Oh, how naive I was, thinking that the Food Network could do no wrong. They couldn’t ever let me down, with all the expertise that goes into their recipes, so there’s no way I could choose to make a recipe from Food Network that I’ve never made before and serve it to over 20 people and have it suck. Nope, that could never happen.
It all started very innocently. While perusing through the latest issue of Food Network Magazine (which I absolutely adore, by the way), a recipe for a lightened up hot artichoke-spinach dip caught my eye. Instead of lots of cheese and mayonnaise, it has pureed white beans and a little cheese. Beans = good, so I thought the recipe would be as well. Fresh spinach, fresh basil — and lots of it! — three different kinds of cheese and Worcestershire sauce was surely the recipe for success. I filed it away for later, knowing that I’d serve that recipe at Owen’s birthday party.
And I did. When it came out of the oven all hot and bubbly, I was seriously impressed with myself. I’d never made a hot dip before, mostly because we don’t eat a lot of dairy and I fear the gloppy white stuff you people call mayonnaise like a disease-infested crack house, so this was new territory, and it looked positively gorgeous.
It was far too hot, but I dipped a chip in anyway because I couldn’t wait to try my delectable dip. Yeah, well, perhaps it was just too hot to taste, so I tried it again in a few minutes. Where was that thing called taste? It clearly escaped from this dip during the cooking process, because it had absolutely no zing.
Picture the next scene: me, hauling the gourmet sea salt and Worcestershire sauce out of my cabinet, dousing the dip in front of all of my guests, trying in desperation to give it some flavor — any flavor! It never made it even close to my expectations, and I’m normally a very good recipe reader.
So what have we learned here?
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Dec 01, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
