Anyway, by dinner time, I'd had it. I was a frazzled mess, and apparently even a dish as easy as Lemon Linguine (pg 230 of How to Eat) was beyond my skill-set. The sauce, if you will, is made of raw egg yolk, parmesan cheese, lemon zest and juice, and heavy cream. I threw in some leftover roast chicken, because it seemed like a good use for it.
Problem #2: I forgot to halve the egg yolks, so to only use one instead of two. So then I was spooning out what looked like half of the broken yolks. It was dumb.
Problem #3: Right around when the pasta was ready and timing became a factor, Charlie needed more blueberries, more cheese, more blueberries again, more cheese again, etc. Totally forgot to add butter right after the pasta drained, so the noodles solidified. Nigella says that "butter is the best flavoring, best texture, best mood enhancer there is." I agree, but apparently I was beyond salvation.
I accept that if I'd been taking my time and my focus wasn't being pulled in four directions at once, I would have tasted it and tweaked the flavors before mixing it all together. It wasn't lemony or cheesy enough. I like the concept, but what I ate wasn't good enough to bother trying again, unless the only ingredients I had in the house were an egg, pasta, cream, and a lemon.
Conclusion: Just okay.
Next Thursday is book club. Now I know to plan to order a pizza on Friday.
Boo. Just okay from Nigella? Hmm, I may have to stick with Nigella Express.
ReplyDeleteFunny - life just does that to us sometimes doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteMy infamous "Campbell's Soup" accident happened in the midst of little people distracting me from the task at hand. Although, to this day, I still blame the soup and not the kids :-)
I see you're working on "make the bread buy the butter". I have been waffling on that one - so it will be interesting to see how that pans out.
Oh no - don't you hate it when you have days like this. I agree that the concept sounded good though.
ReplyDelete