Yes indeed, our attempt at "that gourmet touch" made the rolls look like disgusting disease pustules! Just to prove I did not burn them, let's crack one open that you may see the inside.
See? The roll is not dried out, the bottom is not blackened, and in all other ways these rolls are not as overbaked as the egg on top makes them appear to be.
You may wonder why the rolls are so orange. This recipe calls for mashed potatoes, and we inserted a leftover sweet potato into a blender and used that instead. If you ignored the rolls' burnt appearance, they were delicious. However, one would be wise to not attempt fancying up things in unfamiliar ways when others are expected to eat them.
Ah, yes. Dinner guests make for a bad time to experiment. I learned my lesson on this myself not too long ago. We had a guest who just said he liked "pasta," and since just boiling up some noodles and microwaving Ragu didn't seem to be nearly enough trouble to go through for a guest, I decided to make homemade sauce. Without a recipe. How hard could it be, right? Just cook some tomatoes with seasonings and then blenderize them! Right?
ReplyDeleteAs it turned out, my sauce came out horribly bitter. Turns out most recipes put their tomatoes through a strainer to remove all those nasty-tasting seeds... and on top of that, I burned my herbs by adding them too soon. Oops. Sorry, fresh basil--you did nothing to deserve all this!
As a more gracious relative of mine would say, that dinner sounds "memorable." It does seem like experimenting in front of others makes things almost guaranteed to fail, doesn't it?
DeleteThankfully, said guest was also one of those rail-thin young men with a hummingbird metabolism and the attendant lack of picky eating, so even though I offered canned sauce, he ate it all without complaint. Still, next time, I'm using a strainer anyway.
DeleteIt must not have been all that bad. Or maybe he kinda liked bitterness in his spaghetti sauce.
ReplyDelete