kitchen catastrophe

Readers, I have a confession: sometimes I'm a failure in the kitchen. Take, for example, the picture below. My father recently watched Tyler Florence make the most delectable Spanish tapa where a raw egg is wrapped in jamon serrano, placed atop béchamel and toast, and baked in the oven. TyFlo made it look exceptionally easy.
However, when my dad and I went to recreate the dish, the ham wasn't strong enough to hold the eggs. The eggs rolled off the slippery white sauce and onto the baking sheet. After wasting eight eggs, we managed to get three nestled inside the ham. Then, when we removed the final product from the oven, the toast and eggs were stuck to the pan! Our breakfast was a complete disaster.

While we laughed it off, and managed to take a couple tasty bites of the mess, I got to thinking about failed recipes. Have you ever gone through a similar experience, where the recipe doesn't work? What recipe was it and how did you handle the situation?

Recently I was making dark-chocolate raspberry ice cream. A friend was over and he was desperate to help. Always one to encourage cooking, I told him to prepare the raspberries. Before adding the sugar to the pan, he held up the quarter-cup and asked me for permission to add it to the saute pan. However, his cup was filled with rock salt! Luckily, our disaster was averted, but replacing sugar with rock salt is a serious error that would make the dish inedible.
We all make mistakes, especially when new to the kitchen, so everyone should have something to share. Fess up: from burnt cookies to boiled-over pots, what ended up in the trash instead of on the table?

Source

Whether or not they want to admit it, all of the people in my life have some sort of kitchen pet peeve. My mother? She hates sticky floors. My friend Katie can't stand it when her husband loads two spoons next to one another in the dishwasher, because the silverware doesn't get fully clean. When my boy puts what he thinks is recyclable (but is really just trash) into the recycling bin, I go insane. Do you have any gripes about what drives you crazy in the kitchen? Share them with me in the comments.

Source

Nobody's perfect and when it comes to cooking, I've had my fair share of kitchen catastrophes. The funny thing is, I often make the same mistake over and over again! For example, every couple of months I forget that a plastic cutting board is NOT a hot plate. Last Saturday, I ruined another cutting board by placing a hot frying pan directly on top of it. I know I'm not the only one who repeatedly messes things up, even the most skilled chefs experience kitchen bloopers. So in the spirit of dishing, tell me your common kitchen mistakes by leaving a comment below!

This past Sunday, the Entrée Section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel printed a recipe for Stuffed Chicken. However, instead of calling for 1/8 of a cup, the paper accidentally printed eight cups. I can't imagine making a recipe with eight cups of onions, but I'm sure that some new cooks might have done it.

How about you? Would you have fallen for the eight-cup disaster? Also, have you ever fallen victim to a recipe error, or misread a recipe? Share your tales in the comments below!

Source

Last weekend I went to a friend's house for a small birthday party. I told them not to worry about the cake because I would take care of it. (After all, I like baking and this will be a great excuse for my 52 weeks of baking.) So when I asked what the birthday boy's favorite cake was, I was expecting it to be something standard like chocolate, carrot, coconut, you know, a normal "cake" flavor. I was not expecting Boston Cream Pie! I wasn't even sure I'd actually ever eaten one before, and I knew I sure as heck hadn't made one before. But, since I'm always up for a challenge, I said, "That sounds fun! I'll make one!"

That, my dear friends, turned out to be not such a great idea. I was doomed from the beginning and it turned out disastrously. I even contemplated not sharing this recipe with you guys, but no one's perfect (and I certainly am not), so here it is. To read about my Boston Cream Disaster, read more