Successes and Failures

6 years ago

I wrote a too long version of this and the 'net ate it. Failure of post. Success of forcing me to cultivate brevity. Please add your successes and failures and anything in between. :)

We do grazing on New Year's.

Success in that everybody seemed to have a good time.
Success in that all the food was good and they ate well.
Success in having a tolerant group with no pretenses to keeping kosher so could have a traifapalooza of new recipes.
Failure to communicate in that Mr. Bacon, who I was told would be off with his family, was there cooking ribs, which effectively shut me out of the kitchen until mid-afternoon.
Success in that they were still talking about how good the beef tenderloin was on Christmas Day.
Success in trying several ideas from the appetizer thread.
Failure in roasting peas for the Chinese pea cookies, leading me to wonder why they have to be fresh peas and couldn't I just use dry split peas? They shriveled to nothing but didn't dry.
Failure in toasting almonds. I was trying the whole replace the date pit with almond thing, so I had most of a bag of raw almonds. Toasting changed the texture a bit but did not enhance the flavor. I tried, at least, so that's a success.
Success in coming up with a non-bacon combination--mini sweet pepper around date wrapped almond with melty dab of cheese.
Failure in that while the flavors work, the sweetness and flavor of the dates were overwhelming. They need the bacon's saltiness and "5 kinds of umami" to offset their bullying ways. Using less date didn't help.
Success in making a take off of the recommended Ina Garten tarragon shrimp salad recipe (see Pernod thread). I did, in the end, use it as a template rather than making it as written, but everybody loved it.
Failure in trying to figure out Mr. Bacon's bacon (see Bacon. Really. thread). I did use the recommended methods, but didn't have the time or oomph to run down the bestest ever bacon to cook, and chose from what they had at Whole Foods. Center cut was only thick slices. Applewood was only house brand thin. The former was very fatty, and marbled, and deep fried itself in the oven in its own swimming pool of fat. I had to pick up a very important call just as the timer went off and the extra minute charred most of it. I picked out the good centers. It was the most flavorful. The applewood cooked perfectly, but was bland. Neither showed any promise on even the road to Mr. Bacon's miracle pig.
Success in turning such bacon as there was into the filling for BLT bites.
Success in, in the absence of a melon baller as suggested by Bbstx (i think), I used the spatulate bottom end of a teaspoon to extract the innards of the tomatoes without incident.
Failure in that the beautiful cocktail tomatoes (about twice the size of cherry tomatoes or half the size of Roma/plum) were far too flavorful for the bacon salad filling. I sent out half a dozen to try, Good thing. So then I just put out the tomatoes and the filling for people to help themselves.
Success in the bacon not going soggy after being dressed the night before. It kept well in the fridge. They really liked it, such as it was.
Failure in getting half the dishes I'd planned done, which was a success given Mr. Bacon's rib project.
Failure in getting the crackers and cheeses to the car. I forgot the cheese, but I thought the tote with the crackers was there because it wasn't waiting by the door. I found it later set aside, I assume by the one who was mopping yesterday evening (not me). We could have used the lovely crackers. People filled up on Mr. Picky's pedestrian chips (there were plenty).
Success in getting a nice guacamole made quickly. I've learned. I brought my own spices.
Semi-success in making peewee potatoes french fry style. Some visitors wanted to try them before they left, so I pulled them out creamy inside but only lightly crisp outside. The oven needs to be recalibrated so success in getting the temperature right, too.
Failure in getting the carrots and asparagus made--see above about Mr. Bacon's project. The big asparagus eater didn't come, but now I'm stuck with it. :) Maybe I'll make soup. There were plenty of veg, but I was looking forward to the carrots. Rainbows, and I was going to make lucky coins.
Success in getting the Holiday grapes (globe shaped large red seedless grapes which are very juicy and refreshing and less sweet than the norm). People filled up on them too.
Success to Mr. Picky, who used a new kind of margarine for his best in the world chocolate chip cookies and they were perfect. I did encourage people to take as many as they wanted, and still got to keep the lion's share, lucky me. :)

Yes, this really is the short version. ;)

What successes and failures did you mark the end of the old year/beginning of the new with?

Featured Answer

bob_cville

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

We met with my wife's family for New Years like we have done for the past 20 years, although this year was in St Pete rather than in Vermont. Each night a different person was responsible for dinner and each night was a success.

