Fish and Chips

Tonight I was reminded that there will inevitably be times when the recipe does NOT turn out the way you planned!

Case in point: I found a recipe online for Fish and Chips, and I thought "Great! This will be a good chance for me to make my debut in the fish-cooking world." (Tonight was my first attempt at making a fish meal) Well, an hour later, I discovered differently...

So this recipe calls for potatoes, salt, pepper, an egg, cornmeal, parsley, catfish, and lemon. The recipe itself was not difficult; it just wasn't executed correctly.

I started out by washing and peeling the potatoes. Then I cut them in to "julienned" strips and spread them in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet. Put that in the oven and then on to the fish.

So I dipped the fish in an egg bath, then in the cornmeal mixture, then onto its own foil-lined baking sheet (which is what the directions said to do) and added that to the oven. When I took the potatoes and fish out of the oven, the fiasco began.

The "fries" were not only soft and somewhat mushy, but they were stuck to the foil. The fish, on the other hand, seemed cooked through, but left the breading sticking to the foil. Even though I was far from thinking the food was tasty, my husband graciously ate everything on his plate, while I only nibbled at the fries (which I was able to peel off the foil, but not without smooshing them).

After consulting a better cook than myself, I learned that cooking fish on a grate of some kind is a better method because it allows the juices to cook off (and drop onto a baking sheet waiting below). Perhaps, after I have recovered from my major kitchen blunder, I will one day try this recipe again. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I have started attending a cake decorating class. I have made 3 cakes so far (and I have pictures!) and when I get a chance, I will post them on here for your perusal. Please be kind though, as this is my first foire into cake decorating.

Pork Cutlet, Mashed Potatoes, and Salad

Well, dinner today was interesting. I made an entire meal for us to eat. Parts of it were really good, other parts... not so much, but I'll get to that later. First, let's start off with a picture of the finished meal.

Ok, so the entire meal took me about 30-40 minutes to make. I started with the potatoes. Here's the ingredients list for them: red potatoes, garlic cloves, sour cream, milk, chives, salt and pepper.

First thing I did, of course, was to peel and cut the potatoes. Then I peeled the garlic cloves, put them and the potatoes in a saucepan, filled it with water and boiled the potatoes until they were soft. Then I drained the water, added all the other ingredients, and mashed the potatoes by hand. (I would have preferred mashing them with a hand mixer, but the mixing parts were in the sink from having been used previously, so I had to mash the potatoes by hand.)

So, the potatoes ended up being a bit lumpier than I prefer, but they still tasted good. (which is saying something cuz I normally like gravy on my mashed potatoes, but these were good without gravy.)

While the potatoes were boiling I started the pork cutlet. The ingredients for that recipe are as follows: cooking spray, boneless pork chops, flour, salt, pepper, an egg, milk, Dijon mustard, bread crumbs and a lemon.

To make these, I had to have 3 separate, shallow bowls. The first bowl has flour, salt and pepper mixed; the second bowl has the egg, milk and mustard mixed; and the third bowl has the bread crumbs. Then I dipped the pork chops into each bowl (in the order listed), making sure to coat each side. Now the recipe says to bake the pork chops, but the oven was already being used by a dessert, so I decided to cook them in a pan instead. So I just sprayed some cooking spray in the pan and cooked 3-4 pork chops at a time. It worked just fine and kept me from having to postpone the start of dinner.

The recipe also called for a lemon, but since I didn't have any lemons on hand, I just left that part out. They were only supposed to be used to sprinkle over the top of the pork anyway, so it wasn't super necessary. As for the taste of the pork cutlet, it was very good. Probably my favorite part of the meal (although the dessert was REALLY good, too). The pork has to be dipped in several things, but the recipe is by no means difficult. In fact, it's a very simple recipe to complete, which was nice since I had several parts of the meal to make.

The last portion of the meal was a small side salad that I made because I decided that the meal needed some sort of vegetable (a real vegetable and not something full of starch), so I thought a salad would go very nicely with it. The salad was a very simple salad. As for the actual salad part, I used lettuce, chow mein noodles, and sliced almonds. Then I made a raspberry vinaigrette dressing to go on top.

The dressing contains the following ingredients: raspberry vinegar, olive oil, coriander, salt and pepper. I just put all of those ingredients in a cup, covered the cup with a lid and shook it until the contents were well-blended. Then poured it over the salad. Now if I had to choose a part of the meal that was my least favorite, I'd have to admit that the salad was it. Well... not so much the salad, but the dressing.

I chose a raspberry vinaigrette dressing because I had tried it before in a restaurant and liked it, and because I thought the point value of the dressing (my hubbie and I are currently doing Weight Watchers) would be lower than my first instinct in dressings. I nearly ALWAYS have ranch dressing on my salads, which of course is not very good for you, but tastes great. Although, I have begun expanding my tastebuds in recent years.

But in this particular case, the dressing was just too sour for me, so I ended up not eating it, but my hubbie liked it, so that's proof that the dressing is good to some people (just not me!).

Before I end this posting, I must include one final note: my hubbie told me (as he was headed back for a second helping of the pork cutlet) that tonight's meal may very well be the best meal I've ever made. :o) So he REALLY liked it and practically begged me to make it again sometime.

And now on to dessert...

If you are interested in reading about what I made for dessert tonight, go to the "Basic Baking" portion of my blog. Happy reading!