| |
|
Moonshadow said...
I hosted my first ever dinner party the other night for 20 people (what was I thinking?) and served up an entree of soup. I began ladling the soup into bowls and my flatmates ferried them into the dining room. After a few trips, one of my flatmates comes in and points out that there are no spoons on the dining table. I had forgotten the damn spoons and there weren't enough in our meagre cutlery drawer to go around. Some people had to share, while others had to make do with the measuring spoons I dug up from the depths of the second drawer down. Seeing a friend earnestly spooning pumpkin soup into the smallest measuring spoon was the funniest thing I have ever seen and it was worth it just for that.
04-09-2007
|
|
Georgia Reid said...
To celebrate our moving in together I decided to impress my fiance with a special meal. We went to the market and I purchased 2 whole rainbow trout to cook for dinner...back home I confidently gutted them and cleaned them in preparation for the feast to come...all my ingredients chopped and ready I pre-heated the pan and put in the trout...suddenly the kitchen was filled with a loud popping/crackling sound and volumes of acrid smoke swirled in theair ....in my determination to impress him with my kitchen skills I forgot to scale the fish...and you know what...he even bravely tried to eat the salvaged ( and totally disgusting) remains...ahhh true love!!
14-09-2007
|
|
Carolyn Sherriff said...
As my husband's a vegetarian (who trained as a chef 20 or so years ago), I like to experiment with new products to inject some variety into our menu... But I went a bit too far when I tried the "Smoked Tofu with Squash Recipe" because, after serving it on a steaming bed of rice, my husband spoke those memorable words; "I really don't think I can chew!" Needless to say, I've never used that recipe again...
14-09-2007
|
|
Genevieve Bulluss said...
A year ago, I successfully made a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte with a German friend’s help. Now living in Thailand, I decided to make one on my own. Alas, I didn't have my trusty Margaret Fulton recipe book with me and the internet was down, so I tried to remember by heart how to make a chocolate cake. I couldn't find self-raising flour, but was able to get some plain flour and some sodium bicarbonate. I had the proportions of butter, sugar & egg about right, but used about 7 tablespoons of cocoa and about 7 tablespoons of sodium bicarbonate (I wanted a fluffy rich chocolate cake). Oops. The cake rose really high in the oven and spilled over the sides before flattening completely in the centre again. As I cleaned up the overflow I tasted the cake and to my horror it was REALLY bitter. There was no time to make another one.
I thought I could fix it with some rum and sugar. Perhaps I should mention here that I didn't have any kirsch liquor and didn't have time to make cherry jam, so I mixed up some cherry jam from a jar in a hot saucepan with rum and sugar, with the aim of pouring it over the bitter cake to sweeten it up, as well as adding the alcohol as per usual to make it moist. I added a bit, and it didn’t really help the flavour. So I added more and more until the cake was very moist with Bundaberg rum and bits of cherry jam on top. The flavour was not quite what I was hoping for.
Next, I added the rest of the jam on each layer, piled it with cream and put the layers together, covering the entire outside with cream and grated swiss chocolate.
I took the cake around to my friend’s house. She was having a few people around for a wine tasting and she’d prepared some lovely appetizers to have with each of the wines. Then it came time for dessert, so I pulled out some candles and we wished her a happy birthday, and there were many praises for how good the cake looked.
“It might look good, but it doesn’t taste so good,” I warned. Generally people say this to downplay expectations. You can see that I was being completely honest. Nevertheless, the cake was cut and distributed much to my protests of “you don’t have to eat it”, and after one bite, there were some very interesting, or pained looks on the faces of her guests. One was kind enough to say “I don’t think it tastes that bad”. The rest passed their plates to me and I scraped the pieces into the bin, alongside the uncut half that the birthday girl had already discretely discarded.
14-09-2007
|
|
Jade Lippiatt said...
As a young kid I was in love with cooking and trying to emulate my mother who is a brilliant cook. This takes me back to about age 7 years old, when I was undiagnosed dyslexic, making my first carrot cake unaided, the recipe called for 1/4 of a cup of olive oil which I read to be and proceeded to add 4 cups of olive oil! suffice to say it was inedible. Thankfully my cooking and dyslexia has improved since then.
15-09-2007
|
|
deejay said...
When I was first married I made a chicken curry for a dinner party - I don't know to this day what I did wrong but there was absolutely no flavour in it - so I had to watch the guests all adding salt trying to obtain flavour. How embarassing. And worse still, no-one said anything, the salt was just continually passed around the table.
15-09-2007
|
|
Carolanne Brennan said...
During my apprenticeship in a major Hotel, I was working sweets. Everytime I melted the chocolate in the microwave I would burn it. Chocolate, when burnt, becomes like honeycomb, black honeycomb. But the smell would ALWAYS reach the second floor offices, where the Food & Beverage Manager or General Manager would come down to find me hiding in the coolroom.
