The sauce I made was slightly better than Ocean Spray, which is surprisingly better than store brand. It wasn’t nearly enough better to be worth the effort. Which included cleaning cranberry spatter off the back-splash.
Disagree. The Indian food we make is better than what’s available at any nearby restaurant, and the Chinese is as good the best restaurants, and neither is all that much work.
We don’t make Indian breads, those, we can buy better. Same with samosas and tandoori.
The biriyani is a full day project, but the fried chickpeas, twice-cooked potatoes, lentils, barbeque lamb, cauliflower stew, and several other dishes have become some of our staples.
Toast. I hate it that it is impossible to buy a toaster that makes toast quickly and dependably. Our new one takes 3 goes to brown a slice when it’s set on high. No idea how many it takes on low, because I gotta go to work sometime.
I don’t understand. All the toasters I’ve had browned consistently, usually at a somewhere between a 4-5 setting on a 10 scale, for fluffy white bread, and maybe 6-7 setting for Polish rye bread. Once you find the setting that works for the bread you are using, it should be consistent. I’ve never had it require more than one go, and it’s not like I have a fancy toaster–just a regular $25-$30 Oster.
I understand. My current toaster goes from light brown to burny brown in one sixteenth of an inch. I’ve yet to find a toaster with a control mechanism that isn’t a total PITA.
French onion soup. I am supposed to brown the onions for 25-30 minutes, and I can’t just stand there stirring for that long. Likewise for polenta, although the end result is not all that awesome, so that probably doesn’t count.
Oddly, I enjoy cooking Thanksgiving, even though the process of deboning and butterflying the turkey takes a while. As does making the stock, the stuffing, the rolls, and all the rest of it.
There are methods that help with this. One is just to do it in the oven, and that takes hours, but little to no attention is required. Mine is to use extremely high heat, and that takes about 15 minutes of attention. This highly snarky tutorial is the method I use.
Several months ago a new grocery store opened up in my area that is much better than what we had. The bakery there sells cheesecakes that are pretty good, and less expensive than what I’d spend on ingredients to make one. When I first saw the price I thought, “That can’t be right.”
I’m on call seven days a week six months out of the year, which means I really can’t go anywhere on the weekend.
My hubby and I would take one of those weekends to make an international meal from scratch. We did Chinese, buying the wonton wrappers and making shrimp-filled wontons and I made sesame beef and wonton soup in the wok.
One weekend we did Mexican, with chicken cheese enchiladas and tres leche cake which was so good I made it for my Christmas dessert (the cake, not the enchiladas.)
Italian was chicken parmesan with tiramisu, and damn, did the tiramisu come out perfect. Chicken parmesan was tasty too.
It’s fun to do every once in awhile, but it is labor intensive.
Another way is to cook on low heat on the stove. It takes a long time, but you don’t have to pay much attention. Just give them a stir from time to time.
Ooooo, I’ve had those, sold by a vendor on the beach at Daufuskie Island, off the coast of South Carolina.
You know, I can get picked crab at my local fish store, and I’ll bet you can, too. Why not just make deviled crab in a baking dish? There’s no real reason you need to stuff it back into the empty crab shells.
The type I’m talking about aren’t stuffed in the shell. The crab is mixed with a bunch of other ingredients and then formed into sort of a fat cigar shape and deep fried.
Vendors would sell them piping hot from their carts. I particularly remember them in the parking lot at the grocery store, which was why I always wanted to help mom with the shopping.