My worst was when I went out to a dimly lit street market and bought a bunch of what looked like beautiful white button mushrooms. I planned to make a good mushroom curry.
What I ended up with was a bag of waterchestnuts. I had already started the curry by that point. For the record, water chestnut curry sucks.
Today I have no food but some packaged food sent from home. So I invented something new, and I’m enjoying it. Take some tortilla chips. Throw some canned tuna on top. Put some Italian dressing on that, and a generous amount of dill and parmasean. Microwave it until the tuna gets a bit dry and the chips a bit soggy.
not something I would serve to company, but it is a quick yummy sit-in-front-of-the-computer meal.
There was this one time that they were for sale – Lamb and cantelopes. I stirfried them together. Not horrible, but interesting. For the record sesame oil and cantelope go together fairly well.
Trying to make a white sauce with margarine instead of butter. All you could taste was the flour and it was for a date. I never knew butter is necessary for some recipes. If it says butter, use butter!
I make it all the time and am not sure what you mean by “roast”. Do you mean by letting it turn a light brown color?
I melt a half a stick of butter in a saucepan and then slowly add a half a cup of flour and mix it with a fork over medium heat. Then I slowly add the milk until I get the right consistency. Do you think I should have let it brown a bit before adding the milk? It was only the one time I only had margarine and I could really taste the flour in the roux. I was making creamed salmon with peas and carrots over mashed potatoes. I use a bit of salt and pepper and dill weed as spices.
So you make it with margarine and it comes out fine?
You need to “cook” the flour in whatever fat you use, just for a little bit, before you start mixing in the liquid. Otherwise you get a floury taste. For a real white sauce you’d probably want to let it get only to a cream color.
Ferret Herder beat me to it. For a white sauce, you don’t want it too dark (as you would for a Creole dish, for example). So let it cook for about two or three minutes or so.
I don’t use margarine for roux, myself; but I have done before. Back then it was for things other than white sauce; either to thicken something or make gravy. But I can’t remember what kind of gravy I’d be making without drippings. It’s been a while since I’ve made roux with margarine.
In any case, you just need some fat to mix the flour into and cook the flour in. Butter is better than marge, but the reason your sauce was floury is because it wasn’t toasted; not because you didn’t use butter.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, right? It all started when my wife oversoaked some beans and they turned to mush. We were supposed to bring them to a family dinner, and she didn’t know what to do, so I told her to fry up and slice a half dozen slices of bacon and sautee half a diced up onion while I went to the supermarket.
There I bought one of those huge cans of Libby’s Deep Browned Beans. At home, I opened the can and emptied them into a roaster, over low heat. I threw in the bacon and onion and proceeded to add molasses to the beans, stirring while I did this, and frequently tasting the results.
Eventually, it tasted exactly like the real thing.
We took it to the dinnner, and everyone was fooled, including my wife’s grandmother, who at one time owned her own restaurant in which she was the cook. When she pronounced them to be excellent beans, I admit I felt a little guilty, but hey, whatever works.
Great save! I have also over cooked baked beans and it turns into mush. I have done something similar with chili that turned into pinto bean soup by adding more beans and some tomato sauce. I went through a crock pot stage and they are great for overcooking things if you don’t watch them like a hawk.
I once read in a book (I think it was by Robert Fulgham) that you can add anything to home-made meatloaf. So I, having plans to make a meatloaf, and a half-can of leftover canned corn, set out to add the corn to the meatloaf.
