An entire school year has come and gone, and in that school year I prepared the following meals (* means cooked):
BREAKFAST:
* scrambled eggs (2-3 eggs, 1-2 slices Velveeta cheese, salt, butter, and sometimes onion)
* lamb kidneys (2-3 kidneys, lots of curry, diced onion, oil)
- cheese and toast
- marmalade and toast
- cereal
LUNCH/DINNER:
* spaghetti (noodles, Ragu sauce, ground beef w/ turmeric and salt and sometimes onion)
* crab fettuccine (oil, imitation crab, Ragu alfredo, fettuccine, half a head of garlic, little salt and pepper)
* baked marinated chicken w/ baked potato
* burgers (ground beef, turmeric, salt, pepper, onion powder or 1/8 real onion per patty)
DESSERT:
* chocolate cake w/ chocolate topping (very bad; then so-so)
* yellow cake w/ coconut topping (very good)
* brownies
I was growing upset with the fact that I only knew how to prepare two meals that involved ground beef (spaghetti and burgers) and only one with chicken (baked marinated chicken), so I investigated one new use each for the meaty ingredients. These were (1) meatloaf for the burger meat and (2) curry chicken for the chicken.
Suffice to say, I am confident I prepared both meals correctly, so when I say they are great or horrible, etc., please note that I mean the meal as it was meant to be prepared and not the meal that I and I alone prepared. Okay. Click on comments to read more.
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4 comments:
MEATLOAF: BAD
The last time I ate meatloaf was probably the 2nd time in my life, maybe the first. I know that if it was the 2nd, then both times I ate meatloaf was at Sean Stuart's house. I must have been ... somewhere between 9 and 13 years old. So let's say 13. That puts us at 10 years since I last ate it. And I had fond memories of it.
Well, all I can say is that the meatloaf recipe I followed here was complete and utter bullshit: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Meatloaf_II
You see where it says "15 minutes" preparation time? Yeah. Yeah. "You get what you pay for," so to speak. This was a fucking nightmare. And it still took 30 minutes to prepare, too.
Don't get me wrong: preparation wasn't the nightmare; the finished product was the nightmare. Preparation was actually a little fun, minus the fact that mixing Stove Top stuffing into ground beef by hand hurts like hell until the hard crispy stuffing has absorbed enough grease to moisten up. I dug in starving at around 9:30pm at night and boy, let me tell you, this shit tasted awful. It was not like Sean Stuart's meatloaf ... not even close. I still have fond memories of that meatloaf and, if I could learn the recipe, would still be willing to give it another go, but man oh man was this the sickest pile of dogshit I have ever, ever prepared correctly. Usually I:
a) misprepare it and it tastes bad
b) misprepare it and it tastes okay/good but is wrong and would make Gordon Ramsey explode
c) prepare it correct and it tastes okay/good
Hell, this may be the first time I've ever correctly prepared a meal and been so disgusted. Man. Whoever submitted this recipe to Wiki's Cookbook needs to quit giving advice on cooking. NOW.
CURRY CHICKEN: OKAY
This 15-minute prep for curry chicken, again, was a lie. It actually took 45 minutes, mostly because the chicken took 30 fucking minutes to cook through all the way on the stove top. (I've only ever cooked chicken in the oven @ 350°F before and it normally cooks really quickly.) I even had to remove the curry sauce from the pan, flood it with water, and boil the chicken for like 10 minutes to finally get it cooked. And the worst part is, the chicken was room-temperature, having thawed since 11am or so. It was ridiculous. Anyway ...
This meal actually tastes decent. The thing is:
1) I hate Thai food, and this is (in hindsight) clearly a Thai recipe with the suggestion of coconut milk, which I sheepishly obliged instead of opting out, and
2) it's not what I had hoped it would be.
I tripled the recommended curry, quadrupled the recommended Tabasco sauce, and this meal was neither very hot nor very curry-ey. I was very disappointed and place all the blame on the can of coconut milk I poured in. I think it diluted the dish immensely, but I also think that it's the correct preparation. Which is to say, most Thai dishes I've eaten have been pretty bland (which is why I hate them so much) and the few I've had with peanut creamy sauces or coconut milky sauces have always had a sauce that tasted remarkably similar to what I cooked up. So I'm sure I cooked it right. And I'm sure if you liked Thai food then you would like this. I just ... don't.
Persian curry meals (such as the lamb kidneys I cook) usually involve three things:
1- meat
2- curry
3- oil to facilitate cooking the curry into the meat
That's it. So the curry:meat ratio is very high. In Thai dishes (I am discovering), the ratio plummets thanks to the introduction of the "sauce" (i.e. the coconut milk). I guess what that means is, I have a strong curry-tooth and/or I have high requirements for curry before I consider a dish "curry-ey" as compared with (1) Thais, (2) Americans, or (3) both.
Sigh.
I will consider cooking this again but not with coconut milk. I will try for a different sauce and will DEFINITELY not pour in as much as a can of any diluting liquid. Half a can at most.
Oh. And I will prepare the chicken the night before, because it was a joke to have to wait 30 minutes after the sauce was ready to be eaten.
Here are the links since the first one was a dud and the second one I forgot to paste at all:
meatloaf from Hell
Curry Thaiken
I like meatloaf, but it depends on a tasty outer caramelized crust of ketchup/bbq sauce. mmm...
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