Once again, I was feeling all superior and stuff what with the people eating seconds of the Disney foods I was making. And once again, it was the dishes I thought would surely be the easiest that ended up being not so easy – and in some cases, not so good.
Let’s start with foods from Jiko. Jiko is a signature restaurant that we have not been to because it seems to be a fancy place you go if you wanna get dressed up and drink good wine. I do not ever want to get dressed up or drink wine but I especially don’t want to do those things while at Disney World. That’s the exact opposite of what I want to do. Sure, I wouldn’t mind trying some of the foods but not enough to spend a zillion dollars and get dressed up. Maybe some day when we’ve been to all of the other places?
In the meantime, I thought we could try the Jiko mac & cheese that EVERYONE apparently loves so much that you can still order it even if it is not on the menu. It seemed really easy, particularly compared to that French mac & cheese I made weeks ago. It’s just a simple roux and some shredded Italian cheese. What could go wrong? Welp, it had no taste or maybe tasted a bit of flour even though my roux looked pretty darn good. We all salted and peppered the heck out of it and I dumped some of the sauce from the next recipe onto it and nope. It just wasn’t very good.
I was so confident about that mac & cheese that I decided to make the Jiko Savannah Rolls at the same time. (That’s them in the photo above.) Seemed like a pretty decent idea to go with the heavier mac & cheese. I made a couple of changes to these and those changes were fine. If I did it again, I’d try to NOT make those changes and do it as called for. The changes were:
- I didn’t get to the produce stand so I had no fresh corn. Instead, I used plain old canned corn that I drained and rinsed the heck out of and then let drain again. Because I used canned corn, I sauteed a little less than called for – which I think was correct.
- I didn’t have the size wrappers called for in the recipe so instead of halving them and rolling, I just rolled. I think that was the right call for that sized wrapper. If I had the 8×8 instead of the 4×6, I’d probably halve them as called for in the recipe.
I was most worried about the dipping sauce but it turned out to be pretty much just right for those rolls (and it helped the bad mac & cheese out, too.)
This is the meal where I also made the Pandora Pongu Pongu aka pineapple lumpia. Because see above and me being all overly confident and superior. Haha.
These were fairly easy to roll up – I used the last of the lumpia wrappers from my cheese lumpia last week. The hardest part was trying to spread cream cheese evenly across the wrappers. That was a gooey mess and I hate gooey messes.
Next, the recipe calls for you to pre-roll and freeze – it doesn’t suggest you take them out of the freezer and let them come back to room temp or anything so I assumed you fry from frozen. That was apparently the wrong call since the ends were nice and warm and melty and the middle was frozen.
Also, why did I deep fry TWO things in one night? So much greasy mess.
The Pongu Pongu WAS tasty but deep frying from frozen was not the answer. I will make them again when I have lumpia wrappers and I will not fry them from frozen.
Last but not least, TW requested Mickey Rice Krispies Treats so i made them for 4th of July dessert. I even tracked down a big Mickey head cookie cutter and added vanilla (2 tsp), a handful more marshmallows, and a wee bit more butter (1/2 tbsp) because the WDW versions ARE extra marshmallowy and extra buttery. I forgot I gave my candy melts to Jenn so I just melted a Hershey bar and drizzled or spread chocolate on them.
TW said they were good but they needed more butter. I think she’s nuts and they were pretty darn close to perfect.
