What's the worst thing you have ever cooked or been served.

[JustOneLastThing]

I once made a beef pasta thing, it had 20 cloves of garlic! I followed the recipe to the letter, it took hours. I tended to it almost like I tend to the kids. It tasted like feet.

I think I can still taste it, and it was five years ago! There was so much of it, and we tried to eat it in vain. I eventually threw if away after it had festered in the freezer for a few months years.

I'd bought half a pig (cut up, obvs) and frozen it. So was eating pork practically ad infinitum. Got down to the last few bits and decided to cook pork chops in cider and cream sauce.

I think they'd done a furtive swap and sent me boar meat (the rest of the pig had been fine) because those chops were inedible. They tasted like solid pig-smell (and I've worked with pigs and have nothing against the smell, but...)

Eaten: well. I can eat most things. But XP had decided to 'bake'. He couldn't cook. I was allowed to help but he wouldn't listen to me telling him that his scales were broken, and that was NOT four ounces of sugar.

Half an hour later I'm served burnt wheels of solid, baked sugar with burned raisins in. I'd been promised rock buns. Nope.

I tried to make quesadillas late after a pub night out at uni. I don't think anyone would have eaten them except we were all drunk and starving. They were like dried stale tortilla with a bit of melted cheese. No guac or salsa to go with them either.

My DH is a excellent cook but got it completely wrong once when we lived across the pond and he was able to find some black pudding. He had a Floyd or Elizabeth David recipe for black pudding cooked with apples. The pudding kinda melted into what was essentially apple sauce, all served vaguely hot. It looked log dog vomit and I finally understood what people mean when they say they cannot eat liver. Fortunately it didn't put me off the DH, his cooking or any sort of blood pudding.

The worst I’ve been served is a vegetable lasagne in a pub restaurant, which has excellent reviews, last year. We’d been invited to celebrate our son’s girlfriend’s birthday and the pub her parents had chosen in their village concentrates on serving locally reared steak and only had two vegetarian dishes available so I opted for the lasagne.

It looked amazing, served in an individual dish with crisp grilled cheese on top but the first bite burnt my mouth and the layers of pasta were no existent, everything below the cheese was just a horrible tasteless mush at a volcanic lava temperature.

I find Jamie Oliver always puts too much liquid in, I immediately halve it when trying anything new of his.

I find this with Delia Smith. Once made a cheesecake that I had to bake for about four hours before it finally set.

I’ve remembered another - dh’s attempt at bubble and squeak.

I usually make it by frying finely sliced onions then adding the chopped up roasties, parsnips and sprouts (and stuffing if we had chicken) and frying it all until it is piping hot and full of crispy bits - it is delicious.

He decided to try to speed things up by adding stock - so what should have been something that was all fried and crispy was just soggy and gross.

I cooked some Swiss chard a few weeks ago and must have put salt with it twice. It was inedible. Even DP who will eat pretty much anything and says it's great as long as it's not too fancy commented. The worst thing I've been served was a lasagne which contained hidden veg and baked beans. I would rather have had the veg served with it and what was with the baked beans?

Obviously, most airline food is revolting - they can ruin a bread roll. Worst airline meal was some sort of stew served by Iberia 20+ years ago.

Some chicken dish in a Lebanese restaurant in London. It came up covered in a thick black tar-like sauce which had also stained the chicken to an appetising shade of grey. I had about 2 mouthfuls and gave up trying. It was vile.

Worse that I cooked. Lesagne . Normally i do it low and slow in the oven for max taste. But this time it was too low and too little time, nothing was soft. Noodles hard, peppers rock solid, even the mushrooms could have been replanted and thrived. Also not enough garlic or herbs. Must have been an off day. The salad was lovely though.
Served. Undercooked boiled chicken with boiled potatoes and tinned peas. Gravey like water and no extras. Served by a great friend who said I deserved a treat (just had ds) thank the gods she dropped it off. I sent dh to KFC where the chicken was heaven compared to the pink globules on offer at home.

Cooked- lemon chicken. The sauce was made with cornflour, and despite following the recipe, it turned out like lemon flavoured Vaseline.

Eaten - Red bean ice lolly. I was in Japan, and the picture on the front was just a pink ice lolly, so I thought it would be berry flavour. It wasn’t.

Drunk - also in Japan, they have these can of fruit drink which you have to shake before opening. This is because they have a jelly in the bottom, which then breaks up into the drink. Ewww. Drinks should not be chewy.

