Dear Emeril,
Surely you must be smok’in your herbs again if you think it takes 15 minutes to prepare Veal Marcelle.
Come on, Em... 15 minutes?? Maybe YOU can prepare it in 15 minutes, but let’s not forget there are people in your audience like me...
I thought this was going to be an easy dinner. You said, “15 minutes prep time, 20 minutes cook time”, and naturally I thought, hey what a great quick dinner idea…
We started at 8:00 pm.
In your list of ingredients, you say: 12 (1 1/2-ounce) veal medallions (okay, we used chicken cause I don’t eat baby anythings... except for eggs cause they don’t have faces yet…) You then tell us in the directions to pound them flat, dredge them in flour, and pan cook them.
How long does that take, from pounding to cooking them, in your world? 10 seconds?? I guess so.
Then you call for 1 pound white button mushrooms, stemmed, wiped clean, and sliced. First of all, A POUND of mushrooms? Good grief man! Not to mention the POUND of crabmeat you call for… And you claim this recipe only feeds 4 people??
Perhaps if they be Sumo wrestlers...
Anyway, I thought I was ahead of the game when I bought the pre-cleaned, pre-sliced shrooms. Little did I realize that sneaky word “stemmed” you slipped in there. Not in the directions where it should be. No, of course not. It was in the ingredients, where one might not noticed it at first… So if one should happen to skim over the directions when deciding if this was a realistic recipe to make for dinner, one may not notice until it was too late. I was all ready to add the fungus, when I had to stop everything and stem them...
And stemming mushrooms must some how take about 5 seconds in your kitchen.
Let see… Oh yeah. 16 spears blanched asparagus. Again, listed in the ingredients, not the directions. Well the last time I checked, asparagus doesn’t come blanched nor will it blanche itself. You have to do that one yourself too. Stop everything. Blanche blanche blanche. Tick, tick, tick goes the clock…
And finally – Last but not least – Let us not forget the crème de la crème - the Hollandaise sauce. Not from the packet – noooo. From scratch. Cause we all know, scratch tastes so much better than packet. But HELLO, how long did that take on your show?! And of course it came out perfect the first time. Well sorry, but we are not expert “Hollandaise from scratch” makers. We royally screwed up our first batch, forcing us to start over again, which sent the clock ticking into overtime.
On the brigher side, lucky me actually had un-salted butter and didn’t have to clarified my own...
We finally finished at 9:30... THANK DOG I had Earl's help or I'd still be cooking into Monday.
We made our plates and sat down to eat…
And everything was cold.
Good… but cold.
Mr. Emeril, please. Be realistic. You’re recipe should say:
Prep time: 1 hour (unless you prefer to actually churn your own butter)
Cook time: 30 minutes (probably more, depending on how badly you screw up the Hollandaise sauce and whether or not you remember to stem and blanche certain things... And of course, assuming you are not Emeril or that you have Emeril staff of sue chefs to help...)
Sincerely yours,
Amy
Surely you must be smok’in your herbs again if you think it takes 15 minutes to prepare Veal Marcelle.
Come on, Em... 15 minutes?? Maybe YOU can prepare it in 15 minutes, but let’s not forget there are people in your audience like me...
I thought this was going to be an easy dinner. You said, “15 minutes prep time, 20 minutes cook time”, and naturally I thought, hey what a great quick dinner idea…
We started at 8:00 pm.
In your list of ingredients, you say: 12 (1 1/2-ounce) veal medallions (okay, we used chicken cause I don’t eat baby anythings... except for eggs cause they don’t have faces yet…) You then tell us in the directions to pound them flat, dredge them in flour, and pan cook them.
How long does that take, from pounding to cooking them, in your world? 10 seconds?? I guess so.
Then you call for 1 pound white button mushrooms, stemmed, wiped clean, and sliced. First of all, A POUND of mushrooms? Good grief man! Not to mention the POUND of crabmeat you call for… And you claim this recipe only feeds 4 people??
Perhaps if they be Sumo wrestlers...
Anyway, I thought I was ahead of the game when I bought the pre-cleaned, pre-sliced shrooms. Little did I realize that sneaky word “stemmed” you slipped in there. Not in the directions where it should be. No, of course not. It was in the ingredients, where one might not noticed it at first… So if one should happen to skim over the directions when deciding if this was a realistic recipe to make for dinner, one may not notice until it was too late. I was all ready to add the fungus, when I had to stop everything and stem them...
And stemming mushrooms must some how take about 5 seconds in your kitchen.
Let see… Oh yeah. 16 spears blanched asparagus. Again, listed in the ingredients, not the directions. Well the last time I checked, asparagus doesn’t come blanched nor will it blanche itself. You have to do that one yourself too. Stop everything. Blanche blanche blanche. Tick, tick, tick goes the clock…
And finally – Last but not least – Let us not forget the crème de la crème - the Hollandaise sauce. Not from the packet – noooo. From scratch. Cause we all know, scratch tastes so much better than packet. But HELLO, how long did that take on your show?! And of course it came out perfect the first time. Well sorry, but we are not expert “Hollandaise from scratch” makers. We royally screwed up our first batch, forcing us to start over again, which sent the clock ticking into overtime.
On the brigher side, lucky me actually had un-salted butter and didn’t have to clarified my own...
We finally finished at 9:30... THANK DOG I had Earl's help or I'd still be cooking into Monday.
We made our plates and sat down to eat…
And everything was cold.
Good… but cold.
Mr. Emeril, please. Be realistic. You’re recipe should say:
Prep time: 1 hour (unless you prefer to actually churn your own butter)
Cook time: 30 minutes (probably more, depending on how badly you screw up the Hollandaise sauce and whether or not you remember to stem and blanche certain things... And of course, assuming you are not Emeril or that you have Emeril staff of sue chefs to help...)
Sincerely yours,
Amy
posted by Sp00kalot at 11:18 AM
2 comments
