Tuesday, September 29, 2009

life lessons

Last night's dinner was a disappointment - but also a success. It was my Nigella slow-cooked lamb with macaroni which should have been delish, but was an epic fail - some could say it was on iSnack 2.0 scale of a fail {that's for the aussie readers...}

So, I hadn't written down the recipe. Fail one.
I neglected to include garlic. Fail two.
I bought the meat from Coles instead of the butcher. Fail three.
I bought leg of lamb instead of shoulder. Fail four.
I didn't cut off all the fat. Fail five.
I used white wine {as Nigella suggested}. Fail six.

Now, while this resulted in a bland, fatty meal it also resulted in me coming to a few realisations. Firstly, take note of all the ingredients in a dish, or use common sense. Which leads to 2. Everything tastes better with garlic - except pudding. No matter how busy you are buy meat from a butcher. Buy the right cut for the dish. Cut off fat from lamb when stewing, particularly when it's in a tomato-based dish. Otherwise it results in unappetising orange fat. Erk. Use red wine in rich dishes, white wine in subtle dishes. I like my red meat rich, ergo, I should always use red wine with it.

So there you go. Not Nigella's fault and I think that next time this dish could be a winner. I'll make it properly next time and post the recipe.

Now I'm off to apologise to my butcher for cheating on him...


4 comments:

  1. See there are some menus that can handle substitutions and some that cannot. I rarely think that cuts of red meats can be interchanged without really testing the nature of the dish, whereas things like parts of chicken can be. I wonder if its the integrity of the fattiness in the meat that changes the dish? ANd yes, everything does taste better with garlic sans desserts.

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  2. Totally agreed. Sadly my stuffed up brain just isn't thinking at the moment - and my tastebuds don't know what they want- but know what they don't want!!!

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  3. Oh I have done that once and it took a long time for me to love lamb casserole again, I was scarred. Valuable lessons there xx

    PS I have a surprise for you here (scroll down near bottom of post) xx
    http://www.frillsinthehills.com/2009/09/kitchencovets-robert-gordon-australia.html

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  4. Oh I'm really struggling in the kitchen these last few weeks. All the business had meant meal planning has fallen to the wayside, and I'm doing scrambled eggs and lots of vegemite on toast.

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