NationStates Jolt Archive

Dear NSG,

With all the culinary experts that I've seen here so far, I was wondering if anyone can give me a bit of advise. Today while cooking, I was a little bit distracted and ended up making the most atrocious meal ever.

I was attempting to make coconut curry chicken but ended up making a giant bubbly pot of green stuff that tasted too sweet. I made several mistakes throughout the entire process:

- Didn't use carrots
- Didn't use enough potatoes (was wanting to use 2 but accidentally left 1 on the counter)
- Accidentally used 3/8 of a can of parsley when it was supposed to be a sprinkle
- Used the wrong curry. Didn't have Indian curry so I went with the (cheaper) Oriental curry and that didn't have enough kick.
- Added too much coconut cream. Didn't realise how concentrated the stuff was and so the lack of curry combined with this made the entire dish too thin and sweet.
- Oh, and the biggest mistake of all was that I never made this dish before plus I decided to wing it and didn't taste it at all till the end. I feel like an idiot now.

Is there any way to salvage this? I'd re-cook it with new ingredients but then the amino acids in the veggies might break down and create mush.

Help please!

Nope. The parsley was the kiss of death.

I suppose it's possible you could scoop out the veggies and remake the sauce using a bit of the original sauce, but... no, you're screwed.

Strain out the chicken, rinse it off, make chicken salad.

Try to keep it simple while you are distractable.

I burned ground beef once, and it was when I couldn't afford to do anything about it, so I just opened some cans of kidney beans and a can of Ro-tel and mixed it up and boiled it and told my roomates it was chili. They thought it was awesome. I might mention the ground beef was burned so bad it was basically charcoal.

When at first you don't succeed, make something else.

Nope. The parsley was the kiss of death.

I suppose it's possible you could scoop out the veggies and remake the sauce using a bit of the original sauce, but... no, you're screwed.

Yeah, I thought so too. The entire thing tasted... grassy. :(

I burned ground beef once, and it was when I couldn't afford to do anything about it, so I just opened some cans of kidney beans and a can of Ro-tel and mixed it up and boiled it and told my roomates it was chili. They thought it was awesome. I might mention the ground beef was burned so bad it was basically charcoal.

When at first you don't succeed, make something else.

Hmm... that makes me wonder, do you think I can add noodles to the curry and stir fry it with more salt?

CAN of parsley?

are you sure you used the right kind of coconut cream?

CAN of parsley?

Parsley flakes. I couldn't find the fresh ones (although they would taste much better) so I'm using the dry parsley flakes from cans. :)

I'd add a little water and a bunch of chopped onion. Onions are good for taking the sweetness out of an over-sweet sauce. I'm no expert on curry, but it sounds like you might use what you have now as a pasta sauce - just spread it over some linguine or your preferred pasta.

are you sure you used the right kind of coconut cream?

Um... no. What is it supposed to look like? I opened the can of coconut cream (hmm... there's an issue, I might be using too many canned ingredients) and it was really thick paste and this odd dark pastel yellow colour. It looked quite suspicious and I looked it up on the internet and it's supposed to look like that... I think.

Hmm... that makes me wonder, do you think I can add noodles to the curry and stir fry it with more salt?
Drain as much of the sauce off as you can, and stir it in with noodles, could be good, save some sauce see if you can thin it, that way if you need some more, you'll have it.

I'd add a little water and a bunch of chopped onion. Onions are good for taking the sweetness out of an over-sweet sauce. I'm no expert on curry, but it sounds like you might use what you have now as a pasta sauce - just spread it over some linguine or your preferred pasta.

I added water and an entire red onion into the mix from the start. I think without it the entire thing would have been even sweeter. Thanks for the tip about the onion though, I did not know that. :)

Um... no. What is it supposed to look like? I opened the can of coconut cream (hmm... there's an issue, I might be using too many canned ingredients) and it was really thick paste and this odd dark pastel yellow colour. It looked quite suspicious and I looked it up on the internet and it's supposed to look like that... I think.
i just thought that you might have used the kind of coconut cream that goes into a pina colada.

yeah pick out the bits that you like, lightly wash off the sauce, see if you can take a bit of the left behind sauce--ignoring the green color, its not going to hurt anything really--and see if you can't rebalance the spices to something you LIKE, and serve it with noodles.

in other words: what smunkee said.

