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Famous Cooking Disasters |
You can take the easy road and rename the dish, pretending that you intended all the while to make it over or undercooked, flowing like lava, or ultramarine blue!
Or, you
could
kill yourself, as did Francois Vatel, chef to the French Minister of
Finance.
One day, Louis XIV came calling, and the extraordinary meal that Vatel
prepared was not enough to go around. Some guests were served boiled
eggs,
and other common foods. The next day, Vatel attempted to redeem himself
by placing orders for fresh fish (an uncommon luxury in those times)
with
fisherman throughout the region. That evening he went to the kitchen to
accept delivery from one of the fisherman. He didn't realize this was a
small part of his order. He asked in disbelief, "Is that all there
is?".
Yes, he was mistakenly told. Unable to face two failures, he ran
himself
through with his sword. He was found dead in his room when someone came
to tell him the rest of his deliveries had arrived.
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******Check
out the new Oven turns into Frankenstein Monster at the
end*****************
Another
way
of handling such disasters is to blame it on someone else. A friend of
mine, a noted East Coast food critic, had been challenged by several of
N.Y.'s top chefs to prepare a home cooked meal and let them critique
it.
For dessert, he chose clafoutis, a country French dessert made by
topping
fresh fruit with batter, and baking it. Rather than use the customary
berries,
plums, peaches and other quick cooking fruits, he chose apples. When
the
dessert was served, the apples were still raw, and the chefs were
merciless
in the commentary. At which point, the critic blamed it on his
girlfriend,
saying she had made the dessert!
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One
Sunday,
when I was much younger, I invited a boyfriend's family to Sunday
Brunch.
I got my sister's treasured Noodle Pudding recipe: noodles, egg
custard,
fruit cocktail and vanilla, and assembled the dish in a beautiful
oven-proof
bowl. I did not sense disaster lurking around the corner when I mounded
the pudding in the bowl. Twenty minutes later, the boiling juices
bubbled
out of the bowl, onto the heating element of the oven, and set my oven
on fire. I tried to put it out with water. Big Mistake! When I gave the
family directions to my apartment, instead of pointing out the fountain
in my courtyard, I should have told them to just look for the fire
trucks.
I later found out that I should have drained the fruit
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So here I am, catering a huge luncheon for a brand new client-Associated Press. The guest of honor is none other than New York's beloved Mayor Koch. I arrive with my cart of food for a dozen people, and I make sure to get there extra early. When I unlocked the door to the corporate dining room, I found the floor covered in 6 inches of suds. Someone had run the dishwasher using dish soap instead of the soap made for the dishwasher. My whole staff and some of the guests wound up swabbing the decks up to the last second Hizonner arrived. It looked like a scene straight from an I Love Lucy episode.
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Jason Pappas,
my grilling expert guest on SLO COOKING told us of the time he tried to
bake an apple pie on his barbecue, but failed to remove the mesquite
chips
from dinner the night before.
Yuk!.
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We had no
disasters
at my first annual Grilling Demonstration and Barbecue Sauce Contest
(thank
goodness) this past Labor Day (see the winning
recipes on the Recipe page). Back home,
however,
the patio was almost in flames.
Here's why....
In an effort
to save some sawing, we cut cedar planks for the grilled salmon into
pieces
about 16 inches by 8 inches, instead of the recommended 10x6 inches.
When
it came time to barbecue the salmon on the planks, which had been
soaking
overnight, they caught fire and stayed that way. We realized that the
larger
planks couldn't absorb enough water in the overnight soak, so if you
make
Cedar Planked salmon, stay with the smaller pieces of wood.
And
remember.......it's
always a good idea to have lots of appetizers, cheese, wine, and bread
available for just these incendiary occasions.
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Exploding
Applesauce.
***** No this was not a 4th of July prank, it was an unexpected
surprise
that turned one of my pantry shelves into a disgusting slab of goop. I
apparently overfilled the canning jars, and also used the new method of
inverting the jars, rather than processing them for 10 minutes in a
water
bath. The result was ugly, and probably poisonous.
