The chicken pot pie thread here got me thinking about this.
When reminiscing about my long-since departed grandmother, I remember as much as anything, her skills as a cook. I know this is a common enough sentiment but really my Nana was universally regarded as top-notch.
Nonetheless there were a few clunkers in her repertoire. I’m not talking about a one-off dish that didn’t come out right but rather some that never worked.
Exhibit A was the home-made chicken pot pie. This she made from scratch, cooked it in one of those black speckled, oval baking pans that you don’t see around anymore and it seemed to be a daylong affair.
What I most remember is that when it was served, after roasting for hours in the oven, it came out incredibly, scalding, mouth-burning hot. I don’t think grandma believed in allowing foods to cool so we sat at the table and it was a full ten minutes before you could even attempt to try a forkful. Then after all of that, it was only to discover that the finished product was just as bland as bland can be. Those were the days of the clean-plate club so you glumly finished your serving and didn’t bothered with seconds.
The other dish of hers that was in the fail category was her turkey. Yep the centerpiece of every Thanksgiving and Christmas was cooked too long --every. single. time. There was always a fight for the dark meat since that was the only section that didn’t come out absent any semblance of moisture. If you were stuck with white meat, you had to lather it fully with a heaping glob of gravy.
So how about it? Did your grandmother (or mom or dad) have any dishes that never seemed to turn out right?
Hamloaf … for some godawful reason Mom would pick recipes out of Better Homes and Gardens or some other womans magazine and try them. Horrible, horrible version of meatload. What I vaguely remember was you take a picnic ham, grind it, bind it with egg and breadcrumbs and pretty much nothing else, then plop it into a loaf pan, and top it with some version of a mustard glaze, then bake like a meatloaf. Holy crap was it aweful, it was the one meal I can vividly remember refusing to eat and sitting for hours in front of … this was in about 1968 or 69 …
The one thing of hers I wish I could have her make again was salmon croquettes - canned salmon, bread crumbs, eggs and not sure what else. SoOunds horrible, but was very tasty.
Lima bean soup with noodles. It is, I think, a mutant version of something that was eaten back in Ukraine. I’ve actually never seen it outside my extended family. It starts with the big lima beans, canned or dried, and manages to actually get worse from there. The final product is vaguely like a meatless navy bean soup (which I also hate) with bowtie pasta floating around in it. She always put vinegar on the table to season it. Thankfully, this culinary gem was only served on fast days, so I didn’t have to gag it down too often.
Holy crap!!! My mother made the same goddamn thing and it’s a family legend! My Dad, who usually just scooped food into his mouth and never said a word in fear of her wrath, finally gave up. We threw it all into the dog’s dish who wouldn’t touch it.
Grandmother? Swiss steak. Who the hell eats this anyway? Awful stuff. Once when my uncle got back from a deployment and wanted a real steak, he bought the best he could find, the kind you broil or grill or whatever, but NOT the kind you make swiss steak out of, which is exactly what my Grandmother did.
I can’t recall a single thing my grandma ever cooked, and can’t recall a single failure on my mom’s part.
Everything she did (does) is pretty damn good. Liver and onions? Sure! Mexican? Chinese? All great. Every now and then, she’d whip up some strange, “special” deal that took all day. Pigs-In-Blankets, this bean-thing. Always good.
I didn’t like the lamb, but its not because she screwed it up. I just don’t like lamb. Foul-smelling, greasy meat.
EDIT: I totally failed at answering this, didn’t I?
I call those ‘fish cakes’ or ‘salmon cakes’. Add seasonings and mayo. Form into patties, refrigerate for half an hour or so, and fry in oil. Of course it’s easier just to use Zatarain’s Salmon Cake Mix. Use red salmon (instead of pink) if you can.
Swiss steak was in mom’s rotation. The beef was OK (though always a bit tough), but I didn’t care for the vegetables. I haven’t had Swiss steak since I was a kid.
He would dump pasta into a pan with water, then dump in whatever seasoning he saw on the shelf. He would never smell/taste them, so it got interesting at times.
:eek: :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: That sounds HORRIBLE!!!
My grandmother was French Canadian and made the (white) pea soup, which I didn’t care for, the texture wasn’t right to my childish mouth. And she made the pork pie a time or two, very labor intensive, ground pork and…cloves? encased in a pie crust. It was very heavy and greasy and made me kind of nauseated. Her apple and mincemeat pies were also old fashioned and heavy, with thick crusts. But those dishes were only made on special occasions, otherwise, she was a fine plain cook.
To be fair, pasta-and-beans is not without precedent. Not that such a thing made with lima beans sounds like something I’d like, but the concept isn’t too bizarre.
