Intermediate Cooking Skills Quiz
Your fiancee’s parents are coming over for dinner, and you need to choose a dish to make. Your three options are:
- bouillabaisse
- risotto
- pad thai
You have never made any of them. Which one should you choose? Answer given in the first comment.
Comments (11)
The answer is (b) risotto. Bouillabaisse is the easiest (basically a fish stew) but will make your house smell like the docks. The rice noodles in pad thai are remarkably difficult to time, and the dish cannot be made in home kitchens (your range isn’t hot enough). Risotto requires some stirring but is otherwise fairly simple. Bon Appetit!
you have a fiancee?!?!
Yes, I would have chosen risotto as well. That stuff is the bomb-diggity! The impressiveness to effort ratio is usually pretty high. =)
I knew it. Ed has Geheimnisse!
I would have still chosen the bouillibaisse. To my uncultured palate, risotto is like glorified xi fan.
ditto peterskim!
Yeah for (c), I’d worry about the fish sauce and vinegar from the pad thai smelling up the place, not to mention that your guests will have bad breath afterward haha =).
I actually found risotto to be a bit tricky when I was first making it — you have to keep stirring constantly, it’s hard to get the consistency just right (e.g. often the water boils away before the risotto is done, or it’s done but there’s still too much water… kinda like rice except they solve that problem with rice cookers). And if risotto sits, it hardens and becomes pasty.
I would get take-out from Wang’s or bring them to soul food =).
Ok, one of these Sundays I’ll make the rock shrimp risotto with baby spinach from Simply Ming. You can see how easy the recipe is. Or maybe I just had beginners luck when I made it?
you’re avoiding the question! who’s the lucky woman?
Maybe my recipe was just overly complicated. Now I’m told that you don’t actually have to stir risotto as frequently as I thought. Hmm, o.k. let’s do this for soul food!
Engaged now eh? Wow, things move fast when you get old(er)