Usual advice is to keep it simple. Pull the meat and veggies you can out. Don't try to redo the dish, it's too late. Toss it on a pasta or salad, add some oil. Declare victory.

Update on the situation: parents found the dish after work today and ate all of it. They even complimented me on the dish. I'm guessing different people have different tastes. :confused:

Thanks for all the culinary tips though!

i just thought that you might have used the kind of coconut cream that goes into a pina colada.

Yeah I did. Just for reference, what sort of coconut cream should I be using next time?

Update on the situation: parents found the dish after work today and ate all of it. They even complimented me on the dish. I'm guessing different people have different tastes. :confused:

Thanks for all the culinary tips though!



Yeah I did. Just for reference, what sort of coconut cream should I be using next time?

Sometimes it's best to just smile and nod and let people think you planned it. ;)

Sometimes the best cure for a "bad" meal is to let cheerful, hungry, uncritical people who like you eat it.

When I was first married, I cooked many, many bad meals. I always thought it was strange that my ex never complained about my cooking when we were first married. He just ate and smiled and ..... .

Dear NSG,

With all the culinary experts that I've seen here so far, I was wondering if anyone can give me a bit of advise. Today while cooking, I was a little bit distracted and ended up making the most atrocious meal ever.

I was attempting to make coconut curry chicken but ended up making a giant bubbly pot of green stuff that tasted too sweet. I made several mistakes throughout the entire process:

- Didn't use carrots
- Didn't use enough potatoes (was wanting to use 2 but accidentally left 1 on the counter)
- Accidentally used 3/8 of a can of parsley when it was supposed to be a sprinkle
- Used the wrong curry. Didn't have Indian curry so I went with the (cheaper) Oriental curry and that didn't have enough kick.
- Added too much coconut cream. Didn't realise how concentrated the stuff was and so the lack of curry combined with this made the entire dish too thin and sweet.
- Oh, and the biggest mistake of all was that I never made this dish before plus I decided to wing it and didn't taste it at all till the end. I feel like an idiot now.

Is there any way to salvage this? I'd re-cook it with new ingredients but then the amino acids in the veggies might break down and create mush.

Help please!

You sound like my kind of cook. Get a few ingredients together, loosely base on a recipe and pray to the Gastronomical Gods!

Lots of ketchup can save anything.

Dear NSG,

With all the culinary experts that I've seen here so far, I was wondering if anyone can give me a bit of advise. Today while cooking, I was a little bit distracted and ended up making the most atrocious meal ever.

I was attempting to make coconut curry chicken but ended up making a giant bubbly pot of green stuff that tasted too sweet. I made several mistakes throughout the entire process:

- Didn't use carrots
- Didn't use enough potatoes (was wanting to use 2 but accidentally left 1 on the counter)
- Accidentally used 3/8 of a can of parsley when it was supposed to be a sprinkle
- Used the wrong curry. Didn't have Indian curry so I went with the (cheaper) Oriental curry and that didn't have enough kick.
- Added too much coconut cream. Didn't realise how concentrated the stuff was and so the lack of curry combined with this made the entire dish too thin and sweet.
- Oh, and the biggest mistake of all was that I never made this dish before plus I decided to wing it and didn't taste it at all till the end. I feel like an idiot now.

Is there any way to salvage this? I'd re-cook it with new ingredients but then the amino acids in the veggies might break down and create mush.

Help please!

well you could save it, but a) you'd end up making a massive batch of it (basically add more of the things its missing until it balances out), and b) pain in the ass, plus you might not have enough ingredients to fix it :tongue:

Parsley flakes. I couldn't find the fresh ones (although they would taste much better) so I'm using the dry parsley flakes from cans. :)

cans? round here we get dried herbs in little jars, thus:

http://www.schwartz.co.uk/assets/Parsley-Flat-Leaf.jpg

Um... no. What is it supposed to look like? I opened the can of coconut cream (hmm... there's an issue, I might be using too many canned ingredients) and it was really thick paste and this odd dark pastel yellow colour. It looked quite suspicious and I looked it up on the internet and it's supposed to look like that... I think.

When I make coconut curry, I use coconut milk. I don't know if that's the same as "cream" or "paste", but it's white and you shake it up before you pour it, it's fairly thick.

Update on the situation: parents found the dish after work today and ate all of it. They even complimented me on the dish. I'm guessing different people have different tastes. :confused:

Thanks for all the culinary tips though!

