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Zero stars. Do not recommend.

jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
Does anyone else love watching the reels on the book of face and elsewhere showing entertaining people making recipes? I do and save the videos and write out the ones that look doable.

A recipe, I can't remember which person did it, looked like something my family would like. It was easy to put together and only took an hour for the prep and the baking.

It was horrible.

My family was out having some Trick or Treat fun with my three year old granddaughter, and I was going to have a hot supper ready for them when they came home. I had to text them and say that I put the whole thing in the garbage. The flavor was icky. One of the really bad things was the boneless pork chops had several bone shards in the two bites I tasted. Very glad Granddaughter didn't have any, or anyone else but me, really!

The recipe was ripped to shreds and dumped with vigor into the trash can.

Sometimes we give things a try, only to find out they're terrible. Please share some of yours!

Comments

  • When I lived in Lake Placid, New York (1969 to 1972) I could pick up Canadian TV stations. One station featured The Galloping Gourmet (Graham Kerr) making recipes.

    On one show he made "Devon Porkers with Blackberry and Apple Pie." I never tried making the Devon Porkers, although it does sound like a delicious way to cook pork chops. I did try the Blackberry and Apple Pie, though. Although I was sure I was following Kerr's recipe to the letter, it turned out to be an inedible disaster.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I can't remember where I got the recipe, but it was for a sort of cake of grated parsnip. It looked lovely - firm and golden- but tasted like wet newspaper.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Some of these are AI - so definitely untasted!
  • SandemaniacSandemaniac Shipmate
    I remember making a pumpkin and orange chutney. Looked amazing which is why I tried it.

    Tasted like Dettol (disinfectant for those outwith UK).
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    <snip>On one show he made "Devon Porkers with Blackberry and Apple Pie." I never tried making the Devon Porkers, although it does sound like a delicious way to cook pork chops. I did try the Blackberry and Apple Pie, though. Although I was sure I was following Kerr's recipe to the letter, it turned out to be an inedible disaster.
    If one can make shortcrust pastry, has blackberries, decent cooking apples, and sugar, I find it hard to imagine what could possibly go wrong.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I remember the Galloping Gourmet! He was on at lunchtimes, and we were fascinated, because we'd never seen anyone cooking with garlic before, which he crushed under a big knife. (I use garlic all the time now). His catchphrase about "just having a short slurp" before he drowned the recipe in red wine passed into our family sayings.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    I have a cookbook - The Boxing Clever Cookbook - with lots of vegetarian recipes to use up seasonal gluts of produce. Some of the recipes are excellent. But some...

    Beetroot pie was a sort of beetroot quiche. The pie filling turned out blancmange pink. It looked like a dessert, but tasted of beetroot. The contrast between the appearance and the taste was...disconcerting. Made once and never again.

    I can't remember what was wrong with Courgette Pizza, but I have Never again!!! written next to it.

    I won't say what is written next to the recipe for Lettuce risotto, because TIACW.

    The Lettuce and courgette soup - well, my husband had the genius idea of making it more appealing by serving it with a plastic hippo in the children's bowls and calling it Hippopotamus Swamp Soup.

    Many years ago I was in hospital, and the kids gave my husband a brief guide to housekeeping. You must never cook anything from this book they told him, referring to the Boxing Clever book.
  • I would have thought that the phrase 'courgette pizza' would be enough to simultaneously cause panic and engage the vomit reflex.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    I would have thought that the phrase 'courgette pizza' would be enough to simultaneously cause panic and engage the vomit reflex.

    The odd thing about the cookbook is that some recipes - Fried Lettuce, for example - don't sound promising, but are actually nice.
  • Graven ImageGraven Image Shipmate
    edited 3:17PM
    When I lived in Lake Placid, New York (1969 to 1972) I could pick up Canadian TV stations. One station featured The Galloping Gourmet (Graham Kerr) making recipes.

    On one show he made "Devon Porkers with Blackberry and Apple Pie." I never tried making the Devon Porkers, although it does sound like a delicious way to cook pork chops. I did try the Blackberry and Apple Pie, though. Although I was sure I was following Kerr's recipe to the letter, it turned out to be an inedible disaster.

    I also followed Graham Kerr, and even bought two of his cook books. They are long gone, but I did make a few of the dishes. Just yesterday I tried making some yogurt bread I saw on line and it failed to rise. I quickly added some noodles to the soup I made to give us some carbs.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    A friend who knows I like old cookbooks gave me a copy of Laurel's Kitchen, a pioneering vegetarian cookbook published in the US in 1976. It is a wonderful read and many good ideas but hasn't dated well. The recipes were counter-cultural, hearty and involved many spoonfuls of brewers yeast.

