So he just cooked it straight from frozen? Sounds like a bad idea in the best of circumstances.
Naw, I’m sure he thawed it. I wasn’t there until he came running down the driveway with it, and this was many years ago, so I am unclear on the details of his cooking method.
IIRC, he did mention that it smelled bad and “looked kind of funny” before he even put it in the oven, but figured it was “just one of those things”, and that it would all come out fine. I do remember one thing he said very clearly: He hated to just throw it all away, and couldn’t believe it could possibly be bad since it had been in the deep freeze, so he cut off a piece and either ate it or attempted to eat it. He was notorious for not letting anything go to waste. He ate expired food and milk and stuff all the time rather than toss it.
If he were still alive, I’d ask him for more details.
I very rarely totally screw up in the kitchen to the point of disaster, but I’m pretty sure the worst thing I’ve ever cooked, results wise, was Coq Au Vin, in my French classics phase. I’m not sure if it was the quality of the wine, or the chicken, or what else, but when prepping the dish I was thinking “this smells like it’s just going to be chicken soaked in bad wine, but surely there’s going to be some transformative thing once it soaks/cooks, right?”
Nope. Once done, it tasted exactly the same: like sour wine-chicken stew. I spent like an entire day making it, and nothing specific went spectacularly wrong, but it was just…terrible. (I’ve had Coq Au Vin that was good, so it isn’t the dish in general, just my execution).
I don’t have a particularly epic story to share, but some of you may be familiar with the invertebrate additions that have graced my favourite hot drinks in the past. So the following will come as no surprise.
Back in 2002 I spent two months in the remote bush catching thousands of crocodiles. These things happen. As you can imagine we tended to cook fairly simple stuff, often because we were extremely busy and cooking was the last thing anyone wanted to do. This particular evening we discovered some pasta, some cans of tuna, some mayonnaise and some kind of tomato sauce, the combination of which seemed like a great time. This was the end of a long, hot day so we were already exhausted. An hour later we had this epic, tasty looking dish prepared, a kind of tuna pasta bake. Oh god, it looked good.
And then someone came dashing up to let us know there were crocs caught in the net! We all dashed down to the waterhole, jumped in a small boat and proceeded to free one, then two, then three, then several large freshwater crocodiles. Hours later it finally calmed down and we could take a break. Holy shit, there’s that awesome tuna pasta still waiting for us! We arrived back to the camp to find the pot of tuna, lid on, sitting by the fire coals. Opening the lid, we discovered some rather large, black meat ants had found it and said “For me? You shouldn’t have! So kind.” Yes, it was crawling with hundreds of alarmingly large black ants.
And you know what? We ate the whole fucking lot anyway because by that stage we were so hungry and there were no more shits to be given. It was easily the greatest tuna ant pasta I’ve ever tasted.
Hoooly jeezus.
I always say free is the best spice, but hunger may have it beat there!
I served my brother piss once. Told him it was lemonade.
That was intentional though, not sure it qualifies for the thread.
I want to hear the story about the bad tuna ant pastas.
It was an anty pasto, so they were really hankering for a main course afterwards.
Please don’t stop on my account everyone! My sense of what is normal is at least two standard deviations from the mean. Besides, I don’t think I topped roasting a frozen, rotten chicken.
And is that really cooking?
No, no. The tuna ant pasta is a side, not a topping. :)
Sure, I added sugar, fresh lemon juice, ice, and a little slice of lemon on the rim of the glass.
Anty pasto was clever, mucho props to AP.
I do my terrible best!
On ice, I hope.
Otherwise, he’d be suspicious.
Yes, yes, of course on ice! What sort of rank amateur do you take me for?
If ever there was a perfect text for an insanity wolf meme, this would be it.
