Friday Fuck Ups: Date Night

 

Editors Note: If you’ve ever met me in real life, you know that I’ll eventually start talking about food and the blog. I mean, well, what else is there to talk about. Actually, one time my sister even noted how the conversation remarkably went from well, I don’t remember, and magically back to food. Anyway, it’s no surprise that I’ve gotten my coworkers hooked on ES. Trip J is one of them. And while I usually direct her in the right culinary direction, I may have gotten her off track for this last kitchen adventure.  My bad!  Here’s Trip J’s side of the story.

Gansie is my go-to girl for all date dining emergencies. I think she should be a dating culinary consultant. When I have to plan a spectacular meal that is certain to land me a husband after he eats it, she’s who I ask.  Kidding (about the husband part).  But, I do want the meal to be good and she hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

This time, the date menu plan was tilapia, squash, and potatoes.  So, she pulled a wide range of ES recipes and we checked out other cooking sites – G. Garvin is a favorite of mine.  At any rate, I speed read through the recipes so I could rush home and cook a decadent meal.  And I was on a time crunch because he was arriving late, and then had to leave early to go to work.

Date Night Menu post jump

Fish and Squash

As I prepared the tilapia, I just knew everything would be ok.  It’s a pretty easy fish to work with.  I seasoned it with seasoning salt, pepper, smart balance (gasp!), and finished it off with lemon juice, per gansie’s orders.  She also said to top it with a wine sauce, I’ll get back to that in a minute…

I had my standard recipe for squash ready to go: just sauté with olive oil, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.  Well, I forgot to buy brown sugar.  I just had a yellow and brown tasteless, mushy mess on my hands at that point.

Then, the Potatoes

No one told me that diced potatoes take so long to cook!  Like I said, with the time crunch and all, I just turned up the heat and hoped for the best.  No luck.  We ate hard potatoes.  They were edible, but very borderline…

Finishing Touches

I added the finishing touches to the plate since presentation is everything.  I cut rosemary from my window garden, and then got ready to pour the wine sauce.  Gansie said wine and butter.  Just wine and butter.  She obviously takes her culinary expertise for granted sometimes.  I popped the wine and butter in the microwave for a minute or two and poured it all over the fish.  I could have gotten drunk off of my tilapia that night.  The alcoholic aftertaste was not amazing.  When I saw gansie next time she said I should have reduced the sauce more.  Reduce?  Reduce it to what?  I was supposed to put it in a pan.  Oops.

He said the potatoes were hard, but the meal was good.  It took him too long to say it, and he didn’t get seconds.  I was not convinced.

Photo: flickr user pittigliani2005