• Dealing with Gastronomic Gaffs

    Posted on July 23rd, 2010 Saver Queen 4 comments

    Like most people, I can give myself a hard time when I don’t live up to my own high standards.  But I’m not a perfectionist. I aim for excellence instead; excellence, I think, can encompass high standards for professionalism, quality, dedication and sincerity, without finding oneself completely derailed by the idea of perfection. Perfectionism makes us lose focus, abandon deadlines, and fail to accomplish the main point or goal of any given task. Excellence, on the other hand, provides a guide to a high quality or caliber of work, but allows the person to know when to say  ”it’s good enough” and move on.

    In the kitchen, I let myself fail. In this blog, I post my kitchen successes.  But there are many other kitchen failures.  A few nights ago I made Aloo Ghobi. It smelled delicious, and I thought it was going to taste really good. But it was bland. I don’t know why, because I’d used more spice than what the recipe called for, and my spices are more powerful than most, because they are fresh and whole ground. Perhaps the cauliflower I used wasn’t flavourful enough because it wasn’t fresh enough - it had been sitting in my fridge for a while. Regardless, I thought I might be able to turn the leftovers into a curried cauliflower and potato soup.  I used some leftover corn water as stock.  I’m not sure where my fist mistake was made - either the vegetables cooked way too long and released too much starch - or the corn water was too starchy and I should have just used plain water - but the end result was disgusting. I pureed it and it came out way too thick and unsalvageable. It was a disappointment, because the aroma from all the spices was incredible.

    If anyone has a clearer idea about where I went wrong, please let me know, because I’d like to learn from my mistakes. But I don’t obsess about my kitchen errors, no matter how I many ingredients I waste. It’s sad, yes, but I look at my kitchen experimentations as an investment. I haven’t taken cooking lessons, so the only way I’m going to learn is by trial-by-error and making mistakes.

    I think a lot of people are afraid to learn how to cook, or simply just write the entire idea off by saying, “I can’t cook.” The reality is, if we give ourselves permission to fail, we can learn to do just about anything.

    Good culinary skills are something that will last you your entire life and, from a financial perspective, it’s something that will save you a lot of money in the long run.  Sure, if you have to throw out a failed meal, you might think, “it would have been cheaper to go out to eat.” For that instance, maybe. But you wouldn’t have learned a valuable lesson from your Big Mac, and stopping at McDonald’s won’t make you a better chef.

    So, when I tasted that soup and realized it had the texture of glue, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. Like I said, cooking is an investment and mistakes are just part of the game.

    What’s been your biggest kitchen mishap and how did you deal?

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    4 responses to “Dealing with Gastronomic Gaffs”

    1. psychsarah July 23rd, 2010 at 12:17

      Bummer about the Aloo Ghobi-I love that stuff! I couldn’t tell ya what went wrong, as I haven’t tried to make it at home yet. Hope it goes better next time around. Probably my biggest gaff was turkey soup. I tried to make the stock from scratch after Christmas dinner, but something funky happened and the stock tasted terrible. I never could figure it out. I had used the same method before and have since, and it turned out well, but that day, it just wasn’t meant to be. Sadly, I had to throw out a big pot of soup, because I thought the stock would improve with more ingredients added and I was wrong.

      I agree about people saying they can’t cook. I didn’t know what I was doing a few years ago when I started cooking, but now I get compliments on stuff I make, so it doesn’t take a lot to just try and master a few recipes and then expand your repertoire from there. I ate a bunch of things that weren’t fantastic when I started-so I guess I ate most of my gaffs, and tried to figure out what would make them better-less cooking time, more salt or spice, etc. You live, you learn!

    2. Nancy July 23rd, 2010 at 13:05

      You can can learn a lot about yourself through cooking! It’s always an opportunity to practise mindfulness as you prepare something, attending to all the stages and allowing all your senses to be fully engaged. It’s a way of stretching yourself as you step out of an old routine and step into your creative, adventurous self. It’s an opportunity for gratitude for all this abundance we have around us, nourishing our bodies each day.
      I tend cook simply, using fresh ingredients. I’m big on organic too. Sometimes I don’t give myself full credit for preparing a simple meal but when my husband and I sit down to eat it, the food speaks for itself and we’ve come to really value that.
      I have had some flops though! One time I tried to make soup out of the vegetable pulp that was left from juicing. YUCK. I’m sure there’s a way of doing it, but not my way!

    3. Cate July 24th, 2010 at 21:14

      Yes, yes, yes!

      I tell myself this everytime I end up scraping an entire meal into the trash. Like that inedible pork and hominy stew. Or an Oreo piecrust that turned soggy. I’m always sad to waste food (and money!), but I figure I’ll never become a better cook if I don’t allow myself to make mistakes. I’d just be afraid to try anything.

    4. Finding My Way to Debt Free July 29th, 2010 at 23:54

      Perhaps your culinary soup troubles could have been saved by using a milk based product instead. Something like a starchy potato soup. It thins nicely by adding milk instead of water. Though I’m not a culinary expert - or even a novice, I have learned that starchy items thin to a lovely consistency with milk - something about the casein breaking down the starch into less complex molecules….water only successfully adds to the glue problem. Perhas even yogurt would have helped this as well.

      Just a thought for next time.

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