The first two nights our host cooked, making chicken marbella one night and a roast beef tenderloin the other, while regaling us with tales from when she worked at the New England Culinary Institute. The next night I made "Moroccan Pork with Ras el Hanout" which I've posted here:

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5846092/moroccan-pork-with-ras-el-hanout

the next night there was breaded roast lemon chicken cutlets.

All of these turned out great, so the for final night, New Years Eve, Cindy (the newest member of the family, who married my wife's oldest brother back in August) was feeling a lot of pressure to measure up to the previous days meals. After changing plans for what to make a couple of times, she eventually decided to make a Prime Rib Roast, and received a "foolproof" recipe from her son in Arizona.

Even though the accompaniments were simple, plain spaghetti with butter, olive oil and parsley, and a caesar salad with whole white anchovies, in my opinion it was the best meal of the entire gathering.

This is the "foolproof" recipe that her son sent.

Prime Rib -- Perfect every time
(size does not matter)

Pick well-marbled Roast with layer of white fat.

Let Roast stand at room temp for at least 1 hour (more not less)

Pre-heat oven to 375 deg F

Rub Roast with salt, pepper, seasoning of your choice. Optional to rub with pkg of dry onion soup mix. Make small knife slits sporadically around Roast and push in whole garlic cloves.

Place meat fat side up in shallow roasting pan. Do not cover! Do not add water.

Place roast in oven -- From this point on NEVER open oven door -- Tape across door with duck tape to remind all -- Do Not Touch.

Cook roast for 1 hour at 375 deg F the turn the oven temp off. Do not open the oven door anytime ... Let Roast sit in oven ... Regardless of size until 30-40 minutes before preparing to eat.

Turn oven to pre-heat 375 deg F again, Once oven hits 375 deg F -- cook roast for 30-40 minutes at 375 deg F -- again -- Never touch the door until this is completed.

Now open oven door -- remove Roast to serving platter.

Let stand 15-20 min. Roast will be brown and crisp on outside, pink and juicy on the inside.

Carve slices .. garnish with parsley

(Med-Rare)

Bon Appetit!!

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Comments (11)

foodonastump
6 years ago
Yes, this really is the short version. ;)

You ruined my response!

We didn’t do anything, child free for the first time so dinner was pierogis and kielbasa pulled from the freezer.

But I did have a success. Every year my MIL bakes Greek New Years bread, vasilopita, and every year my wife tells me how she remembers her Yia Yia’s bread being less sweet and more bready. I came to suspect that Yia Yia had made a yeast bread rather than a quick bread. Wife asked her mother if she had Yia Yia’s recipe. Instead she sent hers. Asked again. She dug out Yia Yia’s old cookbook and sent four recipes, three of which were in fact yeast breads. I made the first of the three and my wife says I nailed it! I like this version better, too.

Failure was that MIL obviously took offense that I didn’t use HER recipe which EVERYONE agrees is the BEST. But I managed to talk her down. ;)
party_music50
6 years ago
plllog, I'm stuck on trying to figure out how tomatoes could be "too flavorful"... here I just hope to buy tomatoes that have any flavor at all. Since you said the filling held up well in the fridge, I'm adding those BLT bites to the list of things I can take on my annual holiday trips!

FOAS, I've had that same problem when trying to get old family recipes from some relatives. Glad you finally got the right one. Now I'm missing pierogies and kielbasa... I didn't make pierogies because I didn't go to the Polish market for kielbasa! :(
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foodonastump
6 years ago
PM - The pierogis were from a Costco sized bag of Mrs. T’s. Was pondering whether homemade is worth the effort. If you say yes and have a good recipe you’d want to share (perhaps on another thread) I’d be interested. I know we’ve discussed these here before, including some making them in mass quantities for festivals. Will have to search for old threads. As for the Kielbasa, I always buy Rapacki, preferably fine grind.
colleenoz
6 years ago
Might you share the recipe, FOAS?
foodonastump
6 years ago
Sure Colleen - https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5845412/vasilopita-for-colleenoz#n=0
PRO
beesneeds
6 years ago
"Failure in roasting peas for the Chinese pea cookies, leading me to
wonder why they have to be fresh peas and couldn't I just use dry split
peas? They shriveled to nothing but didn't dry."

I can offer an explanation. The peas used for dried split peas are the mature and hard seed peas, where the roasted peas are dried from fresh younger peas. There's definite starches and sugars along with texture and moisture level differences.

Dehydrated fresh peas turn out tasting like fresh peas, and the flour is easy to grind and use comparably with grain and other veggie flours. Split peas turn out tasting lie mature soup peas, and the flour is not so great, and usually needs some extra hydration to get it to work at all.

