Listening to today’s podcast made me relive the burn that all that extra onion in the dressing added, not to mention the reminder of how my family all sat far away from me and my lovely onion breath for a full day. While we did follow the recipe as written, Kristen and I decided that it was just too much onion and that at some time a change up to the recipe had occurred, resulting in a far less oniony taste. Thank you to whomever made that alteration to the recipe, it was a wise one.
It also got me thinking about some of my favorite cooking fopaux’s. I think a classic new at home cook blunder revolves around garlic. Fresh garlic (vastly different from the pre crushed stuff you find in a jar and keep in your fridge, or “jarlic” as one of my favorite Instagram snarky chefs calls it) comes in a bulb. You peel from that garlic bulb individual garlic cloves - about 10 make up a bulb. However, if you are new to the garlic game, you may not know about the whole bulb thing and think that when a recipe calls for 5 garlic cloves that it really means 5 garlic bulbs and throw in what is WAY too much garlic. I mean, doing some mathematical calculations….your 5 clove recipe will end up with 50 cloves instead. If you are even remotely familiar with garlic, that difference causes your eyes to water.
I was told a story by a friend of their mom, a non-cook, making dinner to impress her date. She made this mistake and by the time the date arrived at the apartment, the burney scent of garlic permeated the air making their eyes water. The date sprung into action, dumped the entire dish out (and I mean out of the apartment - out), opened the windows to air the place out and selected a lovely little place down the road for them to have a delicious dinner. Good news, the date was not deterred and they ended up getting married. Even better news? He doesn’t let her cook.
There are many other ways to screw up your meal and thanks to the joys of the internet, they are shared freely and often memorialized for all eternity in a meme. You can forget that your things are on a cutting board and not a baking sheet and throw it in the oven. I’m sure the scent from this one is equally as burney as the garlic and likely much more toxic. You can go to add a little spice and have the lid fall off of the spice jar into your food along with the vast majority of the contents of the spice bottle. Hopefully some time and careful spooning is enough to savage this dish. You can misread the recipe t for teaspoon as T for tablespoon and add way too much baking powder into your pancake batter. I honestly have no idea how you come back from this one. Baking powder is very dry and has a very unique and not all that pleasant taste that you never notice when used in reasonable quantities. I’m pretty sure we all have a ton of tales of woe that equal messed up meal preparation.
However, sometimes our cooking mistakes are equal parts just not knowing any better and a series of really bad choices. I have a friend (who I will not name to protect the not so innocent) who wanted to grill a steak. He had a little table top grill and was so disappointed to see that it was raining making the outdoor grilling less than desirable. No worries, he thought, I’ll just take it into the kitchen and use it on the table in there. And that, my dear reader, is exactly what he did. After grilling for a while he noticed that he was getting these weird black and white flakes on his table that were not there when he started this whole thing. He looked at the steaks and they looked fine. He looked under the grill and that looked fine. After some time and general confusion, he looked up. Much to his surprise, he saw that the flakes were from the burning spot he was creating on the kitchen ceiling directly above the grill. Ash, the table was covered with ash. Good news, he did not burn the house down. They were able to catch it just as the burn spot started to flame and get the flames out quickly. He, hopefully obviously, moved the grill back out into the rain. Other good news, he had a VERY lax landlord who fixed nothing and never came by and the one time that he did, didn’t notice the large piece of plywood on the floor in the bedroom directly over the kitchen. The bad news, when this friend moved out 2 years later, the house was condemned!
While I am sure you have stories to add, may they be easily remedied and not cause too much burning!