U is for Unmitigated Disasters

I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing. Today is U.

I tried to make this:

for dinner last night. It didn’t go well. I wish I’d taken a picture, it looked so awful.

I don’t have the right kind of pan and I had the heat up too high, so the water boiled off before the pasta was cooked through. I didn’t realize that, so I dished it up and served it.

My daughter took one bite, said it tasted good, but the pasta was really al dente. I took one bite and declared it inedible. We were seated side-by-side at the breakfast bar in my kitchen during this exchange. It felt a little like we were judges on “Chopped.”

And I had committed the cardinal sin – I failed to taste the food before I put it out.

I tried to salvage it by dumping it all back in the pot and adding water. Things went from bad to worse. More to the point – to mush.

So we did the only sensible thing. We ordered Chinese.

I’m a pretty good cook, but it’s good to recognize when things have gone completely wrong and just stop. This recipe, I will try again, and it will probably turn out fine.

Some things I’ve given up on – either because I just didn’t like them enough to keep trying, or in one case, because no matter what I tried, it flopped.

I cannot roast a chicken. I love roast chicken – it’s one of my favorite foods. But every time I’ve tried it, it’s been an unmitigated disaster. Undercooked, overcooked, dried out, flavorless – think of a way to screw up chicken and I’ve probably done it. I’ve given up.

The mistakes in the kitchen aren’t all bad though.

I put ground sausage in meatloaf once because I had it in the house. Now it’s part of the recipe. Another excellent option based on what I had in the house is just ground beef, an egg, a jar of salsa, and some bread crumbs.

I made chocolate chip cookies with coarse kosher salt instead of table salt once. They had the sort of sweet and salty thing you get from salted caramel. Awesome.

I had no vanilla, so substituted bourbon in a banana bread. That’s part of the recipe now.

Actually, I’ve discovered bourbon is a pretty good addition to a lot of things in the kitchen – especially the cook.