    Thinking vaguely of fruit loaves, I made a loaf of bread requiring a cup of brown lentils, two cups stone-ground wholewheat flour, a cup of rolled oats, some wheatgerm, a cup of soaked brown rice, several cups of chopped pecan nuts, another cup of chopped raisins, some sunflower seeds, tablespoons of honey and several eggs. Plus brewers yeast, baking powder, a mug of buttermilk, dried herbs, etc.

    Doorstop is the word. Pushing roughage to the limit.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Many years ago my flatmate and I attempted Mont Blanc from the usually reliable Cookery Year which is a compendium of classic mid-20C recipes with a lot of French influence.

    Prepping the chestnuts was very laborious -we had no powered gadgets. We tried various shifts to try and improve the gritty and largely flavourless result, like adding more sugar, beating in cream etc. Still bin fodder.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    I would have thought that the phrase 'courgette pizza' would be enough to simultaneously cause panic and engage the vomit reflex.
    I agree. Likewise, "a sort of cake of grated parsnip", "pumpkin and orange chutney", and "Lettuce and courgette soup". And if one's bread mixture started with 'two cups of stone-ground wholewheat flour', adding to it '"a cup of brown lentils, two cups a cup of rolled oats, some wheatgerm, a cup of soaked brown rice, several cups of chopped pecan nuts" + assorted other bits and pieces, I would not have thought even tarting up the yeast with a bit of baking powder and some buttermilk could get it somehow to magic into anything other than a doorstep.

    The usual warning story I use against the cooking equivalent of not trying to polish a t**d was some coleslaw which had gone well over. Even after being fried in oil with all sorts of flavourings added, beneath the taste of the oil and everything else added, it was still vinegary, sour, repulsive and revolting.


  • [Tangent warning. Probably mentioned this before, but... I once read a novel that mentioned a book called "What every bride should know", which disappointingly turned out to be a cookery book. Fast forward some years to visiting my wife's grandparents in Montana (grandpa being a long retired presbyterian minister) and there it was among their books. It was real, and it was a cookery book.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited 5:39PM
    The Galloping Gourmet is one of my earliest TV memories, going back to the days when I was still confused about why there appeared to be people in a box in our living room. Kerr later converted to evangelical Christianity, dropped the hedonistic-playboy image, and by the 1990s was hosting a PBS show dedicated to healthy cooking, minus the booze and the flirtation.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Enoch wrote: »
    I would have thought that the phrase 'courgette pizza' would be enough to simultaneously cause panic and engage the vomit reflex.
    I agree. Likewise, "a sort of cake of grated parsnip", "pumpkin and orange chutney", and "Lettuce and courgette soup". And if one's bread mixture started with 'two cups of stone-ground wholewheat flour', adding to it '"a cup of brown lentils, two cups a cup of rolled oats, some wheatgerm, a cup of soaked brown rice, several cups of chopped pecan nuts" + assorted other bits and pieces, I would not have thought even tarting up the yeast with a bit of baking powder and some buttermilk could get it somehow to magic into anything other than a doorstep.

    The usual warning story I use against the cooking equivalent of not trying to polish a t**d was some coleslaw which had gone well over. Even after being fried in oil with all sorts of flavourings added, beneath the taste of the oil and everything else added, it was still vinegary, sour, repulsive and revolting.


    @Enoch, I hear you on the common sense side, that we shouldn't attempt dishes that defy culinary logic etc.

    BUT over and over again I have been amazed at the success of combinations that shouldn't work, pasta e faglioli (two starchy carbs?), microwaved apple crumble, last-minute baked Alaska, chocolate avocado mousse, balsamic vinegar with strawberries. I've eaten all of these and they might not taste great for everyone but they please enough people to become staples.
  • sionisaissionisais Shipmate
    I’m wary of any “Something-or-other” Bake. There are plenty of good, nay great meals of this kind, but they have a proper name, like Moussaka or Shepherd’s Pie, but the contrived concoctions are rarely satisfactory.
    Let this be a warning.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Many years ago a young lady attempted to impress (the now but not then) Mr F by whipping up a meal from the ingredients on hand - which were rice, tomatoes and vinegar.

    A useful bit of culinary knowledge is when to get a takeaway.
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    Firenze, that reminds me of the time, many years ago, when I had just two ingredients to cobble something together for dinner. My ex and I and our two boys lived in a 16 foot travel trailer with a very small fridge, and not very much money.

    There were eggs, and leftover sloppy joes. I decided to make omelets with them! Everybody ate the result, but it was pretty terrible.
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