AKA: Experimenting in the Kitchen
Let’s hear about your kitchen experiments, whether they were successful or spectacular failures. Basically, what have you thrown together on intuition; and how did it turn out?
Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable. Those biscuits turned out like hockey pucks.
In my defense, a) I was in high school, b) it was a group decision, c) it was a class in “Cooking For Jocks and Stoners.”
I’ll let you know a little later this evening. My husband wanted an apple dessert, and I wanted something I could make two of in order to have one for a potluck tomorrow. I love cherry pineapple dump cake, and it’s no-brainer easy, so I decided to adapt the method.
I used a can of apple pie filling and a can of sliced pears in light syrup, drained. I sprinkled the fruit with cinnamon and lemon juice (because apple pie filling is usually really sweet and bland). I used a caramel cake mix and chopped hazelnuts.
I plan on serving it with vanilla ice cream.
I tend to experiment a lot, and usually don’t remember what exactly I did. The one I remember very well was making macaroni and cheese for my family. The plan was mac & cheese with kielbasa and broccoli mixed in (very tasty!), but we had no kielbasa.
Let me tell you: summer sausage is NOT a good substitute. It tainted the entire dish, and nobody ate it.
Why so? I love summer sausage. It should go well in M&C.
You know? The only thing I can remember that was pretty much inedible was some biscuits & gravy I made in the late-'80s. I’d used flour that was pretty darned old. And then I compounded the error by accidentally putting too much salt in the gravy – which also contained the old flour. ick
I mentioned before that I have been accumulating okara. Today I combined 14+ ounces of it with a pound of ground beef, some Vegemite, about 6 oz. minced onion, a tablespoon of minced garlic, a teaspoon or so of liquid smoke, a few glugs of Worcestershire, a healthy dose of coarse black pepper, and a couple large pinches of kosher salt. The consistency was rather wet, primarily to the liquid in the okara. The patties did not hold together well. How did they taste? Not objectionable. Actually, with some Mexican seasoning it might have been at home in a frozen burrito. But certainly nowhere near 100% beef.
That’s what I thought! It may have been that particular variety, but the whole pot of food ended up with a very weird smokey… twang that was almost metallic. It’s hard to describe just what it tasted like, but it wasn’t good at all.
My husband and son declared it awesome. Next time, I’d put it in a 9 x 13 pan instead of a square pan, because the topping didn’t get as brown and crispy as I’d like.
Good to know, I haven’t had dump cake in ages and this looks like a great twist on it. Thanks, freckafree!
There was the time in Jr. High Home Ec. that I set the oven on fire. We made refrigerated ginger cookies, but I sliced them too thin. Put them in the oven, about 10 minutes later the teacher smelled smoke - I opened my oven and had a cookie tray aflame. That was fun.
Tonight I took some sirloin porkchops marinated in hard cider (crisp instead of draft) and made pretzel crumbs (bread crumbs made from pretzels and a little pepper). Cook on high heat in olive oil until one side is brown. Turn over and put in a 350 oven.
I’ll know if it is a success or failure in about 30 min.
I too made an awful batch of biscuits and gravy. Too much salt, too much pepper. I like my gravy spicy and peppery, but no one else would eat it. Meh.
You want an experiment? Here you go!
For my evening meal, I am going to attempt Isicia Omentata. I don’t have any white wine so I’m using white wine vinegar mixed with port. Nam pla will replace the liquanum, and I’ll use a balsamic vinegar reduction to emulate the caroenum. Think I’ll serve it in pita bread or a tortilla.
Basically everything I make. I tend to just throw stuff in a pan and start adding whatever’s in the fridge, pantry, or spice rack at random. Sometimes it’s awful, other times it’s brilliant. Problem is, no matter how it turns out I’ll never be able to make it again because I don’t know what I did.
I tried the beef-soy pulp thing again last night, adding spaghetti sauce and eating it with a slice of provolone on buttered bread. Sort of a sloppy joe style of thing. It was not a success. I think this experiment has failed. Not completely, as it’s not inedible; but still not a success.
My sister was making a cake and was just ready to frost it when the pan fell on the floor and the cake landed in the cat food area. My sister was yelling in distress when I came to the rescue, put the cake back together, and suggested liberal doses of frosting to hide the damage, including the cat hair on the cake. Our father and brother would eat it, I insisted.
They did and my sister and I concluded that “Cake-gate” was indeed a successful coverup.
(Disclaimer: this was a stupid thing we did as children, and I no longer believe it’s funny to give people potentially contaminated food.)
Oh dear Christ.
Not only was that the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever made, I strongly suspect it was the single most disgusting thing I think I’ve ever eaten. Soggy mushed up bread, nasty taste, rubbery hamburger.
I had about five mouthfuls and the rest went into the trash. I’m still gagging at the aftertaste.
A genuine kitchen nightmare.
Due to a momentary distraction from a phone call while harvesting my Aerogarden I made “pesto” from bell pepper leaves instead of basil for my ravioli. :smack:
For the record it doesn’t taste very good, at least to me.
And now, the final beef-soy iteration.
In post #6 I described the concoction. It’s edible, but that’s about it. So tonight I put the rest of it (17 ounces) in a pot. I added all the chili powder I had, the rest of that onion (chopped), a couple teaspoons of ground cumin, some kosher salt, coarse-ground black pepper, a nice amount of red pepper flakes, a can of diced ortega chilis, and water. I boiled it up, and it turned out fairly well. It tastes like canned chili.
I only tasted it, as I had other plans for dinner. I don’t mind canned chili in a pinch, so ‘homemade canned chili’ is fine. But I won’t be adding okara to my meat again.
I threw together dinner last night, and it turned out to be one of those throw-togethers that tasted like I’d been planning and cooking all day.
In reality, I didn’t even start thinking about food until about 5:30, so it was “what can I throw together quickly?” I had a hankerin’ for Mexican, and I bought some fresh cilantro the day before, and some pepper jack cheese. OK, there’s a beginning. I had some leftover spicy shredded beef in the freezer, pull that out. Let’s see… no tortillas, but I had Masa, and make a few corn tortillas from scratch to feed two people takes all of ten minutes, so I did that.
Sides? How about beans? Open a can of black beans, dump in pan. Oh look, there’s fresh ground white pepper left over from the other day, only about a teaspoon and a half, throw that in the beans, along with an equal amount of cumin. Hmm, about 1/2 cup of leftover basmati and leeks in the fridge, throw that in the beans as well.
Made beef soft tacos in the corn tortillas with the pepper jack, some fresh tomatoes, and cilantro. Beans/rice on the side, also with cheese, tomatoes, cilantro.
The real star of the dinner was the beans. The white pepper was AMAZING. This is a spice I always have around, but usually use it in the pepper grinder with a blend of red & black & white pepper. I’ve seldom used it alone, and let me tell you - a little bit of white pepper in a can of black beans is incredibly fragrant and delicious. It’s gonna be my new spice of choice, I can tell.