ChuChu Terrier
16-09-2007
|
|
margrett james said...
my worst kitchen blunder was many years ago and I lovingly cooked my first roast pork
following the recipe to a t
it came out gloriously golden and so the prize was sat up on the bench whilst I went for a walk before the guests arrived
unfortunately the doberman was left in doors so I returned to a very satisfied and lip smacking smile from the canine...
16-09-2007
|
|
Ana Peso said...
I made the unheard of blunder of mistaking Coriander for Parsley whilst creating my best infamous Lasagne. You can imagine the smell through the house and the taste to boot.
17-09-2007
|
|
Arriarne Kemp-Bishop said...
My worst kitchen blunder? Not supervising my husband, who had consumed a few glasses of pinot by then, closely enough as he precicely julienned some asian vegetables for a beautiful summer salad we were to have for dinner whilst on holidays in Noosa. We were attempting to copy the recipe from a fantastic Sunshine Beach restaurant who had kindly shared the secrets of their key ingredients with us. All was going superbly well until my husband cursed loudly, threw the knife on the kitchen bench and held his finger under the running tap ("I've just cut my finger off"). I'm thinking, "OK......surely it's not too bad".......my
little sister, who was observing proceedings from over the breakfast bar, then cried out "Oh my god, is THAT the finger!?!" There was the tip of my husband's finger resting sweetly on the blade of the knife on the kitchen bench. Needless to say, we didn't eat that meal that night, my husband didn't sleep at all well, and the minor surgery the next morning was more pain that the salad would have been worth!
17-09-2007
|
|
Marija Zeko said...
I can never forget the time when I had a date over for dinner and I worked overtime at trying to impress him with a versatile meal, ie some gnocchi, salad, naan bread and roasted chicken. I will never forget cooking the naan bread in a pan when all of a sudden the smoke alarm went off as the pan oozed smoke. My date, in sheer surprise flinched and spilt his glass of red wine on his shirt. After the initial hiccups, dinner was served. With the stress of the prior events hovering, my hand overtly shook as I tried to sprinkle some chilli flakes over my gnocchi. I ended up spilling the whole lot on my plate and ate it with great pain and a sweaty forehead. The whole event was painful and to this day I cringe when I think about it!!!
17-09-2007
|
|
Cathryn Wray said...
I remember the glorious days of being a stay at home mum and having time to spend all day in the kitchen. One particular day my young son and I decided to make pancakes. There we were in kitchen - pure bliss. We mixed and poured and then............ then we cooked. With squeals of flip it mummy flip it..... so mummy flipped it and the theory of what goes up must come down is a wives tale - it never came down. The pancake has left a lasting impression above the stove, some say you can see mother mary in it. My son remembers this day and quietly reminds me of it often though refers to it a spak filler.
18-09-2007
|
|
Katrina Nicolson said...
Learning to cook took me quite awhile. Making a mince dish for the family years ago, the receipe called for a clove of garlic. Not being educated in the world of garlic I added the whole bulb. Yes, it took me forever to peel each clove. Didn't taste too bad to start with until it started to permeate our skin & breath. Needless to say, I was black-banned from going near my friends for 2 days.
18-09-2007
|
|
Adele Smith said...
Wanting to impress my boyfriend (now husband) I decided to cook a lovely roast meal. I followed all instructions perfectly and was wondering why it had turned out so tough. It would have helped if I had not roasted the corn beef!
I also once poached eggs in an egg poacher and didn't know you had to use water. The plastic egg tray totally melted - I have never poached eggs again.
19-09-2007
|
|
Larissa Paton said...
Pavlova yum - not so yummy when you mix salt, instead of sugar, into the cream! Also, not a good idea to boil an egg in the microwave for 10 minutes - consequently they explode! You'll be left with cleaning baked on egg off the ceiling and walls, and it burns skin too.
01-10-2007
|
|
marie artico said...
I'm renown for my food all my family and friends rave about it and cooking is my passion but when I was very young I didn't know much about it and one day I was having friends for dinner I decided to have roast pork so I did all the things I was supposed to put it into the oven and cooked it and when it was about 15minutes for the end of cooking time I took it out of the oven and had a shock there was almost nothing left it had shrunk to nothing I was so upset what had I done wrong I got the wrapper out of the bin and found out it was pickled pork and should have been boiled. my husband went down to the chicken place and picked up a couple of chooks before the guests arrived and saved the day needless to say I did'nt repeat that episode ever again.
14-11-2007
|
|
aleena chung said...
Many years ago,as a newly wed I invited my husband's family of 10 adults over for xmas dinner.I bought a size 22 turkey and yes, it was probably a little too big - considering it was not the only dish on the menu. My mother in law said we could not possibly get through such a large turkey and in turn bought me a much smaller, 'better sized' turkey for me to cook instead and left the size 22 turkey for my husband and myself to eat at another time!
10-06-2008
|
|
Pauline Tonkin said...
I hadn't been married all that long and I invited friends for a dinner party - all went well until the final course! A beautiful, light, recess sponge decorated with fruit and cream. It looked perfect! I brought it to the table so everyone could see my baking and decorating skills! When I cut it it was full of ants!!
Pauline Tonkin
10-06-2008
|