What was your worst instance of culinary hubris or misjudgement?
Here's mine: I was a vegan at the time, and I had got into the habit of making 'pizza' with a toppinng of vegetables, covered with this 'cheese-like' combination of silken tofu and nutritional yeast wizzed together in the blender. It wasn't great - in fact, it was pretty revolting - but it broke up the tedium. (I will add here, as if it needed to be pointed out, that at the time I was cooking for one. Otherwise, I'd never have got away with it.)
Anyway, this tofu-nutritional yeast combo would have been merely a blip in my record of relatively sound food-related judgement, were it not for the fateful day that I went to the farmer's market and returned with a large celeriac. When I got it home, I was wracking my brain for something unusual to do with it, and I hit upon the misguided notion that it would be really delicious to make a kind of celeriac au gratin with the aforementioned tofu/yeast combo as the topping. I spent an hour lovingly slicing the celeriac, braising it (or something) and arranging it in a little pyrex dish. Then I spred the odious combo on top, sprinkled with breadcrumbs and popped it into the oven.
What emerged tasted like drinking rainwater out of a rusty bucket. It was so revolting that I've never been able to eat celeriac again - it's flavour is, for me, indistinguishable from the flavour of nutritional yeast.
Ok, that's mine. I'm not proud, but I feel a little better for having told you. What's yours?
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
7 Comments:
I want to answer this question but can't think of one particular incident. I have many dishes that I made, hated and ate but complained about the whole time...I overcooked the scallps, or something is missing etc. Usually I leave the leftovers for my husband, he eats ANYTHING and HATES to waste food even if it tastes like doggy-doo
ThatGirl153 at 11:49AM on 02/02/07
One summer when I was a boy I was helping my mother to make a ratatouille using vegetable we had just picked from our garden. I was too young to do much more than hand my mother some of the ingredients etc... The time came near the end to season the dish. My mother sprinkled some salt, pepper, few other spices and then a pinch of hot red pepper flakes. I said that it should be spicier. I begged and pleaded to add a little more red pepper flakes. Eventually, she allowed me to add just smidge more....I took the bottle held it over the near finished dish....and the top came off and half the bottle's ingredients fell into the dish.
It was soooo hot! Borderline inedible.
Bosmer at 1:39PM on 02/02/07
I was 10 amd thought Vegamite was some sort of jelly (a sweet one). I made a peanut butter and what I thought was jelly sandwich. Then I took a big bite and spit it right back out. Learned that lesson quickly and never forgot it.
Carmen at 7:50AM on 02/03/07
When I was younger, I once confused cream of tartar for tartar sauce, but I thought to myself, "must require some liquid," so I mixed equal parts tartar sauce and mayonnaise. Yum it was not.
AHoboJetSpy at 6:26AM on 02/05/07
french adouillette.
Dish at 4:17PM on 02/05/07
I've had quite a few major mishaps, but I think my worst was in 1990. I had just come back from a few days in New Orleans, inspired by the great City's cuisine. I had been a vegetarian for a few years (which was quite a problem in the Big Easy), and I had the idea to make "blackened tofu" as a take off on the famous blackened redfish. I rubbed a slab of tofu with the recommended spice mixture, and put in in a hot pan, resulting in enough smoke to fill my apartment with a thick haze. The flavor of the dish was completely dominated by char, and was inedible.
Marc at 2:27AM on 02/06/07
I made a batch of salt and pepper calamari a la Nigella Lawson, and saw that there was far too much breading for the amount of calamari I had on hand. I put about half of the mixture in the freezer (don't worry, I didn't take my life in my hands - none of the stuff I saved had been in the bowl with the first batch of calamari!). When I made the second batch a few weeks later, it was SO SALTY it was inedible! It never occurred to me that the two halves of the batch of breading would get different amounts of salt! I tried to "soak" off some of the salt by tossing it with pasta...it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I also tried just washing it off and starting over. My partner salts everything I've already seasoned, and even she couldn't eat it. That was a few years ago, and I still crave salt and pepper calamari, but I'm scared to death of making it just in case I screw it up again. :(
S. Cornell at 8:30PM on 02/11/07