Jan 08 2009
Recipe Card Let Down Number Two
It looked so nice in the picture! I’d been keeping the card since December! Bah!
- Waitrose Veal Ragu
As I said, I picked this card up in December and thought I could cook this next year! The ingredients were reasonably straightforward and happy, British veal is very reasonably priced, so I was keen to give this a go, even if it meant waiting.
I put this together on a Thursday afternoon. I had a half day for a meeting with an interior designer, which meant I was able to get it cooking nice and early to give it plenty time to bubble away and for the flavours to come out. It looked quite alarming, yet pretty, as it simmered, the wine and red onions contributing a purple tinge to the liquor whilst the something else, not sure what, lent a green shade to the bubbles!
The problem with this was in the recipe, and I should have spotted it sooner. The dish contained 450g of meat, plus some onion and other veg. I then had to add over 600ml of liquid- wine and veggie stock. Then I was to simmer to reduce slightly.
Reducing slighty meant that the meat was swimming in liquid. Even though we realised this and gave it a good boil later to reduce it down, the dish still felt thin and watery. It was difficult to bring it together with the pasta (saffron tagliatelle was called for by the recipe, although normal pasta would have been just fine) and you ended up chasing watery bits round the plate. Very dissapointing, and enough to shake my confidence in Waitrose recipe cards.
I have found this with various recipes. You never know if they have just inserted an extra “0″ or what. I suppose with an experienced eye, one would run through the recipe and go “Uh-oh! this doesn’t add up” but life is not really like that, you just end up boiling away like mad when you should have been simmering etc
I think asking for huge volumes of water and stock was the error. If you remove the “add water” instruction it all makes a lot more sense…
there wasn’t water AND stock. but I suppose if you’d added a stock cube but no water, just wine. or just less of everything.