05 August 2007

What's for Dinner?

I should have taken a picture so that I could've pointed to it and said, "This is why I shouldn't cook," and you would've understood. You would have seen the inside of a dutch oven--my husband's potjie (pronounced poi-kee) pot--with six charcoal briquet looking things in a 1/4 inch cooled, pockmarked lava substance. That was dinner Friday night. I spent all Friday afternoon preparing this new recipe for braised short ribs (what became the charcoal briquets) in a sauce of chipotles, onions, garlic, ancho chiles, adobo sauce, all in coffee-based liquid. Sounds yummy, huh? Well, since I was cooking mine in a potjie pot rather than a roasting pan, I turned down the heat, added extra water, and cooked it for less time. I steamed artichoke and baked french fries (frozen).
The french fries were delicious. (Although I didn't realize that we were out of ketchup--french fries without ketchup? May it never be.)
Not enough damage control in the ribs.
Undercooked (although edible) artichoke.
We were able to excavate some meat from the charbroiled coating.
On the positive side, I used the leftover chipotle chiles and adobo sauce to make some spaghetti sauce with a kick last night. That turned out well.

8 comments:

christianne said...

The spaghetti sauce sounds delicious. Sorry to hear what happened to the rest. :)

Jenny said...

Did we attend the same cooking school? I'll look for you in the yearbook--The Char-broiled Menu. lol
At least you were able to salvage a spaghetti dinner out of it:-)

Jennwith2ns said...

French fries with out ketchup--maybe not. Chips (real, proper British chips)--WITH ketchup? Say it isn't so. Salt and vinegar, PLEASE!

Erin said...

I can send you a wagon load of fresh tomatoes for your next batch of spaghetti sauce. They're taking over my kitchen windowsill!

Heather said...

Erin - sounds good to me! One thing I can do, and that's spaghetti sauce.
Jenn - mmhmm, I do love me some salt and vinegar!

L.L. Barkat said...

Oh. My. Oops!

Pamela said...

for fries... if you run out of ketchup you can substitue 1000 island dressing or ranch dressing.

gotta have those ugly calories.

oh. your dinner sounds disappointing.

Anonymous said...

You might wanna steer clear of a cooking blog ;).