Terrible foodBack when I was a student, we had a "clear out the fridge" party. Everyone brought what they had left and the idea was to make a big meal out of it.
The stew/casserole/whatever was going surprisingly well until someone added the tin of mackerel in tomato sauce they'd been hoarding all year.
What's the worst thing you've ever cooked or eaten? Who's the worst cook you've encountered?
[and yes, we've asked this before, but way, way back before we had the fancy QOTW pages]
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chthonic, Thu 17 May 2007, 10:23)
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Tinned chicken curryIt didn't seem such a bad idea at the time. Chicken curry. In a tin? Bob's your uncle! "Pah to your microwave curries!" I chortled as I ran to the checkout with the tin and a carton of Ribena, "I laugh in your face, Mr Vesta, for I have the subcontinental goodness in a handy cylindrical container... and what's more, judging by the gorgeously tempting photo on the label, it's going to be something to really savour!"
I think it was once the tin was opened that I realised I'd made a terrible error. It smelt like I imagine it smells in that bit in the abbatoir where they rip the shit out of the dangling animals' guts.
But I was young, hungry and impoverished; I'd spunked the rest of my money on fizzy lager and cigarettes, so it was tinned chicken curry or nothing. I slopped the humming brown mass into a saucepan and began to stir. And besides, how bad could it be? After all, I grew up on Uncle Ben's curries made by my mum that had carrots and sultanas in them.
(Think about that for a minute. You young folk have probably never had to endure the late 1970s-early 1980s concept of curry that oldies like me did. Yes, "curry" that bore about as much resemblance to South Asian cookery as Spud-u-like does to The Fat Duck. With *carrots* in it. And *sultanas*. Presumably so you'd have something to recognise when it came steaming out of your hoop the next day at the speed of light. All mixed up with shitloads of "Ignorant White Bastard Bloody Hot Curry Powder". It tasted like white spirit, but without the subtlety.)
Nothing could be worse than that. Could it?
About 20 minutes' stirring, in a desperate bid to find chicken meat among the bits of brain stem and pancreas, it was just about burnt enough that I'd have a go at it. Two mouthfuls in, there was a gurgle of protest from down below. "Damn you to hell!" I told my stomach, "This baby's coming down, and you're going to like it!" I forced a dozen or so mouthfuls of half-chewed chicken rectum and eyeball down before I couldn't bear it any more.
I spent the night in the bathroom, vomiting into the bath and over my legs, while spluttering gangrenous turds into an overflowing bowl, wishing I could rip myself a new hole so it would come out quicker and spare me the misery. I must have lost about three stone.
I haven't eaten tinned chicken curry since.
(, Mon 21 May 2007, 20:24, Reply)
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