Escapist Food Thread

[EvilRoy]

Not to be confused with the Snap Decision thread, I was curious to know what kind of culinary triumphs, failures, and sins we have all experienced recently.

To give a little background, I recently decided that I have to up my game when it comes to cooking, considering someone my age probably shouldn't be subsisting on foods relegated to [Fried Previously Frozen Protien] + [Small Pile of Random Vegetable] or [Premade Noodle Package]. So, I've started to cook more often, and I wanted some ideas of what to take a swing at. For fun I thought it would be interesting to see peoples best dish recently cooked, worst recent fuckup, and laziest/unhealthiest recent meal.

My best dish came out of being confused on what I did and did not have in the cupboard while deciding whether to stop at the store on the way home. Basically I arrived home to find that I had one can of tomato paste, dried noodles, and an assortment of week old vegetables going soft in my fridge. In the face of adversity I used overripe tomatoes, tomato paste, broccoli, garlic, and a few other items to make an extremely filling homemade pasta sauce to go with sphaghetti I cooked and then pan fried without oil or butter. Probably the nicest flavour, texture and calorie count I managed to get out of a recent meal.

My worst fuckup would have to be the spinach spanikapita pie thing I tried to make based off a half remembered recipie. Long story short I can't make pastry for shit, and my attempt to make the crust crispier caused the very cheap feta I was using to melt and pool in the bottom of the pan, leaving bland spinach mulch and unbelievably tough pastry in its wake.

And my sin was, (despite having on hand avocados, real cheese, olives and other delightful fixings) to make nachoes out of stale nachos, processed slices of "pizza mozzerella" and no name salsa dumped over top before microwaving the mess and eating it with a fork.

 

[Dalek Caan]

I can bake Muffins, Pancakes and Biscuit Cake pretty well but whenever I try my hand at cookies I always mess up. I end up either not getting the measurements for the ingredients right or completely messing up the rolling process for the dough.

My worst, and most dumbass, baking moment however was when I baking some Chocolate Chip Muffins. One of the ingredients I needed was 100ml of vegetable oil. Upon looking in the cupboards I found out I didn't have any oil. Fresh oil that is. There was however a large container for oil we reuse for cooking Chips/Fries. Thinking that as long as I filtered out any remnants of chips from the oil I could still use it. The end result was a Chocolate Chip Muffin that smelt of chips, tasted of chips and left an aftertaste that made me think vomit would have been preferable to this.

Usually for dinner I can cook myself some Pasta and Bolognese Sauce. I'll cook it hours in advance and microwave it when I'm hungry so that when I'm eating it's nice a dry and not soaked in water.

 

[EvilRoy]

I can bake Muffins, Pancakes and Biscuit Cake pretty well but whenever I try my hand at cookies I always mess up. I end up either not getting the measurements for the ingredients right or completely messing up the rolling process for the dough.

My worst, and most dumbass, baking moment however was when I baking some Chocolate Chip Muffins. One of the ingredients I needed was 100ml of vegetable oil. Upon looking in the cupboards I found out I didn't have any oil. Fresh oil that is. There was however a large container for oil we reuse for cooking Chips/Fries. Thinking that as long as I filtered out any remnants of chips from the oil I could still use it. The end result was a Chocolate Chip Muffin that smelt of chips, tasted of chips and left an aftertaste that made me think vomit would have been preferable to this.

Usually for dinner I can cook myself some Pasta and Bolognese Sauce. I'll cook it hours in advance and microwave it when I'm hungry so that when I'm eating it's nice a dry and not soaked in water.

Not much for baking myself unless it comes out of a mix. And those are usually crazy high in calories. The same thing for dinner most nights though?

 

[Twintix]

Culinary successes? Well, I am quite good at improvising quick pasta sauces. One of my favorites was chicken, créme fraîche, balsamic vinegar and tons of grated parmesan cheese. It was divine. And probably already invented by an Italian.
And my home-made tomato soup is always made with an unusual ingredient which brings a different flavor each time. I remember that mustard was a really good addition to the soup.

