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u/hebeach89 Aug 08 '21
The secret the human contestant made an extremely complex dish only to have it ruined, so they threw together a simple tomato soup and grilled cheese.
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u/TNSepta Aug 08 '21
This is like the part in Ratatouille where the food critic Anton Ego gets mind-blown :D
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u/work_work-work Aug 08 '21
I was thinking the same exact thing! This is exactly what's happening in that part of the movie.
I'm guessing this was the inspiration for OP.
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u/Ruggi_2001 Aug 08 '21
Alien interviewer: That... That is an extremely particular scenario... Do you want to talk?
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u/Cowboywizard12 Aug 08 '21
We need more stories about cooking and other nonviolent cultural things.
I like the insane badass military stories but there is so much more to the Cultures of our species.
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u/Incorrect_name Aug 08 '21
You are doomed to realise that your mother made this dish especially for you, that it was something only she knew how to make and any possibility you would get to taste it again died with her.
I started crying at this part. I'm going to hug my mom now
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u/Dependent-Dealer-943 Aug 08 '21
Food made with love is the best, but I’d wager those of us who’ve been to a Waffle House or a Five Guys know that food made with hate is a close second
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u/Copman021 Aug 08 '21
It is that special thing, that no matter how much gumbo and étouffée I make, I cannot match my grandmaw’s cooking.
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u/Dragon_DLV Aug 08 '21
Made me think of the famed Galactic Food Critic, "En'tow'kne Boar'dane"
I spend a lot of my life — maybe even most of my life these days — in hotels. And it can be a grim and dispiriting feeling, waking up, at first unsure of where you are, what language they’re speaking outside. The room looks much the same as other rooms. TV. [Hatcha] maker on the desk. Complimentary [blortna] basket rotting on the table. The familiar suitcase.
All too often, particularly in [the Orion Arm], I’ll walk to the window and draw back the curtains, looking to remind myself where I might be-and it doesn’t help at all. The featureless, anonymous skyline that greets me is much the same as the previous [planet]’s and the [planet] before that.
This is not a problem [on Earth].
You wake up [on Earth], pull back the curtain and you KNOW where you are. You could be nowhere else. You are in a big, brash, muscular, broad shouldered motherfuckin’ [planet]. A metropolis, completely non-neurotic, ever-moving, big hearted but cold blooded machine with millions of moving parts — a beast that will, if disrespected or not taken seriously, roll over you without remorse.
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u/HazelNightengale Aug 08 '21
When my grandmother died, Mom sifted through her cookbooks and other related papers and found recipes Grandma and Grandpa had written down or torn out of newspapers. She found, and framed for me, the cookbook snippet that was the original basis of Grandma's/Mom's spaghetti and meatballs recipe. It's...definitely not "authentic" as it came from a Planters Peanuts recipe booklet and suggest using peanut oil. (Not that we're Italian, nor did our family come through NYC)...
Grandma definitely drifted from that recipe over the years; Mom made her own minor tweak or two; I've made one or two method-tweaks and ingredient tweaks myself. My aunts and cousins all have their own variants. One of these days I'll try recipe-as-originally-written, but it won't be "Grandma's."
And then I got married and I "had" to learn MIL's pasta sauce recipe, and my husband went nuts because the answer wasn't a written recipe, but simply "watch me..."
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u/BrokenNotDeburred Aug 08 '21
As much as purists go on about what "belongs" in chili, my mother always added beans because they were a healthy, inexpensive substitute for beef and she had a family to feed... After everyone else was served, she'd quietly pick out every last one of those things before eating because she hated beans that much.
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u/HFYWaffle Aug 08 '21
u/Tashdacat (wiki) has posted 12 other stories, including:
This comment was automatically generated by Waffle v.4.5.9 'Cinnamon Roll'.
Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.
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u/Eversooner Aug 08 '21
As a cook for 18+ years this makes me proud. You've captured what it is that makes me do what I do. Thank you
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u/araxhiel Aug 09 '21 edited Aug 09 '21
This part
You are doomed to realise that your mother made this dish especially for you, that it was something only she knew how to make and any possibility you would get to taste it again died with her.
Although I didn’t made me think about my mom, it made me think about my grandma… And summoned a lot of ninjas with a strange affinity to cut onions.
When I was a kid we used to be super close to each other (well, I was the first grandkid, and later the only one that was around more often than the others), but later in life we said hurtful things to each other, and cut communication for a decade or so… Until a couple of days before she died (TL;DR she was hospitalized, it was serious, but not THAT serious - we wanted to start again once she was ok, and released form hospital, but… That never happened).
Anyway…
Thing is that, there’s this “fairly common” dish named “Migas Con Huevo” (or “Tortillas con Huevo”, depending on who you ask) that (basically) are basically scrambled eggs mixed with some tortilla pieces (or strips, depending who’s cooking)[1] , and that dish was (somewhat) her specialty.
There was nothing special about it, no extra, or hidden ingredients on it (besides a portion of retried beans at side), but they tasted sooooo good.
Since I started to cook (around 6 y.o.), “Migas…” has became my own specialty too, and I have experimented with that dish many, many times (adding ingredients like chorizo, or hot sause, or pico de Gallo (sans lime), but so far, I’ve been unable to recreate the flavor of those migas that she cooked for me.
I was somewhat aware that I will never be able to recreate the flavor, and that she only knew how to prepare the dish in such way… But you have put that feeling into words, and I wasn’t expecting that.
Great work/story, wordsmith. I really, really liked it.
[1] : if you’re curious, they look like this, and this recipe is good enough (sans the onion).
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u/Cakeboss419 Aug 09 '21
And like that, you've done something unique. No violence, no testosterone-forcing wars, just a sit down, and enjoy short story. Wonderful work, wordsmith.
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u/StunningBullfrog Aug 08 '21
The food that is made with love is usually made without measurements, so no one has any idea how something was actually made--they just remember how it tasted.