In the
future,
I'm going to process the jars the old fashioned way, when making sauce.
Jams, jellies, and hot fudge all seem to do okay by putting the mixture
into clean jars, and then inverting for 5 minutes.
Help, my
oven
is making Frankenstein-like noises.
Guaranteed,
the week you plan to start cooking for the big holiday party something
like this will happen. Last Sunday I was roasting my turkey in my new
convection
oven, when all of a sudden sparks started shooting from between the
upper
and lower ovens. The lights in the house dimmed, the computer screen
faded.
etc,. It turned out the wiring had fried itself, but also had frozen
the
oven in an 'on' position. Even though we turned the oven off after
finishing
cooking the turkey (well, I am a chef after all, I'm not going to waste
a whole turkey!), when we woke up the next morning we realized the oven
had turned itself back on during the night, and stayed on the whole
night.
Repair gave me the standard 5-10 working day speech, to which I
responded,
"Do the words 'bomb threat' mean anything to you?" I'm waiting for the
new parts.
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My Marmalade
is running and I can't stop it!%#@$X!!
So far,
I've
cooked 12 pounds of Blood Oranges, wasted 2 cartons of canning jars,
and
too many pounds of sugar,
And
still.....I
can't get the marmalade to set. After trying three recipes, and even
breaking
down and buying a canning cookbook, I finally encountered a recipe that
says "May Take Two Weeks to Set". Well, gee, thanks! Why doesn't
everyone
say that. I guess in cooking, as in other endeavors, Patience, and the
whole set of instructions are the key to success
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I
recollect
a cooking school disaster from when I attended the French Culinary
Institute
back in the 1980's. I had entered a recipe in an international
Champagne
competition under the belief that I would win if I used a lot of
champagne
in my recipe thereby requiring the consumer to spend more $$$. At the
event,
as I attempted to remove a stubborn cork, since I was both nervous and
too energetic it was a recipe for disaster. The cork popped out, hit
the
judge in the face and then fell into a neighboring stock pot. Needless
to say, I did not win any points with the judges, the school, or the
competition.
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Why you
should NEVER make bread when you're expecting the repairman!
I was working on a new bread recipe for a hazelnut baguette, and
was tweaking it to get just the right crust, and make sure the texture
was moist and the crumb open and rustic looking. The repairman was due
to reinstall an entirely new circuit board on my convection oven
sometime between 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock. Now you know, they never are
on time, so I thought I had plenty of time to bake the bread before he
arrived. Wouldn't you know, he came Early! The bread overproofed and
looked like large lumpy lasagna noodles. It tasted good
though..............anyone for bread pudding????
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The chef
who couldn't boil water!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, I wouldn't boil water, and so I attempted to hard boil an egg
in the microwave. I poked a pin-sized hole in the end of the raw egg
hoping it wouldn't explode. WRONG! This technique doesn't work. After
spending 5 minutes cleaning the exploded hard boiled egg off the inside
of the microwave, I declared this "time saver" a total disaster. I went
back to the perfect method of hard boiling eggs. Bring to boil in
salted water. Turn off heat, cover, and wait exactly 9 minutes.
Beer Butt Chicken
| The normal recipe is to open a can of beer, and pour of 1/4 inch of liquid before setting the bird on the can, and then on a pre-heated bbq. Recent recipes want to gild the lily by adding herb branches, and, say, Sapporo beer for a Japanese flavor, or Belgian beer and rosemary for a European flair. Well, I added Rosemary branches to the can and the beer foamed all over the counter, the gas grill, and it was a mess. Don't try to improve on perfection. Just open the can, take a sip, and jam that sucker up the bird's you-know-what! |  |
Know your
Oven
In attempting to demonstrate a better way to bake bagels, a friend of
mine accidentally, instead of turning on the oven light, LOCKED
the oven with the self-cleaning button near the end of the baking time,
and couldn't figure out how to get it unlocked without turning off the
power. Make sure to keep the number of the fire department handy if
you've made this mistake.
Stay Tuned!
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