Moral of the story: always take your phrase book, or Japanese speaking friend, when you go to buy snacks in a forgein country where you can’t read very much of the language.

I made a bean chilli once- a tried and tested recipe that we love...but used extra hot chilli powder. Seems that beans do not like extra hot chilli powder (it was fine in a mince based chilli). One bit and our mouths went numb and the chilli went in the bin.

Served: DH made a smoked mackerel and peanut butter curry which can never be forgotten. it was meant to be some sort of a fish curry/ satay thing. It may also have had sultanas. He also put a tin of sardines in a paella recently as he thought it needed fish. It didn't

Made: I'm a good cook, but last year I made pears in brandy that are growing ever more inedible in their pretty glass jars I think the cloves and star anise were a mistake. It's like pears in cough tincture. I can't seem to throw them away though

Japanese Shabu Shabu consisting of strips of meat and vegetables in a big pot of boiling water in the middle of the restaurant table. Those adept with chopsticks fished out the tasty morsels leaving me with my arthritic fingers to fish out a couple of bits of limp cabbage. Cost a fortune too!

Just as I went to put some chicken Kiev in my mouth at a gastro pub lunch with family I realised it was completely raw inside the crispy coating. Thankfully I hadn't eaten anything else on the plate either so no harm done but didn't have any lunch as I couldn't stand the thought of eating anything else from there. Never been back though strangely (to me) my relatives still went ahead with a booking for a large group gathering the next week.

My dad went with us to the hot wok in our town in Spain. He came back from the buffet with raw chicken which he went to eat having failed to take it to the chefs for cooking first. He really didn't realise it wasn't ready to eat. We obviously have a thing with raw chicken!

Served - cheese and ham filled pancakes on a caravan holiday in France.
Perfectly good cheese and ham. Unfortunately the ready made crepes were sweet ones - bleuch !

Eaten - tete de veau. Also on holiday in France in a set menu cafe. It was that it trotters. Both were cold , set , jellified and served with pickles. I assumed it was like brawn. It was not !

A Jamie Oliver recipe for a dinner party with friends. Took hours! A duck dish with orange and pasta. I should have realised it would be awful from the ingredients list.

At a hotel in the early 1980s

On arrival - corned beef sandwiches without the corned beef because they'd forgotten I was vegetarian.
For evening meal (same hotel) - a plate of sprouts and bread and butter because they'd forgotten again.

I still have bad dreams about this - dinner with some British expats in the south of France, they made a watery grey/brown ragù (which was bad enough but nothing to cause nightmares) then they overcooked some dry spaghetti, rinsed the pasta in cold water before putting it straight onto the plate (not even mixing it with the sauce first) leaving that to set into a kind of cold dry jelly 🤢 🤢 🤢 then finally ladling some ragù on top. I ate it all because I have no self respect when in receipt of hospitality - this was only a few years ago. It’s not like pasta was a new invention.

sarahskitchendiary1.blogspot.com/2011/11/gorgeous-slow-cooked-duck-pasta.html?m=1

Recipe should anybody wish to waste time and money. Although this freak blogger liked it

A lot of our mother's cooking was not brilliant. She grew up in a household with "staff". She was very good at dinber party dishes, but obviously the children didn't get to sample these.

A 'whole food pizza'. The cardboard box it came in would have been less stodgy that the leaden base and the topping consisted of a thick layer of tofu and a few bits of something green, untroubled by any kind of flavouring or seasoning whatsoever.

Ex cooked some salmon which was slightly off and raw in the middle, and because he was abusive the DCs and I had to sit there and eat it.

Oh I've remembered another one. Mum made homemade suet steak & kidney puddings. The recipe called for them to be streamed in muslin cloths. She didn't have any so used kitchen cleaning type cloths. That she had recently washed in Bold. Mmmm. Washing powder puddings.

My mother has a "special lasagne " she serves proudly-
Uncooked lasagne sheets
Tomato paste
Raw mince
Boiling water
Cheese sauce powder
Layed in a pyrex dish and microwaved - it is absolutely vile

Cooked... I once made a homity pie and didn't notice that my eggs had gone off. It was vile. DH would probably say one of the first roasts I cooked for him, some 12 years ago, when I managed to mis-time EVERYTHING and served roast potatoes that were so hard they cracked one of his teeth in half.... Whoops!