Zataran’s jumbalaya is better if you don’t add the oil. It is not as good as real jumbalaya though, and much more bland. I add a few spices when I make it. I like it all right, but I would take the real stuff over it any day, it’s kind of like comparing Kraft dinner to real homemade macaroni and cheese. I like them both, but they are not the same. Or canned chicken soup to homemade, one is an imitation of the real thing.
My disaster was flan. I made it for my Spanish class, it turned out beautifully and looked very nice, but no one ate more than a bite. Bleh.
Well, it might have been ok had I included all those ingredients. I’m just talkin’ spaghetti and eggs. No sauce. Maybe some butter. Maybe I thought…eh, I don’t know what I was thinking.
I have to agree with Velma. The Zatarain’s jambalaya mix calls for far too much oil. That was the slimy factor.
Anyone been to the World of Coke in Atlanta? The international cola flavors room at the end of the tour is the stuff of legend. I could tolerate most of the flavors, and even lamented that I wasn’t able to purchase Lychee-Mello in the gift shop, but the Beverly drink from Italy? Tasted like carbonated deodorant. It was so horrible that people would sip it, and then hang around that fountain to get unsuspecting new arrivals to try it. It was like “The Ring”, and you had to pass the virus in order to live.
Didja marinate it well, drain it, and saute it? If you leave out these steps (especially the marinating), you’re gonna hate it.
Turkish delight is fantastic. There’s a restaurant in town with good Turkish delight, and good Turkish coffee; but if you have the two together, it is a transporting experience. The bitterness of the coffee is exactly complemented by the nectary sweetness of the delight. Yum!
Fry’s, however, is truly repulsive. I’m with matt.
My high school band / choir visited the Coke place in Atlanta, I remember that drink. We did take great delight in getting others to taste it. Man they had some weird flavors, although I think that Diet Coke with Lime is heading into similar territory.
This is some evil joke you’re playing on the Merkins, right? Like telling them all the best sights in London are within walking distance of Ongar tube station?
They cost so much money, they must be good, right?
When I was living in Italy, I bought a little baggie of white truffle-scented Arborio rice from a market (they put the truffle inside a jar of rice and it “perfumes” the entire jar with its scent and flavor). I kept smelling whiffs of methane on the bus home. When I got home, my roommates also thought they smelled gas–the distinctive smell of natural gas was all over the apartment, and we were really scared.
Until I opened my backpack and realized the smell was coming from the bag of rice… and now, also, my clothes, books, backpack, etc.
I thought the rice might taste better once I cooked it. I couldn’t bring myself to put it in my mouth. My truffle-loving roommate ate it with gusto.
I just don’t like it. I don’t understand the appeal of strong truffle flavor and I particularly don’t know why you would pay so much money for it. The only times I’ve had truffle that didn’t make me want to gag, it was in other foods with strong flavors and nearly imperceptible amounts of truffle adding a weird complexity to the food. Once it’s strong enough for me to pick out the flavor, I can’t stand it.
While this is a funny line, I just thought I’d be educational and let everyone know that in Turkey (and also Greece, which stole all its good food ideas from Turkey) it is called lokum. However, this is not the Turkish Delight from TL,TWATW. That refers to salep, a drink. Here’s the wikipedia page on it:Salep
Mine isn’t really a normal food, but I definitely regretted it. I love dark chocolate, and was always looking out for the darkest I could find. So when I saw Baker’s Unsweetened at the supermarket, I figured, hey, you can’t get much darker than that. My mother warned me I wouldn’t like it, but I had to try it. Very bad stuff.
I think it’s because nobody has ever lusted after lutefisk! I could be wrong, of course, but the name and description just never seemed appealing to me.
Mmm… fish soaked in lye… aaahh.
The best recipe I ever found for jambalaya came from America’s Test Kitchen. This program is on PBS, so check your TV listings for dates and times. Anyway, the premise of the show is that different foods are made in the test kitchen several times until a fool proof method that can be done in a home kitchen is devised. The main pointers of easy fool proof jambalaya are:
Use chicken thighs for the meat and leave the skin on while sauteeing. Remove the thights when outside is crisp and remove the skins before returning chicken to the pot.
Don’t crowd the pot when sauteeing the chicken or the sausages. You want the meat to sear and get brown, not steam in its release juices.
When the onions, carrots and garlic are finished sauteeing, add the rice and cook it slightly before adding the liquid.
Leave the shrimp till the last five minutes. When the jambalaya is almost finished, put the shrimp in the pot and spoon the contents over the shrimp and immediately put the cover back on. Turn the heat down to low and let the shrimp cook by the residual steam. When you take the lid off the pot, the shrimp are just cooked and are springy and juicy instead of dry and rubbery.
I love this series because of their in depth testing and explanations. HTH
Tracer
That’s because I’ve never had a chance to try lutkefisk. I have to know if it’s as bad as people say or if I will develop cravings for rotted, gelatinous fish.
