Thursday, November 07, 2013

Slow

Win some; Lose some.

On CB (from his Mangina Monologues) and his FB page, he commented on a dish that looked good and easy.  He's all about the easy.

Admittedly, it looked good.  But looks can be deceiving.

Or perhaps, I just fucked it up. And trust me, even if I did fuck it up, the recipe might be more at fault than my "cooking" ability.

There are al of five ingredients in the dish and it goes in a slow cooker.  How hard can this be?, you're probably thinking to yourselves. In theory it is not. In reality, there has to be nuances for that frickin' Facebook crowd to give it 200+ positive comments.

I shant be one of them.

So here's how they broke it down:

1 small bag of spinach
1 quart of vegetable stock
1 block of cream cheese (cubed)
2 cans of Italian styled diced tomatoes
1 bag of frozen tortellini

Throw it all in the crockpot and cook on low for 5-6 hours.

Of course problems arise in what they don't say: what size cans of diced tomatoes?  What exactly is a small bad of spinach?  How big of a bag of frozen tortellini????

Details people!!!  I need details.

Let's start off with I had frozen ravioli, not tortellini.  That should work, no?  (maybe not.)   Two (one could assume) 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes?  Eh, I had one can of 28.5.


It came out a gloppy mess, if you ask me, even if it looks decent here.

It didn't taste horrible. But it didn't present well and the texture wasn't all that great.  I don't know how pasta can sit with a quart of liquid for 5-6 hours and not come out soggy.  Well.......it didn't.


There is a lot of extra liquid I thought might cook away (it didn't), and I don't foresee eating the remainders and I'm always good about the leftovers.  I don't imagine this would reheat nicely.

Like I said:  win some; lose some.   ....and this time, I lost.  This is not going into the rotation.



Song by: the Cardigans

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never tried slow cooking Italian food before. I imagine spaghetti or any noodle that isn't stuffed with anything would work out fine.

As for recipies, I always look at three different versions because cooking times as well as ingredients can vary.

Anonymous said...

I agree about the details - when I first really go into cooking I came across a few recipes that would give the weight for everything rather than in cups or sizes - now I wish all recipes gave an approximate weight or at least in cups. How big is a small onion or pepper? Just how big should a clove of garlic be?

Your results is why I try to read a number of comments when I find a recipe. Even one from the Barefoot Contessa - usually they'll point out mistakes or the nuances needed for success or reasons to forget about it.

cb said...

At least you tried it first. Saved me the trouble.