The Kitchen: all things delicious and disastrous

Not confectioners sugar, Baker's sugar. It's a fine sugar for baking specifically. If there was no confectioners sugar I'd move!

Also, has anyone ever tried using apricots as a substitute for butter in cake? The results are fantastic and it makes for a healthy sub at that.

Not apricot, but I have used prune paste as a partial fat substitute. You'd think it would do weird things to the flavor, but it doesn't really.

One day I will learn how to make pie. I had a delicious pie a few months back - I can never remember if it was pear or peach.

I'm really happy that I taught myself how to make my favourite soup (chicken noodle, only I substitute potatoes for noodles). One day I will learn to make chicken pot pie and rice balls. Until then, I got my girlfriend to promise to make me those things.

-is confused by the idea of fruit in omelets-

Is seitan that yellow chunky stuff that looks like miniature sponges?

Now I just remembered Win. He was the sushi chef at the deli and taught me a cool trick when making falafel; throw in some toasted sesame oil. Fabulous. He would make tofu from scratch. Cool guy.

Don't be, funnyguts. It's good. Although I will admit that I was startled the first Mr Maddy suggested a cheese and jam omelet to me (grated cheddar and strawberry jam — yummy!). But really, the sweetness of the fruit goes really well with the egg.

edited 15th Mar '11 7:04:14 PM by Madrugada

It makes sense, if you think about it; there's a lot of egg in cakes, for instance. Goes just fine.

Speaking of vegetarian sausage: soy chorizo sausage ('soyrizo' brand is the common one) tastes pretty damn like the meaty one, is far less greasy and nasty, and is overall delicious. It's a Mexican sausage that isn't eaten whole; rather, you cut it open and use the filling as a spicy ground meat. Commonly mixed with egg for breakfast, though that's not the only way to eat it.

edited 15th Mar '11 7:12:57 PM by Morven

I've seen a recipe that used applesauce instead of butter. It made a really nice low-fat cake.

I never knew what chorizo was before I went veg, so I never got to compare it to soyrizo. Soyrizo is good though.

As for fruit in omelets, my family would almost never put any non-animal product in ours. It would always be three eggs, bacon, ham, a few types of cheese, and maybe some onion.

I'm still not sure how I ended up vegan. :/

Seitan can be yellow, but usually isn't... depends what you put in there. You might be thinking of a type of tofu, Blackcat.

edited 15th Mar '11 7:49:34 PM by Funnyguts

^ The omelette sounds like way too much for me. I like mine with cheese and vegetables.

edited 16th Mar '11 9:11:01 AM by Jace

I want to try a spinach and feta omelet, it sounds delicious. (Once I find eggs and cheese acceptable to me blah blah)

chorizo

Corect me, but I thought chorizo was sausage?

It is, but in Mexican cooking it is cut open and the meat inside it used.

...why would you do that? Then again, I prefer chuzos. Oh, sweet death in a stick.

I worked at a Mexican restaurant many years ago and we abbreviated Chorizo as Izo. Izo nachos, Izo enchiladas, Izo in chili. Izo quesadillas. I still think of it as Izo.

Do amusing stories of failure with the microwave fit here? If so...My family seems to have a thing with putting things in there for too long or putting things in there that shouldn't be there.

My aunt used to put whole cans of shit in the microwave and just let it go for a while. The sparks and strange smells and sounds didn't make her go "You know this seems like a bad thing...". She broke a microwave or two this way and almost burned my uncle's hands off with one of the cans.

My brother wanted mac 'n cheese. We had some made and I didn't feel like heating it up for him. He was old enough. I was doing shit by the time I was four I said. Nothing bad will happen. Ten minutes latter the smoke alarms were going off and there was a melted hunk of plastic and pasta in our microwave.

More kitchen woes: I used to joke about dislocated toes a lot when I was younger for some reason. I have no clue why. I wanted tea one day though and I had the kettle on. It started whistling away and I ran to it only to bang my foot into the tv stand. I turned off the stove and fell to the ground in a fit of pain only to discover that I had dislocated my toe.

funnyguts, normally I wouldn't eat Veggie sausage but I bought these by mistake and they are surprisingly well made.

Mr. b accidentally set the microwave to 20 minutes instead of 2 once while I was in Toledo.

But my favorite was when he made popcorn forgot to put the lid on and went to take a shower.

Did you get Yves brand or something? :P

We never get popcorn right half the time...Sometimes it's burnt. Sometimes it's not cooked all the way and half the bag is unpopped kernels. Sometimes it's stale. Sometimes it just tastes like shit for no discernible reason. That's microwavable popcorn.

Pan popcorn we've tried a few times. The results I do not remember other than that one attempt was an utter failure that left me sad and disappointed.

I feel that there is a popcorn god and he has laid a curse upon us.

An old next door neighbour of ours put an entire kilogram of chestnuts in the microwave for ten minutes. The door exploded off its hinges, to the complaints of half the street.

Holy shit...

Mmm, chestnuts nuking in an open microwave.

jack frost puking on your toes

Tater tots with their eyes lava flow

edited 15th Mar '11 10:09:12 PM by blackcat

My mother sent me a recipe for microwave chocolate cake. It's a pity I don't have cooking supplies here and am limited to packet mixes.

My most recent kitchen disaster. Saw Nigella making honeycomb on TV. Thought, wow, that looks so easy! Three ingredients, bam, honeycomb.

Unfortunately either I did something wrong, or the climate here is unsuited to honeycomb making. The foam collapsed into a sticky golden-syrupy puddle that looked like an animal was having digestion problems.

Still tasted fine though.