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| Hot out of the oven and looking delicious... |
So, originally this blog was supposed to be about the snack
food we served at game night. It would
have included wonderful delights like buffalo chicken bread, philly cheese
steak pull aparts, and taco queso. But
it turns out I got drunk before game night even began, so all I really remember
about the food is "oh shit this is delicious!" Also, no one ate any of my blueberry jalapeño
cream cheese dip, and it made me sad when the girlfriend threw it away at the
end of the night with most of it still remaining. It was delicious and I'm still a little
bitter. But not so bitter that I won't
write up Sunday's dinner: Jalapeño
Popper Tater Tot Chicken Casserole.
Which is entirely too long for the name of a dish. But that's a key component to running a food blog
- dish titles that include as many of the ingredients as possible. Personally, if I were really trying to
attention whore I would have called it Bacon Jalapeño Pepper Popper Tater Tot
Rotisserie Chicken Mexican Cheese Casserole.
But the more reasonable, slap a hipster side of me would have gone with
Chicken Tot Casserole. But I guess
that's why I'm over here slumming it with a free blog I write for giggles.
By the way, ever start a new blog quietly, and only tell a
couple people while you work on the concept to get it off the ground? Then, in that awkward time where you've only
told one or two people, one of those people mentions the blog in front of
someone who knows about your fantasy hockey blog and they have a completely
unwarranted, knee jerk, butt hurt reaction.
I guess that's just one of the many unforeseeable risks of game night,
though. Well, that and getting drunk
enough that you don't remember anything about the dishes you were originally
going to review... And getting kicked in
the left nut while trying to crawl an oreo from your forehead to your mouth
using only your face muscles.
Anyway, to compensate, the head chef of my apartment went
slumming on Pinterest again, and pulled the recipe you can see in the
sidebar. Which actually ended up being
super weather appropriate on a weekend when all my favorite outdoor activities
were cancelled due to frigid temperatures and persistent rain. A tater tot casserole is the epitome of a
comfort dish, and were I more like the food blog we pulled the recipe from I’d
regale you with tales of building snowmen all day to retire to a cozy sofa with
a melty grilled cheese and a steaming bowl of tomato soup. But we’re not that blog, we’re this blog; so
instead let me tell you how you score dueling two’s in plating and execution.
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| Looking good, pre-bake, too. |
This recipe isn’t super complicated. The list of ingredients isn’t really short,
but it’s not like anything listed is super complex. Hell, the chicken is already cooked! So when you’re taking your first bites of tot
casserole and you stop, and admit that you completely forgot to include one of
the ingredients, you’re gonna get knocked down a few pegs. This wasn’t some strategic decision made to
wow my pallet, this was a total blonde moment.
And the result was sort of evident in the final product as it was
definitely missing a bit of creaminess I expected. I’m not saying the casserole was overly dry
by any means, so it’s not like I was raging through the kitchen smashing plates. But I definitely considered it. Except there were no plates. That’s right, my
dinner was served in a paper bowl as if this were some sort of white trash
diner. That’s how you roll a pair of
twos.
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| Paper bowls... PAPER BOWLS?! |
Prep difficulty gets a friendly four; even the chopping of
vegetables wasn’t that bad, even though I had to do it myself. I did deduct a point because after chopping
jalapenos I rubbed my eye. Sorry, but you
can’t score a five in prep difficulty if anyone cried; even if it was my own
damn fault. The cost also scores
favorably; none of the ingredients are going to break the bank and the recipe
makes enough for six people at least. So
offsetting the plating and chef’s execution we score a 4 and 5 in prep and
cost. And all of that brings us to the
moment of truth, the flavor.
The title itself makes a huge deal out of telling you every
last damn ingredient in the dish, but it falls well short of delivering on the
jalapeno popper it promises. I can see
where they tried, though. The inclusion
of garlic salt, cream cheese, bacon, and jalapenos is an honest attempt to
create that popper flavor. But it fails
miserably. The garlic doesn’t come
through at all and the jalapeno is muted (which is a shock when you consider
how damn large the peppers we used were) behind the green onions. I need to find the person who came up with
this recipe and shove my inferno fingers their eyes. The bacon is definitely a welcome addition
(we even used pre-cooked) and the cream cheese and Mexican cheese blends are
delicious. But in a dish where the
popper ain’t poppin’, I’m definitely going to be adding hot sauce to these
leftovers.
After all that, I’m sure you think the dish was barely
edible. Well that’s just not true; I
even had a
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| Pineapple-Ghost Pepper jelly over cream cheese on the side. |
So who scored worse, the recipe or the cook? Good to see you’re asking the tough questions, dear reader. The truth is we just come out here, you know, and try to take it one meal at a time. A recipe, the cook, and the eater are like a team, you know. And, um, there’s no I in team, right? It’s not really fair to blame a loss on any one person… we win as a team and lose as a team. So, you know, even if
Even though the cook totally blew it when she skipped an
ingredient, sucking the score down from 3.8 to a 3.2. The cook had no comment. Mostly because she doesn't know any of what I've written yet. Which means I'm probably going to be murdered. Avenge me, dear reader. AVENGE ME!
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