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torquillThis may end up being a recurring post; I suspect lily's -food discussion is getting rather tired of me ranting about the multiple failures I find in recipes that are supposedly tested and highly rated. *sigh*
I mean, sure, I'm often working with online recipes, which have their pitfalls: recipes which have pretty obviously never been cooked ("Swedish lemon angels" level); ones which contain items in the procedures which are not listed in the ingredients; ones whose cooking times are waaaaaay off, or whose authors have confused teaspoons and tablespoons, or must have been using spices that have sat in the cupboard since 1975; and ones that simply appear to come from a universe equipped with an alternative set of physical laws. You end up almost having to know how the recipe is supposed to be written before you even go looking, which sort of negates the point.
It's not just online, though. Julie Sahni's "Indian Cooking" book has sabotaged me so many times I no longer trust any recipe in this supposed "bible" of Indian cooking, at least without reading it carefully and applying my experience to see whether the spices are out of proportion. She should also know better than to chill a custard before straining it. And on the custard front, Michael Ruhlman (of all people) put a recipe in "Ratio" which supposedly makes 6 three-ounce portions, yet asks for four eggs and two cups of milk (that doesn't add up to eighteen ounces, in case you were wondering, even without the half-cup of sugar involved). The custards also took twice as long to cook as he said they would, and when that means an hour, it's not inconsequential.
I run across little things all the time, too. Even when I do my best to vet them. Tonight, I was cooking daal gosht (meat with lentils); the five-star recipe from the net looked pretty darned good. Fry the onions, garlic, ginger, and spices, add tomatoes, all normal procedure, in normal proportions. Add the meat and fry until brown (okay, not so easy with four large tomatoes in there, but I can handle a slip like that). Add lentils and cook until the lentils are soft, then serve. The author was doing it by pressure cooker, but I can just let it simmer away for a while.
But wait: did you catch the problem in there?
I didn't until I happened to look in "The Joy of Cooking" for a feel of how much liquid the lentils would need the sauce to have. And found right there a fact I had known, but which had slipped my mind: if you cook legumes in an acidic solution, they don't get soft. EVER. You can cook them until the trump of doom and they will stay crunchy. In fact, if you want them to soften easily, you need to add a pinch of baking soda to the water to make it alkaline instead.
At least I hadn't added the lentils yet. I cooked them solo, and folded them in after the main pot was just about done. Sitting for a day in the fridge will flavor them nicely, and I'll tweak the salt then. But jeez.
Between that and trying to brown meat that's sitting in a cup of tomato juice, I'm forced to conclude that I'm doomed to rewrite every recipe I come across. That's part of the reason I'm posting recipes here, because I know how hard it is to find proofed, proven recipes that actually taste good. I just wish somebody were out there to do it for ME. :)
I mean, sure, I'm often working with online recipes, which have their pitfalls: recipes which have pretty obviously never been cooked ("Swedish lemon angels" level); ones which contain items in the procedures which are not listed in the ingredients; ones whose cooking times are waaaaaay off, or whose authors have confused teaspoons and tablespoons, or must have been using spices that have sat in the cupboard since 1975; and ones that simply appear to come from a universe equipped with an alternative set of physical laws. You end up almost having to know how the recipe is supposed to be written before you even go looking, which sort of negates the point.
It's not just online, though. Julie Sahni's "Indian Cooking" book has sabotaged me so many times I no longer trust any recipe in this supposed "bible" of Indian cooking, at least without reading it carefully and applying my experience to see whether the spices are out of proportion. She should also know better than to chill a custard before straining it. And on the custard front, Michael Ruhlman (of all people) put a recipe in "Ratio" which supposedly makes 6 three-ounce portions, yet asks for four eggs and two cups of milk (that doesn't add up to eighteen ounces, in case you were wondering, even without the half-cup of sugar involved). The custards also took twice as long to cook as he said they would, and when that means an hour, it's not inconsequential.
I run across little things all the time, too. Even when I do my best to vet them. Tonight, I was cooking daal gosht (meat with lentils); the five-star recipe from the net looked pretty darned good. Fry the onions, garlic, ginger, and spices, add tomatoes, all normal procedure, in normal proportions. Add the meat and fry until brown (okay, not so easy with four large tomatoes in there, but I can handle a slip like that). Add lentils and cook until the lentils are soft, then serve. The author was doing it by pressure cooker, but I can just let it simmer away for a while.
But wait: did you catch the problem in there?
I didn't until I happened to look in "The Joy of Cooking" for a feel of how much liquid the lentils would need the sauce to have. And found right there a fact I had known, but which had slipped my mind: if you cook legumes in an acidic solution, they don't get soft. EVER. You can cook them until the trump of doom and they will stay crunchy. In fact, if you want them to soften easily, you need to add a pinch of baking soda to the water to make it alkaline instead.
At least I hadn't added the lentils yet. I cooked them solo, and folded them in after the main pot was just about done. Sitting for a day in the fridge will flavor them nicely, and I'll tweak the salt then. But jeez.
Between that and trying to brown meat that's sitting in a cup of tomato juice, I'm forced to conclude that I'm doomed to rewrite every recipe I come across. That's part of the reason I'm posting recipes here, because I know how hard it is to find proofed, proven recipes that actually taste good. I just wish somebody were out there to do it for ME. :)