Good save, parents! I once made a horrible pound cake, but my ex's father loved it with coffee... it takes all kinds.

If you ever want to attempt curry in the future, I have a good recipe and tips (I make it so much I don't even look at the recipe anymore).

Nope. The parsley was the kiss of death.

I suppose it's possible you could scoop out the veggies and remake the sauce using a bit of the original sauce, but... no, you're screwed.

well... you might trying adding some milk and flour and turn that green blob into a flan (if it's semisolid, make some scoops of it with a spoon and bake them in the oven separately), but the parsley could still be a major problem - there's no correcting the parsley.

Yeah I did. Just for reference, what sort of coconut cream should I be using next time?


The only coconut stuff I use for a curry is coconut MILK. it's looks like full fat milk from a cow, white and easily stirrable, and the easiest way to get it out of the can is to simply use the can-opener to cut an arc of 1/4 the circumference and use the butt of a knife to push that in and then pour it out.

The heavy concentrated coconut cream is this stiff boiled down to a thick paste like condensed milk,

Update on the situation: parents found the dish after work today and ate all of it. They even complimented me on the dish. I'm guessing different people have different tastes. :confused:

Thanks for all the culinary tips though!



Yeah I did. Just for reference, what sort of coconut cream should I be using next time?
congratulations! youre a chef!

you cant go wrong if you buy it in the asian/indian/thai food aisle. if its sold there, its the right kind eh?

if you cant get fresh parsely, leave it out. it doesnt add much flavor anyway.

cans? round here we get dried herbs in little jars

I get fresh parsley, Petroselinum crispum var. neapolitanum mostly (flat leaf parsley). There's a saying here: "essere come il prezzemolo" (being like the parsley), meaning "popping up everywhere".

Sometimes the best cure for a "bad" meal is to let cheerful, hungry, uncritical people who like you eat it.

When I was first married, I cooked many, many bad meals. I always thought it was strange that my ex never complained about my cooking when we were first married. He just ate and smiled and ..... .

Yeah, hubby ate all my disasters while I was learning to cook. He would eat seconds even. :confused: I would ask him how it was and get one of three answers "good effort", "edible", or "good".

As anyone who's ever eaten Army food will tell you: Tobasco sauce. Lots of Tobasco sauce. Enough Tobasco sauce will make anything palatable.

As anyone who's ever eaten Army food will tell you: Tobasco sauce. Lots of Tobasco sauce. Enough Tobasco sauce will make anything palatable.


Never been in the army, but that was one of my first impulses. OTOH, I Tobasco all shorts of stuff - luch today was a tossed salad dressed with equal measures of chipotle and habanero Tobasco sauces. Yummy!

Get really drunk before you force yourself to eat it!

I get fresh parsley, Petroselinum crispum var. neapolitanum mostly (flat leaf parsley). There's a saying here: "essere come il prezzemolo" (being like the parsley), meaning "popping up everywhere".

i like the saying :wink:

and you can buy fresh stuff here (my mum grows a little) but we tend to not use enough of it to keep getting it fresh. jars keep for ages!

but, of course, fresher is better :p

Strain out the chicken, rinse it off, make chicken salad.

Try to keep it simple while you are distractable.

I burned ground beef once, and it was when I couldn't afford to do anything about it, so I just opened some cans of kidney beans and a can of Ro-tel and mixed it up and boiled it and told my roomates it was chili. They thought it was awesome. I might mention the ground beef was burned so bad it was basically charcoal.

When at first you don't succeed, make something else.

QFT.

I love slapdash. just slap things together in a dash. :tongue:

That's how I make Fried Rice. take leftovers, chop, add into pan of rice and Oyster sause... saute... serve.

QFT.

I love slapdash. just slap things together in a dash. :tongue:

That's how I make Fried Rice. take leftovers, chop, add into pan of rice and Oyster sause... saute... serve.

That's very similar to ghetto gourmet.

That's very similar to ghetto gourmet.

Put all you have in a pot together, boil, add Italian seasoning and season salt, stir, eat, be glad you have food because people in Africa are starving.

That's very similar to ghetto gourmet.

Slapdash
Ghetto Gourmet
Student Special
Chef's Surprise (cuz sometimes even teh chef is surprised)

it's all good. :p

Call it an experiment gone wrong and feed it to your dog.

Then call for take out. Simple.