Meal time near miss!
I think we all dread the thought of things going wrong when we are cooking. Ingredients are expensive and our time is precious. Often cooking is an emotional experience, and a failure or “near miss” isn’t exactly what we set out to achieve. BUT we’ve all had one or two, and it’s definitely worth learning from mistakes, and turning it into something positive to take away.
My most memorable cooking “boo boo” wasn’t actually my own. It was my fantastic sister in law’s. It was the first night we’d ever met each other (we live on opposite sides of Australia). I was on my honeymoon, and fairly new to cooking. As we happily chatted, she was making a lemon sauce to serve with Veal Schnitzels. I watched her reach under the sink and add some lemon dishwashing liquid to the pan.
She intended to add lemon squeeze from the fridge. After a good squirt, she looked horrified and we both dissolved into hysterics. Once we composed ourselves, we quickly reached for paper towel and a spoon. Seeing she hadn’t stirred it, the detergent was reasonably easy to “sop up” and “spoon off” the top.
She served it, and we didn’t tell our husbands until after they’d eaten it. Fortunately, they saw the funny side of it too… and we’d achieved an excellent rescue result.
The moral of the story is….
Get all of your ingredients out and measure them before you start cooking.
Check their authenticity before starting to talk and becoming distracted.
The most important thing I learnt..
Was to laugh at your mistake. (Tears only add more salt to the problem.)
Use every means available to fix the problem without either poisoning anyone or having to start from scratch, wasting time, ingredients and energy.
Not all cooking disasters can have this theory applied. But in this case, it has to be one of the funniest family stories that my sister in law and I can still laugh uncontrollably about 32 years later.
PS. She is a superb cook, and we have shared lots of delicious meals together and swapped hundreds of recipes throughout the years.
TIP FROM THE MAGGI Kitchen – if you do spill a non-food product such as dishwashing liquid on or near your food, the safest option is to throw away the food and start again.
