I wanted to try to make a famous dish from a restaurant so the first few things that popped into my mind were Bamba's Huevos, Omakase's Spicy Tuna Salad, and Cibo's Telefono. The salad didn't fit in much so I decided to go for the other two.
Huevos Flamencos
It wasn't Bamba, but it was good. I was so tempted to add cheese to it (it was really calling out to me) but I decided not to because it was my first time to make it and I didn't want to screw it up by adding things outside the recipe.
The recipe I followed: this and this
What I could've done better: chop all the ingredients smaller
What I'm happy about: it was good altogether, and I'm happy my egg didn't break! The recipe says to bake it in the oven until the egg's ready to go, but the only oven friendly container I had was so ugly and I didn't want to serve the Huevos in them so I baked the egg separately and place it on top of the Huevos after. Ideally, it would be best to have the egg baked on top with the egg white all over the Huevos, but since I baked it separately I lost a lot of the egg white. Good thing the yolk didn't break during the transfer. It broke beautifully on top of the dish when it was eaten.
This one would've been near perfect if only I made enough sauce! I thought I had enough since the pan was about halfway full, but once I put in the pasta, I realized that I should've only put in half the bag of penne. Gah.
The recipe I followed: this
What I could've done better: add in just the right amount of pasta
What I'm happy about: the flavor. And that I didn't cook it all the way in the beginning so that it wouldn't end up overcooked after mixing it in with the sauce.
My sister's Herbed Chicken
We didn't plan for the two dishes to go well together, but once we had a bite of my sister's chicken then the pasta, the combination of the two was unexpectedly good. The strong flavors from the chicken sort of made up for the lack of sauce of my pasta, so when biting into the Telefono, the flavor of the sauce came out more.
I'm pretty happy with the outcome of tonight's dishes (considering I really am a kitchen newbie), but there's always something to improve on for the next kitchen experiment:
1. Read more than one recipe.
2. Allot more time for preps.
3. Organize. Especially if you're cooking with a lot of ingredients.
4. Make a better estimate of the different ingredients needed.
5. Bring out all the needed kitchenware beforehand.
Man I sound like a mess. But I swear the family enjoyed it!
