Thursday, May 3, 2007

Kate's Test Kitchen, Episode 1

This is only "Episode 1", because kitchen weirdness is a recurring theme with me. I'm always trying new and impractical recipes. Shirley, if you're out there in the ether and read this, it's addressed particularly to you, regarding "en papiotte". Hope I spelled that right.

Last night's recipe was salmon "en papiotte" with a cucumber dill sauce. One thing I liked about the recipe was that it called for fresh fennel and leeks. Yummy. The kids had not tried fennel before. Sara liked the smell when I was cutting it up and hung around, eating raw off-cuts, which she said were good. (Nate was at soccer practice with his dad.) Cutting out the parchment wasn't a big deal, and I managed to fold it like the picture in the magazine. So, you put the leeks and fennel in the middle of the paper, lay the salmon on there and splash some white wine around. Except the recipe said the salmon had to be skinned, and mine wasn't. That was a major, sticky, screw-around business. In fact, that alone could be a deal killer. Oh, well, the little packets looked so cute. They made it into the oven, and I started on the sauce. Easy: grated cucumber, dill, garlic, plain yoghurt. So, I open the tub of yoghurt and it's raspberry. Damn, damn, damn. Damn "Mountain High" Corp. for making all their tubs look alike except for the TINY lettering to indicate the flavor. After a minute of staring into the fridge, mentally willing a tub of plain yoghurt to appear, Sara and I make a mad dash for the store, hoping to make it back before the salmon "en papiotte" becomes the salmon "flambe". I was grateful that I wasn't up in Brighton. At any rate, we managed to get back in time.

Taste rating: "pretty good" (although the kids just picked at it and mostly ate the baked sweet potatoes I made to go with it)

Hassle Rating: "why bother"

Final analysis: "Not a Keeper".

1 comment:

Weber said...

Kate - I loved it! Especially the "hassle rating". I could feel your pain about the wrong yogurt - I quite often will go back to the pantry or fridge and just keeping willing that missing item to appear. Actually, a few weeks ago I needed a can of cream of mushroom soup. I looked 3 times in the same spot and there was none there. After I came up with another recipe, I went back to the storage area in the basement to look for something else and suddenly there was a 12 can case of Cream of Mushroom soup. Is it magic or am I just blind?