A number of people asked me to post on my rendition of the Goi Ga . I pretty much followed Ramon’s directions with a few minor changes. I poached the chicken in water which was flavored with ginger, garlic and lemon grass. For the herbs, I used a combination of Thai basil, mint, and cilantro. The minor changes I made were:
• Instead of using white sugar, I decided to use palm sugar which, I thought, would give the dressing more depth of flavor. However, my package of palm sugar appeared to have found an undiscoverable hiding spot in my cabinet. As a substitute, I used a combination of white sugar and turbinado sugar.
• Instead of all Napa, I used a combination of Napa cabbage and red cabbage for a crunchier texture.
Others asked me to share my culinary mishaps with the Red Velvet Cake. So, in the spirit of bringing it all to the table for my LTH friends, here are my mishaps and misfortunes with dessert.
The LTH recipe for Red Velvet Cake linked to two recipes. The first used a bottle of red dye. The second used pureed red beets. I elected to go with the beet version as I had no desire to ingest dyes. Since this was a Southern cake I felt it warranted dipping into my store of White Lily flour milled in the South. This recipe not only used beets, but also had melted chocolate in addition to the cocoa. The cake batter had no hint of red but, as they say, the proof is in the baking. Sadly, 35 minutes of baking did nothing to enhance the color. It looked like a basic chocolate cake. At this point it was 1:00 am and my bed was calling.
The next morning all that remained for me to do was to whip up a cream cheese frosting and slap it onto my nine-inch cake layers. I turned to the internet and picked a cream cheese frosting recipe under the mistaken impression that they were all pretty much the same. This recipe used three ingredients – cream cheese, butter, and confectioners’ sugar. Three ingredients that, despite my efforts at stirring, whipping, begging, and praying, refused to come together to form a frosting. “Perhaps it will firm up once it’s on the cake,” I hoped, as I attempted to spread this mixture on the cake. It did not, and just kept slithering down the sides of the cake and pooling onto the parchment strips I was using to keep my serving platter pristine. After ten minutes of spreading and then watching the slip sliding I accepted this cake as a lost cause and skimmed through the recipes to find a different dessert.
Wait, the mishaps continue …
Staying with the chocolate theme, I selected Super Chocolate Brownies as per the recipe posted by tcdup.
I quickly mixed together two batches and heaved a sigh of relief when they emerged looking dark and shiny. After they cooled, I cut them into squares and placed each batch on a plate. As I was wrapping the plates with foil, one plate slid out of my hands and I watched in horror as one batch of brownies lay on the floor in tiny pieces! It looked like we would have only one batch of brownies instead of two - not the end of the world.
At 3:00 p.m. I packed the food, took it to the car and drove off to pick up Cynthia. I was sharing my kitchen disasters with her when, to my utter dismay and horror, I saw the second plate of brownies slide from their safely ensconced position and land upside down onto the floor of the car in, you guessed it, small pieces. Cynthia helped me salvage a few pieces but clearly this was not an appealing pile of brownies!
You decide – just culinary mishaps or evil spirits.
BTW the brownies were indeed super!
Jyoti
A meal, with bread and wine, shared with friends and family is among the most essential and important of all human rituals.
Ruhlman