Friday, October 14, 2005
Recipe Sabotager
We have family friends here in Atlanta who invite my sister and I to Shabbat and holiday dinners on a regular basis. Basically, since our parents still live in NYC, they've adopted us to a certain extent and make sure we’re taken care of. Especially during the holidays.
On this regular basis, the mom of the house cooks (or defrosts) her time tested arsenal of dinner dishes. Every once and a while she’ll throw in something different, like roasted chicken or honey mustard salmon, but the real core of the meal is always comprised of brisket, stewed cabbage, rice and onion casserole. Onion casserole. So for weeks I've been asking for the recipe for this famed onion casserole. If you didn't know that it was an onion casserole, you would never have guessed it was an onion casserole. It's that yummy: a little mushy inside, a little crispy on top, and I always get seconds. By some miracle, my sister happened to get the recipe and sent it to me just as I was trying to figure out what I’d be making for Yom Kippur’s before-fast meal. It made the cut, and here we are. Right below you’ll find the recipe…
Onion Casserole
(courtesy of Hasia Levine)
3 big onions finely chopped
3/4 cup shredded cheese (Mexican 4 cheese)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil (not olive)
4 eggs
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
pepper to taste
1 tsp. chicken bouillon powder to taste
Mix all ingredients together and pour into 8X11 casserole dish sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle additional cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes until golden brown (check it after 35-40). Cool, slice and serve.
I prepped the ingredients as instructed, measured everything carefully, baked appropriately, sliced on the diagonal and…
…noticed that I could still distinguish the onion pieces from the casserole stuff. I had failed in reaching the non-oniony consistency of Hasia’s onion casserole and was severely disappointed. The taste was all there, but none of the texture.
The thing you have to understand is that when it comes to finely dicing an onion, I am a champ. I will venture to bet that if you (or anyone) and I went head to head, mincing all these damn onions, I’d take you down faster than you could say santoku. Thus by extending this logic, there is no way possible that Hasia’s mince could be finer than mine. Because of my confidence in my mince (and notice that the instructions were to “finely chop”) I can’t help but to think that I was given misleading instructions.
Was this on purpose? Was this an error of word usage? Was this a hint to use a food processor? I don’t know. All I know that this kind of thing happens more often than not. The “oh sure I’ll give you my recipe” line followed by a serious culinary disappointment, and then the “she must have forgotten to tell me to add the x before the y with a dash of z.”
Recipe sabotaging, I call it. It sucks, we’ve all been victim to it and yet we’ve all done it and continue to do so. Some people use the excuse that they take no measurements due to it being a family recipe that they know by heart, by look and by taste; others just choose to leave out a crucial ingredient or a necessary step in the cooking process. Wherever the error comes from, it sucks. If you don’t want to share your recipe to begin with, just say so. Don’t be such a tease.
On this regular basis, the mom of the house cooks (or defrosts) her time tested arsenal of dinner dishes. Every once and a while she’ll throw in something different, like roasted chicken or honey mustard salmon, but the real core of the meal is always comprised of brisket, stewed cabbage, rice and onion casserole. Onion casserole. So for weeks I've been asking for the recipe for this famed onion casserole. If you didn't know that it was an onion casserole, you would never have guessed it was an onion casserole. It's that yummy: a little mushy inside, a little crispy on top, and I always get seconds. By some miracle, my sister happened to get the recipe and sent it to me just as I was trying to figure out what I’d be making for Yom Kippur’s before-fast meal. It made the cut, and here we are. Right below you’ll find the recipe…
Onion Casserole
(courtesy of Hasia Levine)
3 big onions finely chopped
3/4 cup shredded cheese (Mexican 4 cheese)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil (not olive)
4 eggs
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
pepper to taste
1 tsp. chicken bouillon powder to taste
Mix all ingredients together and pour into 8X11 casserole dish sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle additional cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes until golden brown (check it after 35-40). Cool, slice and serve.
I prepped the ingredients as instructed, measured everything carefully, baked appropriately, sliced on the diagonal and…
…noticed that I could still distinguish the onion pieces from the casserole stuff. I had failed in reaching the non-oniony consistency of Hasia’s onion casserole and was severely disappointed. The taste was all there, but none of the texture.
The thing you have to understand is that when it comes to finely dicing an onion, I am a champ. I will venture to bet that if you (or anyone) and I went head to head, mincing all these damn onions, I’d take you down faster than you could say santoku. Thus by extending this logic, there is no way possible that Hasia’s mince could be finer than mine. Because of my confidence in my mince (and notice that the instructions were to “finely chop”) I can’t help but to think that I was given misleading instructions.
Was this on purpose? Was this an error of word usage? Was this a hint to use a food processor? I don’t know. All I know that this kind of thing happens more often than not. The “oh sure I’ll give you my recipe” line followed by a serious culinary disappointment, and then the “she must have forgotten to tell me to add the x before the y with a dash of z.”
Recipe sabotaging, I call it. It sucks, we’ve all been victim to it and yet we’ve all done it and continue to do so. Some people use the excuse that they take no measurements due to it being a family recipe that they know by heart, by look and by taste; others just choose to leave out a crucial ingredient or a necessary step in the cooking process. Wherever the error comes from, it sucks. If you don’t want to share your recipe to begin with, just say so. Don’t be such a tease.
