Adventures in (Disney) cookery

So this weekend, in an effort to be less dependent upon Carl's Jr. (because, dammit, we would not starve to death without them, I don't care what the commercial says), we decided to attempt to make our own food. Disneyland food, to be specific, since there's some damn yummy food to be had at the Disneyland. The recipes we attempted were Bengal Beef (the spicy version) and steak gumbo (from the Royal Street Veranda).

The Bengal Beef was delightlfully easy, and a smashing success. You basically make the sauce, grill the meat, and apply the sauce to the meat. The sauce isn't even difficult to make--it's just soy sauce, sesame oil, a lot of cayenne pepper, and some corn starch for thickening. And grilling meat isn't difficult, although we elected not to actually skewer our beef chunks.

The gumbo---or "gumbo," since it doesn't particularly resemble what real cajuns think of as gumbo---was somewhat less successful, largely because I first had to convert from weight to volume measurements, then cut the recipe dramatically. It ended up tasting pretty much right, but the color was all wrong, way too pale. I suspect that if I had let my roux darken longer, I would've obtained the correct color. I won't be finding out for a really long time, though, because I've had about enough home-made "gumbo" for a few months at least. Possibly I should have sixthed or eighthed the recipe, instead of just thirding it. Oh, I even cut out bread bowls for the "gumbo" more or less like at Disneyland (but I'm not very good at it, so they weren't as nice).

On the whole, our experiments in Disney cookery were successful. I'll be linking to the original recipes in the recipes section of my website. If anyone asks I could supply my converted, thirded recipe, for those who do not wish to do their own arithmetic, but I don't necessarily know that mine can be trusted, particularly the conversion from weight to volume. Feh.