January 13, 2009

Tuesday @ Chef T's

Thanks to Chef Tahya for hosting the event. Warming winters chill was our theme and Cassoulet was the entree of choice. So, our menu was;
Winter Salad w/ Vinegarette
Cassoulet
Butterscotch Pie

Collection of French Wine from Baseball Mike

Everything was great. Well, except for the pie. Movie-man Sandy brought the pie. O.K., I realize that you're not a cook Sandy. You did a great job with the shrimp and other items you brought to the holiday party, but this dish, YUK. Here are some cooking tips for you:
#1. Salt will NOT "burn off" when it bakes. What would be the point of seasoning something then?
#2. When you're transcribing something, make sure you write down the right amount. 1/4 teaspoon is not in any way comparable to 1/4 CUP. In fact, why not just use your computer printer?
#3. If you've over salted something, adding additional sugar isn't going to help. Lemon juice can fix some MINOR issues when braising or stewing something, but NOT when baking. A potato can work as well to draw out some of the seasoning but again, NOT when baking.
#4. Just for your future reference. C = Cup, T or Tbs = Tablespoon and t or tsp = teaspoon.
All of this of course, begs the question. Once you knew you'ld made the mistake of adding too much salt, why didn't you just throw out the filling and make another batch? Once you decided to "doctor" up the batch with too much salt and then decided to go ahead and bake it, why wouldn't you taste it after it was done to decide if it was worth bringing? There will always be the possibility that something someone makes won't taste great, but that won't be from making an error in measuring. After all, the whole idea of Butterscotch Pie was to see how it tasted. But that is on the theory that it was made per the recipe, not with mistakes or doctored up to try and fix said mistakes. Another question would be that once you knew it was bad, why did you bring it? Is bad food something you like to give to your friends? You simply could have tossed the filling and picked up a pie at Coco's or Denny's and called it good. But you didn't and you didn't bring a back-up. Even Baseball Mike brought back-up wine in case some of his bottles were bad. All of this is just Food for Thought.
Enough Movie-man Sandy bashing. We'll be looking forward to tasting a perfected version on Tuesday, January 27th.