I was ambitious this Thanksgiving. Attempted many first time dishes for the 2 meals I made this season- some of which are a resounding success, and some made me learn lessons about life & myself.
The family menu on Thursday night looked something like that- bacon & cheese stuffed mushrooms (it’s surprisingly easier than it sounds), crunchy romaine salad (one of Arthur’s favorite salad modified by using balsamic vinegar), mashed sweet potatoes (yummy), Swedish meatballs & rosti (don ever buy frozen rosti from Ikea, yucks!), pizza and lemon bars.
The BIG blunder for that night was my festive cider. When I served the drink excitedly to Arthur, he was like “interesting… it has a very strong taste”. I was like “Yeah, I didn’t understand why I had to put so much garlic into the drink”. “Why did you boil it with garlic?” “The recipe called for cloves.” His laughter was uncontrollable for the next 10 minutes.
So I learnt that cloves are not just collective nouns for garlic, but is a spice. Why didn’t they teach that in school?
I wanted to do something really traditional for the party on Saturday night. So the menu consisted of-
Meats: Chicken & stuffing with cranberry sauce (had wanted to do a turkey, but ‘chickened in’ after I realized I had no fridge space for a Butterball), Meatloaf (recipe with ketchup, obviously for the ketchup lover), Pineapple stuffed sausages with melted cheese,
Carbs: Mashed potatoes & gravy, dinner rolls (garlic & cream cheese)
Greens: Crunchy Romain salad (finally found my Red Wine Vinegar @ Carrefour), Boiled carrots and Green beans casserole with corn & mushrooms
Desserts: Pumpkin pie & Lemon bars
Drinks: Festive cider (this time boiled with real cloves), Sangria
So what went wrong this time… hmm.. I was too lazy to do the short-crust pastry for the pie, so I opted for the frozen pie pastry. After I rolled it out, fitted it nicely into the pie dish, and folded the edges into a pretty looking pie, I sent it into the oven to partially bake it.
When I checked it 7 minutes later.. Yikes, the sides started to curl and shrink away. So obviously I had to take it out and try to salvage it- how else was I to pour the pumpkin filling into a curled-up pie? So I tried to knead the hot dough back onto its sides, patching it however I could. My fingers turned pink coz of the heat. And sadly, my once-pretty pie frills no longer looked pretty. But thankfully, the dough held up this time. So I put some rice into the pie to act as pie weights.
When the pie base was ready for its filling, I had to remove the rice bits. I started picking them off. But I got impatient, so I tried to turn the pie over to shake them off. What happened next was a no-brainer. The pie fell, and broke. GOSH. But again, thankfully, the dough was not entirely cooked, so I was still able to piece them back together.
Impatience for a young baking apprentice is a killer. Perhaps I need to bake more to learn better lessons on following instructions and patience. Sorry, not too many pictures because we forgot to take them :(
The family menu on Thursday night looked something like that- bacon & cheese stuffed mushrooms (it’s surprisingly easier than it sounds), crunchy romaine salad (one of Arthur’s favorite salad modified by using balsamic vinegar), mashed sweet potatoes (yummy), Swedish meatballs & rosti (don ever buy frozen rosti from Ikea, yucks!), pizza and lemon bars.
The BIG blunder for that night was my festive cider. When I served the drink excitedly to Arthur, he was like “interesting… it has a very strong taste”. I was like “Yeah, I didn’t understand why I had to put so much garlic into the drink”. “Why did you boil it with garlic?” “The recipe called for cloves.” His laughter was uncontrollable for the next 10 minutes.
So I learnt that cloves are not just collective nouns for garlic, but is a spice. Why didn’t they teach that in school?
I wanted to do something really traditional for the party on Saturday night. So the menu consisted of-
Meats: Chicken & stuffing with cranberry sauce (had wanted to do a turkey, but ‘chickened in’ after I realized I had no fridge space for a Butterball), Meatloaf (recipe with ketchup, obviously for the ketchup lover), Pineapple stuffed sausages with melted cheese,
Carbs: Mashed potatoes & gravy, dinner rolls (garlic & cream cheese)
Greens: Crunchy Romain salad (finally found my Red Wine Vinegar @ Carrefour), Boiled carrots and Green beans casserole with corn & mushrooms
Desserts: Pumpkin pie & Lemon bars
Drinks: Festive cider (this time boiled with real cloves), Sangria
So what went wrong this time… hmm.. I was too lazy to do the short-crust pastry for the pie, so I opted for the frozen pie pastry. After I rolled it out, fitted it nicely into the pie dish, and folded the edges into a pretty looking pie, I sent it into the oven to partially bake it.
When I checked it 7 minutes later.. Yikes, the sides started to curl and shrink away. So obviously I had to take it out and try to salvage it- how else was I to pour the pumpkin filling into a curled-up pie? So I tried to knead the hot dough back onto its sides, patching it however I could. My fingers turned pink coz of the heat. And sadly, my once-pretty pie frills no longer looked pretty. But thankfully, the dough held up this time. So I put some rice into the pie to act as pie weights.
When the pie base was ready for its filling, I had to remove the rice bits. I started picking them off. But I got impatient, so I tried to turn the pie over to shake them off. What happened next was a no-brainer. The pie fell, and broke. GOSH. But again, thankfully, the dough was not entirely cooked, so I was still able to piece them back together.
Impatience for a young baking apprentice is a killer. Perhaps I need to bake more to learn better lessons on following instructions and patience. Sorry, not too many pictures because we forgot to take them :(
2 comments:
hmm ur food looks real yummy
hope u enjoy cooking
is red wine vinegar so hard to find? i like balsamic vinegar it goes really well with mushrooms..
mm.. cloves are spices- taught in home economics classes.. obviously someone hasn't paid attention.
nonetheless, thank u for cooking! it was yummy! i loved the mushrooms especially..
and yeah the rosti was a total flop. we will bring art to marche some day when he is done with his exams!
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