I have no idea what recipe you used, some call for already made peas, or tell you to dry and fry.... I do dehydrate my own peas (from frozen, not garden fresh ones yet, sigh), and would use those to make the cookies before trying split peas.

And lol, what is Mr. Bacon?
ediej1209 AL Zn 7
6 years ago
Wow you did GOOD!! I used cocktail tomatoes for BLT Bites too. I used a grapefruit spoon to scrape out the halves then salted them a bit and turned them upside down on a rack to drain. I guess mine weren't really ripe as they didn't have a whole lot of flavor. But they all disappeared so that and the Bu^che de Noel were my successes. We slightly overcooked the Friday night family dinner ribs though, they were a tad dry and chewy :-( so that was not a success. And after everyone went home I realized the mop and bucket were still sitting out in a corner of the kitchen. Ugh.

Cream of Asparagus soup would be yummy I bet! Maybe make a nice bowl of rainbow carrot sticks to encourage healthy munching?

But in the end it sounds like everyone had a lovely time and nobody went home hungry so you can be justified in being very happy with yourself!!
plllog
Original Author
6 years ago
FOAS, perhaps the trick is to do both MIL's and Yia Yia's recipes? Keep everybody's noses on straight? Nice of your MIL to find and send all the recipes. I know how the mandelbroit in Grandma's cookie jar were made, but that bakery closed decades ago.... :D

PM and Edie, I just meant too flavorful for the filling. They're really good ! And ripe and lovely. I didn't halve them though, just cut out the stem then scraped out the innards and drained. I packed them almost to splitting, but there was so much tomato flavor, it masked the bacon salad, which is a flavor bomb on its own. Live and learn. The little tomatoes were all oval and teardrops and the plums were sad, so these really were the best choice. And the little tomatoes have even more flavor. So that gave me a few more minutes with the company, only assembling the half dozen. No one fancy there. They were fine spooning the bacon salad out of the plastic storage container. :)

Beesneeds, thank-you for the clear explanation! I think on some level I knew most of that but didn't think of it in my frustration. You've made it all clear and organized. The recipe mentioned using frozen, so I'll try that next. Mind were the bagged fresh English peas, so pretty mature. We only ever see petits pois frozen. But they always have them frozen. If I can get myself from eating all of them before they go in the oven (candy!)... Thanks so much for the advice.

Re Mr. Bacon: My friends and family don't do social media and don't want others to do it for them, so I don't use names. It can be very inconvenient and I'm beginning to lose patience, so I named a beloved but unconventional eater who I've been trying to feed (mixed success and failure. I'm still learning). I call him Mr. Picky. Then another of our circle, who has a very mixed bag of cooking skills and massive lacks (I try to help, but he's resistant to learning how to think about cooking), has been withholding the secret to the so amazing bacon. It's always the same and extremely perfect to my mind. I started a thread asking for advice and the consensus was flat on a lined sheet pan in a hot oven. It yielded good bacon (ignoring the part that got charred, which was all my fault), but didn't come close to his. I was really tired after three long days of schlepping and cooking food, so I named him Mr. Bacon. I'm still keeping up with the don't post about us rules and it's so much easier to call him that.

Edie, I have rainbow baby snack carrots. I may still make the lucky coins with the big ones. Or I could steam them and put them in Sunday's dinner. I've been thinking about tacos adobos casserole, but don't have it all figured out yet. Or I could shave them! The same kind of thing has happened to me as your mop and bucket. Worry not! i've been told that it lends a homey feel. :)

No brevity here. I'm still really tired, though I got myself through this morning's meeting.

I'll be interested to see the pierogi and kielbasa forthcoming.
party_music50
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Plllog, the thought is making my mouth water!

FOAS, I have my grandmother's recipe for the dough if you want it, but it's pretty standard, I think. I don't believe anyone in my family has a recipe for the fillings. We make potato or cabbage (sauerkraut) fillings, but we wing it. We usually use pressed cheese for both, but I often use cottage cheese w/ my potato pierogi.. ETA: it takes a long time to make them, but they're so good. I don't believe I've ever eaten store bought pierogi, so I can't make a comparison.
sheilajoyce_gw
6 years ago
I used dark brown sugar for our candied sweet potatoes, and it made a very nice difference from the usual light brown sugar.

bacon--try roasting in on cooling racks in the roasting pan. That should help with cooking the bacon out of the bacon fat.

Pillog, your spread sounds delicious. Yum.
plllog thanked sheilajoyce_gw

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