irish grandpa on the farm used to make left-over oatmeal into thin patties with some milk egg and sugar, and fry them up in butter and load then load them up with good stuff.
And speaking of good things, he got boxes of some crispy thin buttery semi-sweet oatmeal brittle from relatives in the Old Country when I was a kid. I remember that being delicious. I wish I could find out what that stuff was. Never been able to find anything like it since.
Violet
@jl:
My mom did that! Amazing stuff.
Sounds a little like flapjack.
cckids
@Mayur: Cool. Thanks!
This beats my other method of NEVER NEVER doing that again :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I use my smartwatch as a timer.
My mom had about a 10lb roast that she was defrosting in the oven. Or she thought she had set it to low heat. We went out for about a hour and came back to the house to see smoke billowing out of every window in a good sized ranch style house. My dad raced into the house with a wet towel over his nose to find the fire. He found what had been a 10lb roast that now was a charred mass the size of a baseball. My dad saved that “roast” for several years.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Man, I am really leery of leaving the house with any cooking/heating going on. About the only exception is the slow cooker. I will go out while that is chugging away.
jl
@Violet: You are a goddess! I would ask if you were looking for a man, but we might be related.
Flapjacks might be it. What I remember as more like cookie brittle. Like the flapjack recipe you linked to, but the oats were mixed with a slightly sweetened whole wheat batter made with milk or cream. Not nearly so much sugar.
I never heard of that kind of flapjack before. If you left out the fruit, the recipe below seems even closer to what i remember:
Irish Breakfast Flapjacks
http://breakfast.betterrecipes.com/irish-breakfast-flapjacks.html
Tommy
@Steeplejack: The alarm clock on my phone is my best friend.
Steeplejack
@Tommy:
My most used timer on my phone is to reboot the housecat’s heating pad at her workstation. It times out after an hour. It’s either be proactive with that or get an uncomfortable feeling and suddenly look up to see her staring daggers at me. Unsettling.
Tommy
@Violet: I am a Scot. I am not sure we ever made anything that interesting to eat and I will eat and/or try anything. Multiple times.
Tommy
@Steeplejack: I know that feeling. So know it. I might live in my house but my cat owns it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I think it was pointed out here last night. “With dogs you’re family, with cats you’re staff.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I don’t think housecat and workstation should be in the same sentence.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: So true. I am staff in my own house.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I use the timer on my smartwatch now, I usually don’t carry my phone around in the house.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, it is more of a supervisory, management-type workstation. Cat equivalent of the corner office with the aircraft carrier desk and overpriced ergonomic chair.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Did I see this here?
Dog: “You feed me, shelter me and love me. You are a god!”
Cat: “You feed me, shelter me and love me. I am a god!”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I believe I’ve seen that here as well.
ETA: I should note that my 2 roommates are k9s.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
What breed?
(May check back sooner or later. Going to bed, might read/surf for a while.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (tablet): Cocker Spaniel and a Yorkie/Pomeranian mix.
SWMBO
@TaMara (BHF): In one of the recent Nimoy threads, there was a link to him talking about his history of coming from immigrant Russian Jews. One of the youtubes had him talking about his grandmother using turkey feathers. She used them to make challah bread,brushing the bread with the turkey feathers to make a nice golden bread. He said it was the most delicious bread and was just beautiful to look at. Do you have a challah bread recipe for Passover? Publix has fresh challah bread that is very nice but there are times I wish I had a recipe for it.
@Tommy: I burned a pan up like that boiling eggs. There is nothing quite like the smell of burnt eggs and metal.
I was sick one time that my husband tried to cook something nice and almost got there. He was going to make minute steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. He had seen me shaking the minute steak in a bag of flour without realizing what the white stuff was. He found the powdered sugar and put the coated meat in the skillet of hot butter. It looked funny. He got it cooked and it still didn’t look quite right so he asked if there was something else special I did. Once we got it straight that I use flour, he tried to fix it by adding more butter to the skillet and stirred in some lemon juice. Wasn’t what I expected but it tasted good.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Cool. My brother has a greyhound that I often take care of. We had dogs growing up, but as an adult I found that cats were better for the solo guy lifestyle. Mine, anyway.
Mary G
@BillinGlendaleCA: Was it hot up there today? It was 91 degrees here. Insane!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: I think the high here was 89, however it got up to 92 inside my cave. I’m not exactly looking forward to tomorrow and Sunday. Those poor runners in the marathon tomorrow.
TaMara (BHF)
@SWMBO: Funny you should say that, because the person I would ask about a challah recipe was actually good friends with Nimoy. I’ll see if she has a recipe.
NotMax
Gonna start in a short bit on a large pot of fire-roasted tomato soup as part of the dinner I’ll be cooking/serving Saturday to the usual gang of idiots. (h/t MAD magazine)
Toughest part of when I do this is lugging everything to the car (a bit of a hike to where it is, multiple trips down and back up the stairs from house to auto), then slowly, oh so slowly, driving down the 40 degree slope driveway from here to the street (slowing down to 5 mph or less at speed bumps) to truck it over to where we meet.
tsquared2001
Sister always watched whatever Grandma did while cooking. Sis got to know how to do greens, sweet potato pie, friend green tomatoes.
For me, I just wish I knew how to do Dad’s beef stew.
And Mom’s dumplings.
JGabriel
TaMara @ Top:
The truly tragic number of pots who’ve given their lives in my futile attempts to boil water – or, more accurately, my futile attempts to remember that I’ve put water on to boil until I’m saying to myself “Where’s that smell like burning enamel carbonizing on molten metal coming from? Aw, shit, not again.”
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: LOL! Great story!
Emily68
@WereBear: I think Lucy and Ethel had this very problem one time.
schrodinger's cat
It was my first time using a pressure cooker. I cooked sprouted green mung beans in the pressure cooker. Needless to say it was an inedible pasty mess.
kerFuFFler
@WereBear:
Great story! Reminds me of the pudding in Woody Allen’s Sleeper.
At Passover, matzah bread is referred to as “the bread of our affliction”, so when I served up a batch of remarkably tough and deflated matzo balls at the Seder, my husband disparaged them as matzo balls of our affliction. They were indeed awful…
kerFuFFler
@SWMBO: People don’t eat challah for Passover because it is leavened.
Aleta
That Bixby looks like a HOOT. Gorgeous, too.
I’m learning that when I teach The Dog something, he eventually will turn it around into a command that he has taught me.
Me: “When I say ‘sit’, it means ‘you sit down’ and then I’ll give you a treat.”
Him: “When I sit down, that is the command for ‘you give me a treat.'”