My biggest cooking disaster occurred in the serving of a dish, rather than the cooking of it. It not only tested a new friendship (with Sharon and Anthony, no less!), but much to my continuing horror the mishap left a reminder of the incident! It was at the end of a fantastic dinner at Sharon and Anthony’s house. This was one of the first evenings we were having dinner with no kids around. My contribution to the Tex-Mex inspired dinner was a flan, a Mexican custard dessert that is cooked with browned sugar to give it a nice caramel sauce on top when you flip it out of the pan.
To make transportation easy, I left the cooked flan in the dish I cooked it in. I brought a beautiful platter to serve the flan, which simply involves inverting the cooking dish so that the flan comes out of the dish with the sauce on top. So, as everyone settled in to the living room for some post-dinner conversation and dessert, I prepared the flan to serve. I flipped it onto the platter with no problems, and poured out as much of the caramel as I could. I proudly carried my flan out from their kitchen, across their dining room, and into the living room area. As I reached the living room, Sharon noticed that some of the caramel sauce was dripping over the side of the platter! Horrified, I quickly put the dish down so I could wipe up the sauce, only to discover that I had not only dripped sauce in their living room, but there was a trail of caramel sauce all the way from the kitchen!! Here’s the kicker – it had dripped onto their WHITE carpet. Needless to say, I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Our new friends were so gracious about the spill, but I felt horrible. The next day I gave them a gift card for a carpet cleaner, but burnt sugar is apparently really tough to get out of white carpet. I would see evidence of that sugar trail every time I was at their house!! I am so thankful that Sharon and Anthony didn’t hold it against me and that we can laugh about it.
I can’t come up with my biggest cooking disaster. I attribute this not to my lack of cooking disasters, but rather to my murky memory. Here are the three categories of cooking disasters that I usually do:
1. I like to use recipes as an inspiration rather than an absolute guideline, so I do run into issues when I guess on quantities, substitute ingredients, and riff on the preparation or cooking time.
2. I like to enjoy a good dinner with my guests, so even though I make lists of all the dishes ahead of time when planning the meal, I do occasionally leave a dish in the oven or refrigerator and find it the next morning after the party.
3. The biggest cooking disaster that I used to make (and I’ve been trying to improve) is to spend more time on the food preparation than on enjoying the dinner and the guests. I spent many an evening in the kitchen madly making an elaborate multi-course meal only to hear and see all my guests enjoying it while I was alone in the kitchen cooking, dishing, and serving. I now work on planning meals that have more prep ahead so that I have more time to spend with my guests enjoying the time and meal together.
Ok, I hope you have already digested your breakfast before reading this one…..
I was cooking a stir fry and there seemed to be a little too much water from the vegetables after I put them in the pan. In any situation where I want to reduce a little moisture I typically use a pinch of flour or baking powder. Well, I grabbed baking “soda” and proceeded to create an incredible science experiment right before the eyes of my family. As the bubbles from my stove top concoction continued to rise, I got worried that they were going to overtake the pan and my stovetop like a washing machine purging bubbles with 4X the recommended detergent having been added. Never again!!
What an excellent story (and chemistry lesson). My six year old is having a ball with baking soda and baking powder science experiments right now. We’re trying to keep them out of our meals though 🙂