Ok, this is my first blog and i just want to have an outlet for my musing and hopefully in time some comments and help with recipes. I am 46yrs old married woman, my children have grown up and left home and I find myself cooking as a way to de-stress. We have a busy social life and often have friends over for food.
This weekend it was the girls from work, one of them was a colleague from Texas, so I decided to try my hand at Tex-Mex. Why oh why would I think I could cook better chili than a Texan! Regardless of what I was thinking at the time I had announced the dinner menu to my guests and was now committed.
I don't know how everyone else thinks but I need no encouragement to buy a new piece of kitchen equipment for a recipe and this was no exception. The menu was fresh salsa and guacamole with tortilla chips, along with a terribly trashy cheese dip made with Velveeta cheese and a can of Rotel hot tomatoes with green chillies for appetisers, then onto main course of chili, refried beans and cornbread and for dessert a refreshing margarita ice-cream. As I was making cornbread, the need for an iron skillet became a necessity, in my eyes at least!
The night before the dinner i cooked the Chilli in order to let the flavours develop, not putting in beans as when doing research for the chili i discovered that a true Texan chilli does not contain beans.I also made the margarita ice-cream and finally the refried beans.
Everything was going well until a friend who had dropped by said that they did not look like any refried beans he had! Arggghhh, why is it that friends feel that they can say such things and its not going to put you into a state of absolute panic. After that statement I was ready to throw them away and start all over again!! What he really meant was thankfully, that they did not look like the canned refried beans he had had previously.
So this just left the salsa, guacamole and cornbread to do on the night. I finished work at 4 so had a couple of hours before they arrived, so began with the salsa. Nothing hard about making a salsa. Then the guacamole, here we hit a hiccup. I had bought 4 avocados and 2 were not good. The other 2 looked ok but as soon as I blended the ingredients together it went a horrible brown colour, not appetising in the least. This I could not serve to anyone, so was promptly thrown in the bin.
Next onto the cornbread, I put some oil to heat in the skillet in the oven and starting mixing up the ingredients. It quickly became apparent that the mixture(a recipe I had not tried before) was not a cornbread batter consistency, more like a gloppy yellow blob. I added more milk and got the consistency I needed and put it into the oven to cook.
Whilst this was in I washed the rice and put it into the rice cooker. I don't know what it is but cooking rice is never easy for me, it terrifies me! My husband usually does it in the microwave and it comes out perfectly every time. At least for me the rice cooker is easy enough to use although it does feel like cheating to use it.
I wish i had taken a picture of the woeful looking cornbread that came from the oven when the cooking time was finished. At least the birds enjoyed it the following day.
I am lucky the I had understanding guests and that there was plenty to eat without the cornbread and guacamole!!!
Next time I will post pictures.
