Sometimes recipes unexpectedly flop. Maybe it’s a bad or inaccurate recipe, maybe you messed up… it happens. But I’m learning that sometimes, when something doesn’t taste good, it’s because I went against my common sense when selecting the recipe in the first place.
Last night for dinner I made two recipes from the very first cookbook I ever bought, Vegan Planet. The first sounded pretty exciting – cumin-spiced wagon wheels with jalapeno pesto. The second recipe was the savory spinach bread pudding.
The wagon wheels with jalapeno pesto wasn’t terrible by any means. It just wasn’t very exciting. I think I just expected more bang to the finished dish than I got. It was an unusual recipe that I’d been wanting to try, and I’m happy I finally made it, but doubt I’d make it again.
The bread pudding however… what was I thinking? Everyone knows what they like and don’t like to eat. One things I don’t like is an overwhelming taste of soy. And yet I completely ignored the fact that this recipe contains 3 cups of soy milk and 1 pound of silken tofu. I should have known I wouldn’t have liked the finished product. But I made it anyway. My boyfriend also thought it was awful.
I don’t mean for this post to be bashing Robin Robertson’s Vegan Planet. There are plenty of delicious recipes in that book! I just think I need to imagine the finished product more than just flipping through the pages and picking a random recipe.
Have any of you ever prepared a recipe and then realized that you don’t like the ingredients in it?
Ahimsa 
October 20, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Yep, it does happen… I’ll like the idea of a recipe, but not the reality of it. Last time this happened to me, it was a creamy “chicken” soup. I hate that kind of stuff! I’d much prefer a brothy noodle or veggie soup. I just got caught up in wanting something comforting, I guess…
October 21, 2011 at 2:52 pm
I’m not a huge raw onion fan, and I always have to remind myself to not put in as much onion as recipes call for, or I won’t like it at all! It’s so refreshing to see a post about a recipe fail (or, a taste fail?), thanks for this!
October 24, 2011 at 1:56 pm
I’m not really a fan of uncooked tofu, it has a really weird taste. So I totally regretted making creamy spinach dip once that had uncooked silken tofu mixed into it. The recipe had the option of using beans instead, but I already had tofu on hand and was too lazy to go to the store for different ingredients.