The Dish with Nine Lives

Have you ever cooked a truly vile dinner? One that should have been lovely but just goes wrong?

I failed to parboil the potatoes enough. I put the spices in too soon and they started to singe so I turned the heat down. My attempt to fry my veg before adding the stock and tomatos was therefore a failure....

I failed to realise all this though.

So then I had to add water and chop up all the potato much smaller.

The food went from a pan to a wok as the volume increased with all the water to my stew pan as I realised it was all wrong.... A second kettle full of water and a load more spices as the water evaporated and took the flavour with it....

And STILL it cooks!

For so long now, it has been cooking in one form or another.

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And still the potato has a bit of that uncooked-ness about it. And I know that if I had cooked it as a stew it would have been done ages ago!

No idea what it will taste like when it is finally done but the taste I just had was rather bland - despite an earlier accident with the fennel seed jar. Thankfully F is not here and waiting for his tea....

Over two hours of cooking and all I have is potential waste so on I doggedly cook...

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I don't understand this dish. How come the number of potatoes I have seems to be reducing but yet I still have some crunchy-ish potato and carrot!

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Well, finally i got to eat - about 3 hours after I started!

...and it was good!

All those spices added at different times seems to have given it layers of taste. It is lovely. I am sure I must have boiled out all the nutrients but hey! so I was aiming for large lumps of potato and veg with a think tomato based sauce lightly covering them... and I got a thin soup with smallish lumps of veg