The other day I wanted to make scrambled eggs but a check of the pantry and refrigerator uncovered nothing I’d normally add to gin up the flavor. (I’m on a highly restricted low-residue diet right now.) What to do, what to do – and then I spotted it: a bottle of Ipswich Ale Mustard. I whipped a spoon’s worth into the eggs and voila! It was damned good, so good I made it again tonight.
So, what desperation measures in the kitchen have turned into unexpected pleasures for you?
I faked baked beans, and they came out surprisingly well.
My SO and I were bringing a rib dinner out to the rest of her family, who live out in the country. Typically, I do the ribs earlier in the day so that they just need to be finished off on the barbecue. I also make cole slaw and baked beans.
One time, there was a problem with the beans – I think they must have soaked too long, but they turned into mush. Now, you’ve just gotta have home-baked beans with ribs and cole slaw – nothing else will do.
Dire circumstances call for dire measures, and I was willing to try almost anything, so I went to the local Safeway and got a huge can of Libby’s Deep-Browned Beans – problem with these, though, is that they don’t taste anything like home-baked beans; the sauce is too tomatoey.
I emptied the can into a roasting pan, took out the pork, and crumpled some already-cooked bacon I had into it, about eight slices. And then I added molasses and heated it on the stove. I kept adding molasses until the mixture of the tomato sauce and the molasses tasted like home-baked, probably about three-quarters of a cup of the stuff, a little at a time, well mixed in, but it worked.
In fact, it worked so well, it fooled everyone, including the SO’s grandmother. And she used to own a restaurant!
Yum! Have you used that recipe since then? Seems like a lot less work than doing baked beans from scratch.
I tried making baked beans from scratch once, and at the end of the process decided the canned variety were good enough for me. 
Actually, I now use it instead of the “real” way, because it’s just that good and that easy.
I have to admit, I felt a bit guilty trying to fly it past everyone in the first place, but no one noticed at all.
When my girlfriend’s grandmother complimented me on them (given that she owned her own restaurant and was the cook, and that she’s still a fantastic cook at the age of 77), I felt REALLY guilty.
Funny thing, my girlfriends mom made baked beans one time last fall – and they actually had no taste to them. Gramma comes over to me later while I’m outside having a smoke and says to me, “Make sure you bring the beans next time–the ones she made were horrible!”
Has to be my sundried tomato and cashew nut hummus, which came about because the health food shop had closed so I couldn’t get tahini.
Drinkwise, jasmine tea grog. I’m not particularly fond of jasmine tea, but it’s included in most green tea collections, so there’s usually a couple of bags in the back of the cupboard. I’m not particularly fond of punsch either, it’s something I keep for flavouring one or two desserts per year and couldn’t imagine using as a drink. But I discovered once, when I was desperate for something hot and slightly alcoholic, that jasmine tea and punsch cancel out each other’s weak parts admirably.