March 19, 2006
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Speaking of cooking (as we were a couple of posts down), it still baffles me when someone makes a substantive change to a recipe, then proceeds to gripe that the dish didn’t turn out well. Over at Allrecipes.com there’s a recipe for Broccoli Bites I’m planning on trying soon, and the reviews are mostly positive.
Not the latest one, though. Unfortunately, that reviewer was unimpressed by how they turned out for her. Do you suppose there might be a reason for this, though? “I love the Broccoli Bites from Bennigan’s, and I was hoping this recipe
would replicate them, but I was disappointed. Perhaps it’s because I
baked mine instead of frying…”Gee, you think?
Not that baking instead of frying doesn’t produce good results a good bit of the time, but it sure seems it’d be fair to make the recipe per the instructions before weighing in with a less-than-enthusiastic review. OTOH, at least she was honest about not having followed the directions.
Comments (5)
People are funny about cooking, though – they seem to think that making small changes aren’t going to affect anything vital, not realizing that we’re really talking about chemistry, here. A bit of a change in ingredients creates a different substance!
My family – the entire Meyer clan, even my dad’s family – are Hellmann’s Mayonnaise Only Freaks. “Mayonnaise” means Hellmann’s (or Best Foods, depending on where you live) and anything else is not mayonnaise. We always have people raving over our macaroni salad, or Lois’ potato salad (she’s not a Meyer but she knows about the mayonnaise thing, and I make “her” potato salad) and they wonder what makes ours so special?
“Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. You MUST buy Hellmann’s or it won’t taste the same.”
A friend begged me to tell her JUST HOW TO MAKE MACARONI salad. I told her, including the above advice. She was too cheap to spend $.20 extra an got the store brand. Her mac salad was disgusting and she kept saying, “I don’t understand, I got real mayonnaise, not salad dressing…” UGH!
If you say you like how something tastes, and you get THAT recipe, why would you tweak it before you try it, at least once??
Sheesh.
me<><
All right, don’t talk about wonderful potato salad, macaroni salad etc w/o sharing recipes. Scheeessshhh!
Macaroni salad:
1 lb box Mueller’s elbow macaroni (again, USE MUELLER’s – it holds up to the process better.)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3-4 stalks of celery, finely chopped
6 hard boiled eggs, 1/4″ cube
1/4-1/3 C pimento stuffed green olives, sliced
Hellmann’s mayonnaise to moisten, with a bit – perhaps 2-3 tablespoons – of the water from the olives to loosen.
Salt and pepper to taste.
That’s it.
Potato salad is exactly the same, substituting 6 or 8 medium potatoes, boiled whole just until you can stick a fork in ‘em, then cooled, peeled and cubed. DON’T overcook or you have potato salad paste.
I generally like to mix the mayonnaise and juice from the olives together and put them on the mac. or pot. while dicing the rest of the stuff, that way the flavors start to meld.
Both salads do better if made at least a couple of hours ahead, although Lois does her potato salad with less lead time and hers is the best, so don’t listen to me!
me<><
Can’t wait to make both of these!! Thanks, truly appreciated!
I prefer to call over-boiled potato salad “Mashed Potato Salad.”