Food faffs and food lies

[myrtleWilson]

Inspired by tonight's cooking of queso fundido - I loathe having to peel tomatoes. Despite the boiling water, the crosses in the skin, I never have tomatoes that "the skins slip off easily" - its more like that constant picking of bits like when you were at infant school and you got dried glue on your fingers... or sun burn. Every now and then I'll have a holy grail tomato which does do as its told but otherwise - complete faff.

I would also include mashing potatoes in this category before I discovered the joys of a potato ricer...

And my ultimate food lie - risotto... I actually love cooking risotto but only since I acknowledged the lie that risottos take about 12.5 minutes to cook rather than my experience of a lot a bit longer than that.

Please join me in food faff and food lie misery...

I have similar issues peeling hard boiled eggs.
I never eat tangerines or clentines because I have to remote every single bit of white pith.
I pay a premium for filleted fish and deboned chicken because I just don’t ‘do’ bones. I know chicken thighs are considered superior in terms of flavour and staying moist but it’s breastall the way for me.

Ooh - I don’t have any of my own (right now) but I can solve the hard boiled egg thing. Your eggs are too fresh! Older eggs peel much easier than mega fresh when hard boiled! It’s all to do with the amount of air that gets into the egg as time goes on.

So - mega fresh = poached
Several days old = hard boil.

Salt. We are encouraged to lower our salt intake but on all the 'cheffy' programmes huge amounts of salt are added. Contestants fail on Masterchef type competitions for 'too little seasoning'.

Potatoes boulangaire or dauphinois!! Recipes always say they need like 45 mins when in reality they're barely warm at this time and need about twice as long as stated! Likewise sweating or caramelising onions. It's never going to happen in 3-5 mins!!

My trick with hardboiled eggs is to remove them from the heat, immediately crack the shells and then plunge them into cold water- then, when they're cool enough to handle, i roll them on the work surface and then shell comes off almost all in one piece

Double podding broad beans is one of those things that I have to be in the right mood / have enough patience to do but is always worthwhile when I do

And i really like shellfish like mussels but cleaning and sifting through them for dead ones is a bit of a chore - same goes when you buy a (cooked) crab - it makes more sense financially to buy a whole one but you get more from your money if you pick the meat out yourself .....

And as for soaking and cooking my own beans and pulses - no chance!!

thanks to my DH's hatred of shellfish (insects of the sea he says) I don't have to traverse the mussel sift but I feel your pain.

And multiple laughs at the onion caramelisation in 5 minutes!!

I've seen recipes for risotto that say 'sautee the rice till opaque' and others say 'till translucent'

I guess the outside of the grain goes translucent and the inside bit goes opaque...

I've made a vow to myself that when a recipe calls for chopped pistachios, I will just bloody shell out for buy ready chopped pistachios rather than deshelling and chopping myself.

Blimey synd you must be in for an award for effort on deshelling and chopping!

It was not worth the 70 odd pence I saved.

Yes to risotto (30-40 minutes ) and tomato's. I confess to just ignoring the instructions and chucking toms in skin and all. Mushrooms too. Who's got time to peel mushrooms?

Sweating onions in 2-3 mins? No again 5-10 in reality.

Can I add the lie and waste of time that is a garlic press? half of each clove is wasted ( which you have to pick out , therefore garlicing your hands anyway!)

Any chef that promotes '30' or '15' minute suppers. Utter bollocks. Does not take into account the following:
Shopping for ingredients
Warming up the oven
Organising dishes, cooking tools, a space to prepare in
Checking/deciphering the recipe as you go (eg what does 'opaque' meant to look like?)
Clearing up as you go/washing up.

But of course, celeb chefs have an army of helpers to do all the above cruddy tasks.

I often make my risotto in the oven now. Now exactly authentic, but much less effort...

I hate peeling tomatoes too so I just don't bother. When I make queso fundido I just use some tinned tomatoes.

And I simply refuse to cook anything that uses peeled/chopped/diced butternut squash. I can barely get the damn thing cut in half, let alone anything smaller.

In one of the Delia books I've got she says of caramelising onions "this should take at least 30 minutes"- a nice change from onions that apparently caramelise in 5 minutes flat. (Yeah, Jamie, I'm looking at you).

On the tomatoes thing- are you plunging them in ice cold water after boiling them? Usually does the trick for me.

My pet hate is recipes that say at the top: "15 minutes", then you notice the ingredient list contains things like

2 medium onions peeled and chopped
500g tomatoes peeled
5 carrots, shredded
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped.

In total agreement on the "30 minute meals" rubbish, Yeah, they might take 30 minutes to cook in the oven, but that's not the claim and I don't ever believe anyone who says it's possible. Not from scratch. I rarely get dinner on the table without it taking an hour at least, and I cook from scratch. Maybe if I just shoved a supermarket pizza in the oven, I could do it but even then, the damn thing has to heat up first.

That veggies are easy to grow.....the snails and other assorted beasts are well fed but I am not!

Easy Peeler satsumas that are far from easy to peel!

Just thought of another one. Ring pull tins. Does anybody else struggle getting the last bit of the lid off after pulling it all the way back and end up with it coming off with a bit of a 'jolt' and splashing tomato juice over you?