Baklava and Spanakopita and Dolmas are a big hassle to make. The filo dough and grape leaves are always breaking.
Fresh tortillas are nice but so are the ones in stores.
Can’t wait to grow and can my own olives.
Totally agree - did it once, not worth it at all.
Totally disagree - jarred sauce sucks and making it an absolutely superior one is trivial.
Cassoulet. I haven’t really tried following the standard recipe but a number of things I find un-necessary:
- Needing to spice the beans while cooking them separately. A pork stock or a piece of bone will do. The bouquet garnier seems weak. I mean, beans have their own flavor when cooked. I can’t see how herbs can improve that.
- Having to put agar - you cook the beans right and you can’t get a better consistency than with agar
- Requiring a browned crust - this is just a pork-and-beans recipe. You cook those two together covered for two hours and you should bring out all the flavors you want.
I like the refrigerated Bob Evans mashed potatoes you can buy. Indistinguishable from homemade. The $1 add-water-and-heat-in-a-microwave single servings are pretty good for the effort, especially if you add butter, maybe a little milk, or top with gravy. The boxed instant potatoes don’t taste good to me.
I will NEVER make homemade mashed potatoes again if I can help it. Peel 'em, cut 'em, boil 'em in a pot, then use a mixer to mash 'em and add milk/butter. All that time and effort and things to clean? Just. Not. Worth. It. Not to me.
One more use is a pseudolassi. Throw some buttermilk, some honey, some ice, and some fruit in a blender, and in thirty seconds you’ve got a super-refreshing drink.
I make a lot of biscuits and waffles and pancakes, so we keep whole-milk buttermilk around; these lassis are a summer treat.
Huh. It’s just never occurred to me that mashed potatoes are a pain in the ass. I just use one pot, but I usually don’t peel them. They’re pretty much the vegetable side I make when I don’t feel like cooking.
I also roasted my own pumpkin for pie and was really disappointed. It tasted no different and it was a huge pain to get it right texture-wise. $2 One Pie for me from now on.
Taste-wise, alfredo sauce from scratch was absolutely amazing and not too hard. However, the recipe I used made soooooooo much sauce it wasn’t worth it. After a day or two of leftovers, it’s not as appealing. Plus you can’t just microwave the leftovers unless you want a broken, gloopy mess. So to eat it properly leftover involves a ton of work that I just don’t want to do. Leftovers should be a couple minutes in the microwave, not delicately reheating on the stove with added milk. Now I’ll just order it in restaurants or make sure if I do make it from scratch to make a tiny batch.
The wife feels the same way. Boil, smash, fluff. She won’t tolerate instant potatoes in the house.
She got a sister?
3 of them! Want some phone numbers?
It helps if you make them with your friend.
From her sojourn in Mexico at an Early Age Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) reports that fresh tortillas are magnificent when the maid makes them, spreads butter, rolls them up and hands them to you.
Now that is ambition!
There is a Mexican pimp joke here, but I don’t know you, so I’m not going there.
Pssst! Hey, Senor Plant? You want picture of my seester-in-law? She pretty good. Five dollah.
Jalapeno poppers. I tried making them from scratch one. It makes a huge mess and takes an awful lot of time. Much easier to just buy them frozen.
I was thinking more of, “She ees a virgin, and her children are not home!”
Jalapenos sliced, stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon? (Don’t tell Rabbi!) They are very easy. I scrape the seeds out with a melon ball scoop.
I’ve found this to be the case for pretty much any fried food.
Buttermilk is unnecessary for great fried chicken. Just rinse and dry your chicken parts, season heavily, then toss in a bag of seasoned flour. Set them out to dry while you get your pan and hot grease ready. Toss once more in the flour, then lay them in the pan
Save your cold buttermilk for your cornbread, and for drinking, with a dash of salt on the top.
There’s a childhood memory! I loved it when I came home from school, and could hear the slap-slap-slap of the monthly maid hand-making tortillas! (Which she would spread with butter and roll up for me.)
You know how to cook fried chicken and cornbread, yet you live in Brooklyn?
Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) was from Long Island and couldn’t cook anything except brisket.