Four years ago, I made a dish that turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I put cooked rice in the slow cooker with chicken and vegetables hoping for a nice stew with rice in it. What I got was something else entirely. To this day, it is still refereed to as chicken goop. When ever we talking about how good our meals are, the good (or bad!!) old chicken goop gets mentioned. I don’t think I will ever live down chicken goop.
I have been getting more and more out of my usual comfort zone in the kitchen lately, and it is perhaps because of my experimenting that today will always be remembered… along with chicken goop. Today consisted of many firsts. First time attempting sourdough focaccia bread. First time attempting to cook with tempeh. First time cooking and eating mushrooms. Yup, no small milestones.
I made the dough as directed ahead of time. Really, after I ended up with sticky dough up the walls, I should have known then that it wasn’t going to end well. But OHH NOO! I persisted.
After hours and hours of resting (and not that much rising) I did as instructed on the recipe and shaped my dough into focaccia loaves. See how pretty they look? I sprinkled them with the right herbs, garlic and cheese just for extra awesome. Yup, they sure did look good…
At the farmers markets we got some Tempeh. I have never had it before, nor cooked with it. I decided that as other vegetarians eat it, perhaps we should. I did everything that the girl told me to do to prepare it. I fried up some hallomi (a favourite with Joe and I) just for a treat. I also fried up some shiitake mushrooms with garlic. Oh wow, this was all looking good and smelling so great. Vegetarian heven!
I constructed myself a fantastic looking sandwich out of all the goods. I was feeling rather pleased with myself as I drizzled on the sweet chilli sauce to top it all off. Yup, awesome meal, Rhi… you are really improving as a cook…
And then I bit into it. After spitting it all back out, I pondered; How could this NOT be delicious? It all looked so good. I was in shock. Chicken goop had a challenger for the worlds worse dinner title. A serious challenger.
Let us never speak of this again…
