Klutz in the kitchen? No, just AROUND it!
March 25th 2008 00:26
So another Easter has come and gone, and I must describe a not-so-memorable day in the kitchen on Sunday. I decided that I would make a contribution to the Easter Sunday lunch menu. I am a great fan of Stephanie Alexander, and decided to pay my respects by cooking her lemon tart recipe (from The Cook’s Companion.) This tart is straightforward enough, but I somehow managed to make it about as complicated as possible! Our main course consisted of roasted fillet steak, along with the usual roasted vegetables and some steamed greens. So whilst all of this roasting was going on in the oven, I decided I would make my shortcrust pastry – the assembly of this pastry is very very easy, then it needs to be pressed into a flan dish and blind baked. I managed to scrounge up some chickpeas and cannellini beans as my weights for this blind bake exercise, and once the pastry, foil and legumes were in place, I was confident enough to balance the flan dish (with a push-out bottom) on one hand. Big, BIG mistake. I pushed up through the flan dish, (accidentally of course!) and pastry, and what seemed to be a million beans covered the kitchen floor in the blink of an eye. Usually I have a short fuse, but rather than turn into Gordon Ramsay I managed to keep my cool – that is, until my older sibling peered over the kitchen bench and felt the whole thing was a joke. My response was to order him to clean up the mess (using some pretty colourful language) whilst I retrieved my pastry from the floor. With no great damage done, I decided the pastry was retrievable (don’t worry I’m not a commercial chef) and I made the executive decision to roll the pastry again and get this ridiculous blind-baking show on the road. (No one has since died from my cooking.)
After that was complete, I decided it was time to make the lemon filling, and that was also very easy, so I sat down with the family to eat the lovely tender meat, caramelised roasted pumpkin and the other vegetables. About half way through the meal, I got up to turn the oven on, adjusted it to the correct temperature and sat back down after placing the tart in the oven. It’s just a shame I forgot to turn the fan on, especially since the oven is fan-forced. I only learned this had happened after the 45 minute cooking time had elapsed. So although not as bad as dropping the pastry, I felt pretty silly mucking this up. Really it just meant I had to cook the tart for approximately 20 minutes longer, but I don’t like making mistakes like this one too much. I suddenly felt like a contestant on one of the cooking reality shows who’d made a timing mistake – all I had to wait for was the scolding from the master chef!
Once the tart finally cooked, everyone sat down and enjoyed it, but it was lucky that no one was in a hurry to leave that afternoon. I suppose the moral of this story is, if you can possibly prepare any part of a dish before guests arrive, then do it! Anyway, next time I’ll try and write about a happier cooking experience, because cooking really does make me happy!
Once the tart finally cooked, everyone sat down and enjoyed it, but it was lucky that no one was in a hurry to leave that afternoon. I suppose the moral of this story is, if you can possibly prepare any part of a dish before guests arrive, then do it! Anyway, next time I’ll try and write about a happier cooking experience, because cooking really does make me happy!
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Thanks,
Jon.
(Guy who runs Orble with Charles)