Fudge. It was basically a hardened, grainy, chocolate-sugar sludge. I think it’s how she liked it, and for the first ten years I thought that was what fudge was supposed to be. But when I bought some gourmet fudge on vacation one day, I thought the smooth creamy stuff a was huge mistake by the cook. By the 4th bite I realized my error, and that that Grandma just made bad fudge.
My mom was an okay cook. She was German, so the only seasonings or herbs she used were salt, bullion cubes, bay leaves, and parsley. Maybe some basil if she felt adventurous.
She was from the Northern Europe ‘Boil It Until You’re Sure It’s Dead’ Culinary Culture, though. No eggs were harder boiled than hers. You might mistake them for tennis balls with the green part inside.
I’m a slightly better than okay cook, and she regards my skills with awe, like I’m the reincarnation of Julia Child or something because I use broth and fruit and spices in my cooking,
The only things I didn’t like much at grandma’s house were boiled swiss chard and boiled kohlrabi. I’m sure they were cooked fine, but the flavour was too strong for my picky youthful tastebuds.
My grandmother came off the boat from Greece in the 1920s, and her only real fault (if you want to call it that) was that she never did learn to speak English all that well.
She had incredible cooking skills. She just seemed to know what things worked well together and knew exactly what proportions things needed to be. She never measured anything, which made it all but impossible to get a recipe out of her.
Us: How much of that do you put in?
Grandma: Enough.
Us: What’s enough?
Grandma: <shrug?> Enough.
The only way you could get a recipe of sorts out of her was to carefully watch everything she did and guess how much “enough” was for each thing she put in. She wasn’t secretive about her recipes like some old women I’ve known have been. She would gladly show you what she did. It’s just that since she never measured anything, you really had to watch carefully everything she did.
Her recipes weren’t fixed, either. If she didn’t have something, she’d just use a bit of something else and maybe something other than that as well.
The amazing thing was, nothing of hers ever missed. She never had too much of this or too little of that. Everything was always spot on.
Mrs. Geek has tried to make some of her recipes, and can never get them right. It’s not that they taste bad, it’s that they are usually just a little off. We could never get exactly how much “enough” was for every little thing that went into her cooking.
I never had grandparents to speak of (too old/ill on one side, estranged on the other) but my mother was, for her culinarily-challenged era, a pretty good cook. But she made one dish quite regularly that would have been terrible enough if she did it right, but I’m pretty sure that she was making a mistake that caused it to be even worse.
Given that this is the 1960s we’re talking about, of course it was a jello salad. The ingredients were, I kid you not: lime jello, mayonnaise, cream cheese, onions, and walnuts.
The thing is, I am pretty sure that the cream cheese was supposed to be smoothly incorporated into the gelatin and mayo, creating a smooth, mousse-like texture. However, my mother left marble-sized LUMPS of cream cheese suspended in the salad. I guess they kept the walnut and onion lumps company. Whatever, it was gag-worthy.
To this day I can’t believe anyone would dream up that dish, much less prepare it and eat it. But my dad loved it so we had it fairly often. As I grew up in a family where helpings were served to me and I had to clean my plate, my heart always sank when I saw it.
Ham loaf, on the other hand … I remember that! My friends and I really liked it and were always delighted when it was served (it was a company dish at our house). Salty, meaty goodness with a sugary-sharp tang from a sauce made with mustard and brown sugar. Either my mother’s recipe was better than the ones used upthread, or there is no accounting for taste.
My grandmother didn’t bake. The iconic picture of a white-haired, apple-cheeked matron pulling a pie or a tray of cookies from the oven was just a fantasy in my youth.
She made amazing soups, and Thanksgiving and Easter at her house were spectacular. But she didn’t bake.
Then again, she didn’t have to. My grandparents lived within walking distance of several wonderful bakeries - one of which was owned by the Mikulski family (cousins of the Senator, I believe.) My grandfather would go to whichever one my grandmother designated and come back with bread, pies, cakes, donuts, buns, and incredible baked goods of every description.
The only time I remember her trying to bake, she made cookies from the roll of dough. She burned them.
My other grandmother didn’t even pretend. She used her oven as a pantry for store-bought cookies. Lucky for me, my mom learned how to bake and taught me, so if I ever have grandkids, they’ll have proper cookies!
Roast beef. My grandmother believed you cooked meat until you were absolutely sure it was dead. Her roast beef was half way between very well done and beef jerky.
Donuts. My grandmother would fry up donuts and I would gobble them down because I was a kid. But these were just fried rings of dough. I never associated them with the kind of donuts you’d get at a donut shop. But years later I was visiting my cousin and his wife cooked up a batch of donuts and it was a revelation; for the first time I realized home-made donuts could actually taste good. And I realized in retrospect that my grandmother’s donuts had been terrible.
Use red salmon (instead of pink) if you can.
