Lessons from FUBAR Food
You've made a special dinner for the hunk you're passionate about. Everything is perfect — candles, a small vase of flowers, all the right plates, glasses and silverware, no kids around. You even took the time to crush ice cubes in a dish towel with a hammer to lay the shrimp on for the appetizer. You bask in the praise you are receiving until you bite into that first luscious piece of chilled jumbo shrimp.
It's not quite right. There's something funny about it. It's, well, mushy.
You look across the table and notice the hunk's face — his mouth in particular. He's thinking the same thing you are but is too kind to say what you now know for sure.
The shrimp is raw. You know. Blue. Not pink like it's supposed to be. Blue and absolutely disgusting.
We couldn't spit it out fast enough, and have laughed about it for years.
It doesn't happen often, but when I screw up something in the kitchen, I do it with panache. Here's the list of what I now know:
1) Biscuits made with old baking powder can be a substitute for a hockey puck in a pinch.
2) When you make Chili Verde with the wrong chilis because there are eight different kinds and the dork in the produce department doesn't know what he's talking about, the result can be so spicy that the table will be cleared in seconds and a line at the kitchen sink needing water to put out the fire in their mouths.
3) You can't rescue the Petite Marmite after the lid falls off the pepper shaker dumping its entire contents into the pot, no matter how much pepper you scoop off the bottom of the pan.
4) A gateau will always have a cracked surface and soft center no matter how many times you put it back in the oven thinking it just isn't done. And covering it with ganache won't soften the brick-like end product, either. But you may be able to wing it at your neighbor's incessantly barking dog.
5) Using a 50-year-old Betty Crocker cookbook to cook a gorgeous pork tenderloin will garnish comments at your table such as, "This is great turkey," while guest are chewing and chewing, and taking many drinks of their beverage just to swallow the dry, stringy mouthful. You can later question their intelligence since the meat is sitting on the table and doesn't remotely resemble a turkey.
6) You can wet your pants laughing over the chemical reaction that takes place when you add baking powder to your fondue instead of cornstarch and no one else at your party will really know what's going on. They just ask, "What's supposed to go with all these crudites?"
7) Risotto that has been rushed through the process of "adding liquid, stirring until almost absorbed, adding more liquid" can be used to plaster your garage.
8) Food from the Barbie will be too salty to eat when you forget to tell the Master of the House not to use the entire cup of rub you made for four pieces of steak au poivre.
The good thing about all this food that has been so completely F**ked Up Beyond All Repair, is that you learn something each time it happens and understand it will definitely not be the last.