When I was 12, I made a cake, and after I took it out of the oven, there were cooked ants in it. The sugar must have had ants in it....ugh! My other failure, like you, was making gnocchi and they disintegrated into nothing in the water😶Havent made them since...lol...I will have to try your recipe.
This is a fantastic article. Why do we try to hide all these mistakes, when they are part and parcel of the learning process? Thanks for writing this, makes me feel a lot better about my own mess ups.
I got distracted by a phone call and forgot to add the last half of the flour to cake batter. Agree I pulled it from the oven it took a few minutes to figure out the mistake. It was a recipe I’d developed and made (successfully!) many times. No salvaging it, into the bin.
When I first moved into am apartment,I tried to cook a steak in the bottom drawer of the electric oven. My mom had a gas oven and her bottom drawer was actually a broiler. Apparently mine was just a storage drawer but there was a broiler pan in it so I put the steak on and turned the oven to broil. 3 hours later the apartment was hot but the steak was barely warm. I’ve made many more disasters since then but this one always makes laugh.
Gnocchi are my long term nemesis. Despite all the good advice I’ve read over the years they still sometimes just dissolve in the pot. I swear off them but then am tempted again--but it always feels a bit like “gnocchi roulette.”
The first time I cooked artichokes, we had guests from Holland for dinner. It was for a pasta dish, and I had no idea how much one should trim--but our guests very good humored about having to extract thistles from their mouths 🫣🫣🫣
This “true confession” is refreshing to hear from an accomplished cook. As another self-taught home cook, there are times when I’ve made a tried-and-try dish that doesn’t come out well--possibly because I wasn’t paying close attention or missed a step or ingredient in a recipe that I’ve done many times before. Thank you for sharing all the bumps along your path to becoming a great cook. You help to make cooking ftom scratch more approachable to everyone who follows you!
Too many, but what comes to mind is that I cannot get sourdough starter started, tarte tatin is my nemesis, just the other day I tried to make eclairs (not for the first time!) and they were flat as pancakes.
One time I was working on a historical recipe for my website and tried to blend squid broth and almonds but forgot to check that the blender was off before I plugged it in, loaded with the stuff, and ended up with squid juice all over my kitchen. And squid juice all over myself. Fun times!
I'm so glad to see I am not alone with failure in the kitchen. I have left an egg pan melting butter until it set off the fire alarm because I got side tracked and like you, so many loaves of hard stone bread in the trash. I think I finally have it down thanks to you. I gave up on some things because like you said you gotta pick your battles. One of my favorite Julia Child quotes is "remember it's only you in the kitchen" so sometimes it is and the mistakes are only between me and my stove. LOL xoxo Lisa
When I was 12, I made a cake, and after I took it out of the oven, there were cooked ants in it. The sugar must have had ants in it....ugh! My other failure, like you, was making gnocchi and they disintegrated into nothing in the water😶Havent made them since...lol...I will have to try your recipe.
This is a fantastic article. Why do we try to hide all these mistakes, when they are part and parcel of the learning process? Thanks for writing this, makes me feel a lot better about my own mess ups.
I think your book will live in my kitchen!
I got distracted by a phone call and forgot to add the last half of the flour to cake batter. Agree I pulled it from the oven it took a few minutes to figure out the mistake. It was a recipe I’d developed and made (successfully!) many times. No salvaging it, into the bin.
When I first moved into am apartment,I tried to cook a steak in the bottom drawer of the electric oven. My mom had a gas oven and her bottom drawer was actually a broiler. Apparently mine was just a storage drawer but there was a broiler pan in it so I put the steak on and turned the oven to broil. 3 hours later the apartment was hot but the steak was barely warm. I’ve made many more disasters since then but this one always makes laugh.
Gnocchi are my long term nemesis. Despite all the good advice I’ve read over the years they still sometimes just dissolve in the pot. I swear off them but then am tempted again--but it always feels a bit like “gnocchi roulette.”
The first time I cooked artichokes, we had guests from Holland for dinner. It was for a pasta dish, and I had no idea how much one should trim--but our guests very good humored about having to extract thistles from their mouths 🫣🫣🫣
This “true confession” is refreshing to hear from an accomplished cook. As another self-taught home cook, there are times when I’ve made a tried-and-try dish that doesn’t come out well--possibly because I wasn’t paying close attention or missed a step or ingredient in a recipe that I’ve done many times before. Thank you for sharing all the bumps along your path to becoming a great cook. You help to make cooking ftom scratch more approachable to everyone who follows you!
Oh, how we all can relate! But practice makes perfect. Well, sometimes. The point being we continue to do what we love, cook!
Too many, but what comes to mind is that I cannot get sourdough starter started, tarte tatin is my nemesis, just the other day I tried to make eclairs (not for the first time!) and they were flat as pancakes.
One time I was working on a historical recipe for my website and tried to blend squid broth and almonds but forgot to check that the blender was off before I plugged it in, loaded with the stuff, and ended up with squid juice all over my kitchen. And squid juice all over myself. Fun times!
I'm so glad to see I am not alone with failure in the kitchen. I have left an egg pan melting butter until it set off the fire alarm because I got side tracked and like you, so many loaves of hard stone bread in the trash. I think I finally have it down thanks to you. I gave up on some things because like you said you gotta pick your battles. One of my favorite Julia Child quotes is "remember it's only you in the kitchen" so sometimes it is and the mistakes are only between me and my stove. LOL xoxo Lisa