Last edited Sun Jan 8, 2023, 02:16 AM - Edit history (1)
All I had to do was read that aspic recipe and it was "nuh-uh, Julia, not doing that one." I did the baguettes once, also, and since I lacked a steam oven, the crust was not fantastic. Au Bon Pan had just opened, so I decided to buy the damned things.
Edit: I just watched the moussaka show and it brought back some ugly memories, "let's go out for pizza!" memories. I'd thumbed through it all because it had been a request. I like lamb, but lamb doesn't like me, so I subbed beef. I thought the hours long tomato sauce recipe for a red moat around a black lump on a serving platter idea was dumb, so I used some sauce I'd canned the preceding fall. The rest of it was fairly straightforward, saute the mushies and veg while the eggplant is baking, and yes, I did get rid of the cigarette butts in the bottom of a beer bottle brown eggplant juice. I didn't have a cylinder, either, so I used an oblong dish that worked out quite well. I turned it out on a platter and surrounded it with half a jar of tomato sauce and I don't think it was particularly bad, it was just this shiny, very unappetizing black lump that looked like it had bled out on the platter. It had very little flavor for that much seasoning and effort so pizza sounded a hell of a lot better.
The next night, I chucked the offending eggplant skins and turned the filling into a proper meatloaf with more onion, bread crumbs, and egg and served it with mash. It was a hell of a lot better.
For years, I thought the problem was using beef instead of lamb. Turns out it just wasn't a very good recipe.