Cooking with Arnold IX

Post after post after post of kitchen tragedies (see my “Cooking with Arnold” series in the history), a good Samaritan has come to my aid all the way from Madrid, Spain.

Meet Cherina from the Application Integration team. Web server wizard. She posted some ridiculously easy recipes on her site specifically for me to try. If she went through all this trouble posting it for me, I might as well give these a try. Besides, going through the recipe instructions, these things will be easy. There’s no way anyone can mess these up.

But then again, I’m the rice burning, potato mashing, pancake smoking, Coke using chef slash arsonist. And oh, I make you have allergies too.

“Gazpechas”

The ingredients are listed in Cher’s site.

I cleaned and chopped up the veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, onion and green pepper). I’m not a veggie person and there so many things yet for me to learn about vegetables.

Do you take out the tomato seeds? (I didn’t)
How do you cut green pepper? (I chopped it in half sending seeds flying in every irection)
Do you peel cucumbers? (I didn’t)
Do you take out cucumber seeds? (I didn’t)





I took out a blender, pureed the veggies then realized that I went through all the trouble chopping them all up and end up pureeing them anyway. D’oh! The concoction turned brown. It doesn’t look good. It smelled like freshly cut grass. I added the seasonings (olive oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, water), stirred it and stared at it. It looks horrible. I placed some plastic wrap over it then left it in the fridge to cool.



The next day, Feliz was over for lunch. I was too cowardly to taste this and I brought in someone else. I took out the bowl from the fridge and removed the plastic. Feliz saw it and jumped up and down “Wow! KARE KARE!”

An angel and a devil appeared on my left and right shoulder, both of them waving their hands and shouting “We know what you’re thinking! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”. I sighed but agreed.

I told Feliz it was actually a cold veggie like soup. I took out a small spoon and I asked her to taste it. It felt like I was pushing a lamb into a lion's cage. Before she could approach the bowl, I took the spoon and mixed the bowl with it. I took a small portion and slowly brought it to my lips. My hands were shaking. I was so nervous I dropped the spoon which bubbled to the bottom. With Feliz and Louvre laughing horribly in the background I took out another spoon, closed my eyes and tasted the damned thing.

It tasted just like that… damned.

I ran to the sink and spat it out. I took the bowl and dumped its contents into the garbage disposal. I was still doing some spitting sounds because I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth. On the way out, I picked up a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream just to remove the awful taste.

Gazpechas… Gazpacho na lasang…