Oh, and baking is one of my fortes. The things I cannot bake are next to none! (If you get that reference, kudos) If I can't bake it, it's just because I've never heard of it or tried it.

One of my worst culinary failures came when I was trying to make a rice omelette when I was about 13. See, I knew that omelette rice was fried rice wrapped in an egg, so I thought that rice omelette was an omelette with rice in the egg batter. So I fried some mince meat, boiled some rice and mixed with the egg. I didn't count on the rice-meat mixture absorbing the egg, creating a vomit-like blob in a bowl. So I tried frying it. It didn't improve anything. I ate it. It was awful.

And as a culinary sin...

I eat pasta with ketchup. There are probably a few Italians in the world who would want to strangle me to death over that one, seeing how some of them reacted when an Italian-inspired Japanese pasta dish had, like, a tablespoon of ketchup in the sauce...

 

[Dalek Caan]

Not much for baking myself unless it comes out of a mix. And those are usually crazy high in calories. The same thing for dinner most nights though?

Honestly man, no idea. As long as it taste good I'll eat it. Which probably isn't great for my health but until I find healthy food that I think taste good it will probably stay that way.

 

[EvilRoy]

And as a culinary sin...

I eat pasta with ketchup. There are probably a few Italians in the world who would want to strangle me to death over that one, seeing how some of them reacted when an Italian-inspired Japanese pasta dish had, like, a tablespoon of ketchup in the sauce...

A buddy actually explained that one to me, because he said the insult about the pasta sauce at the end of Goodfellas was proof real Italians were involved with the writing. Apparently calling pasta sauce ketchup is an intense insult because it implies you're too cheap or lazy to use real tomatoes. He tells me almost every sauce is made from scratch over there, and if you entertain you would never serve something premade. Which is cool, but I would never do it. Takes long enough to do it for special.

Not much for baking myself unless it comes out of a mix. And those are usually crazy high in calories. The same thing for dinner most nights though?

Honestly man, no idea. As long as it taste good I'll eat it. Which probably isn't great for my health but until I find healthy food that I think taste good it will probably stay that way.

Fair enough, just watch you don't end up like me. Learning to cook for realzies because I was too lazy/didn't like real food and it made me fat.

 

[Dalek Caan]

And as a culinary sin...

I eat pasta with ketchup. There are probably a few Italians in the world who would want to strangle me to death over that one, seeing how some of them reacted when an Italian-inspired Japanese pasta dish had, like, a tablespoon of ketchup in the sauce...

I used to do the exact same thing. I stopped a while and fully moved over to using Bolognese Sauce but it was nice. I've heard people react the same if you put Chips and Tomato sauce together. I think those people where slightly mad.

 

[IndianaJonny]

So, I've started to cook more often, and I wanted some ideas of what to take a swing at...

Save baking/pastry-making for another day, champ. It takes a bit more practice than your typical 'meal'-cooking to get them right - unless you've got a flair for it, I suppose.

What's your cooking/living situation? You looking for meals to eat when you get in from work, eating with housemates - that sort of thing?

 

[sky14kemea]

I actually made mini-cupcakes 2 hours ago! The cupcakes themselves turned out great but the icing could've been way better... It's been a while since I used to bake regularly.

I can do cakes/biscuits/pies etc at a good enough level for my own consumption, but I'm definitely not at a high standard. Cooking-wise I can do all the basics, pasta/rice/easy things.

I had a huge dumbass moment today with baking. I forgot which measurements I needed for the icing and threw my first batch out thinking it had curdled. Then I remembered halfway through the second try that I needed double the icing sugar, not double the butter.... Oh how I laughed and cried.

I suppose my sin would be that I still put chocolate or cake in my cereal in the mornings sometimes. It just makes it more fun..