From personal experience, I shall venture to proclaim a truth universally acknowleged that Asians don't bake. Now, before you jump to any screaming conclusions, I mean this in a Betty Crocker, thick rich chocolate, gooey sumptuous desserts sort of baking. If you've ever been to Asia, you'll quickly discover that such delectable provenders don't really exist. They would much rather boil their red beans down to a paste and eat it mashed inside sticky buns.
This past weekend I attempted to redeem said failure pertaining to anything measurable in an X by X quantity. (I'd also been bumming my roommates' baked goods for months, and thought I might as well learn to fish instead of just eating it...)
I have, in my possession, a scrumptuous recipe for blond chocolate chip brownies that I have attempted to bake thrice. The first time, due to distractions, my friend baked them up in my stead and they turned out perfectly (he being male the ignominy even more shameful.) The second and third, needless to say: tragic. Being that it has been over a year since the last defeat, I thought I could salvage some means of culinary refinement.
I was under a time limit to get them baking, so I quickly turned on the oven and put some cold butter in the microwave to "soften." The flour, baking powder, and salt were "stirred and set aside"... meanwhile the butter had heated too long and was melting into a puddle. Strike one. I dumped the fatty liquid into the KitchenAid to "whip with sugars until light and fluffy"... and realized I had no vanilla. My Darling Culinary Roommate had taken her real Mexican vanilla with her when she entered connubial bliss three months earlier. The logical step would have been to a) run to the store and get some, b) find an acceptable substitute, c) get over it and move on. Time crunch prevented leaving the apartment, I combed every single kitchen shelf, and I had no idea what the properties of vanilla were to find a subsitute. I therefore called a roommate in a panic, asking such questions as "can I subsitute molasses? (NO!) (in my defense, they are both packed in large dark brown bottles... they LOOK similar!) Maple syrup? (brown and sweet, right?)" She finally convinced me to simply leave it out.
I then tried to put in brown sugar, but seeing how long it had been since my last adventure, mine had calcified into something akin to the Rock of Gibraltar... I resigned myself to stealing said roommate's brown sugar... but upon measuring it out, saw that there were only about two tablespoons left in her bag. Leaving miniscule amounts of food for other people being one of my Pet Peeves, I decided to dump the rest in, and thought I could offset it with a teeny more salt. As I flung upon the cabinet door to grab the salt, a can of something-or-another fell from the top shelf, landing squarely in my bowl of "prestirred" dry ingredients.
*FWWOOOOMPH*
Flour all over the kitchen.
By this time, I couldn't help but giggle at my self-created predicament, flour all over my church clothes, the walls, the refrigerator, the floor... after sweeping it up (marginally) I stared at my somewhat-empty bowl of flour... I have found a quote that accurately describes my mindset:
"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude." --Julia Child
That being said, I meted out approximations of the missing dry ingredients now plastered to the walls, stirred everything else in, and, right before spreading into the pan, decided what the heck, how about some lemon juice?? and poured that in too.Bad idea.
The brownies baked for 25-30 minutes. Golden brown on top... liquified and gooey on the bottom. Back into the oven for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes more... by now brown and crispy on top... still oozy on the bottom. Tastewise: edible. Brownie-wise: strike #3. I'm out, game over. I'll just stick to wontons (but not wonton soup...)
So I'm sure some of you have had some crazy cooking stories out there... what's the worst thing that ever happened to you in the kitchen?
10 comments:
HaHa! I laugh harder everytime I hear (or read) your molasses and lemon juice story.
While Asiankeng can't bake, I would trade my chocolate-chip banana bread or any other "baking" item for your divine spicy tofu...chicken curry... wontons... ANY DAY!
And, please next time your decide to bake, can I have frontseat tickets to the show?
Have you tasted salt and brown sugar?
Next time you want to make a treat go for something simple like a "Tim Tam Slam." Although I don't know if you can handle heating milk up.
I think you know what the worst thing that happened to me in the kitchen was---that pot of biohazardous waste that had fermented in Crown #9's kitchen for several weeks.
I have to say that your ingenuity in experimental cooking substitutions tops mine. I never would've thought of molasses as a substitute for vanilla :) That being said, one of the creations I'm most proud of was a jello cake I made in high school and left on the doorstep of a nerdy rival of mine. Not just any jello thrown in a mold....it had four layers of jello (cherry, lime, raspberry and lemon), and each layer had its own special ingredients: chocolate chips, pineapple, coconut, marshmallows, cheerios. With whipped cream on top. And all around. And little flags with his name on them. I would post a photo, but I don't want you to try this at home without supervision.
As the resident pastry chef...I must say, I can find no suitable opponent to rival that story. Unmatched is your culinary logic that leads you from vanilla to molasses.
But don't worry. One time, when I had 25 friends over for a 3 course meal (we weren't even at my house, we were at a friend's parents house) I made bacon wrapped meat loaf (so good) on a cookie sheet instead of in a pan with sides. The bacon fat rendered and dripped off the sheet, pooling on the floor of the oven and proceeded to start a blazing grease fire (in my friend's mom's kitchen). With cat-like agility I never knew I had, I yanked the box of baking soda from the shelf and tried to get some in the oven without dusting the meatloaf. The inferno grew as I gingerly attempted to quell its fury and I had to throw the entire box in there. I took out the meat loaf from the dusty oven and could come up with no other option than to vacuum out the excess baking soda from the oven...which I did. Also, lest we forget, I broke a bottle of olive oil on the stone floor an hour earlier and it didn't mop up entirely and people slipped on it all night (including a rambunctious child someone had brought because...well, I don't know why). And half my dishes didn't turn out because my menu was too ambitious. And we were 2 hourse behind schedule because I didn't go shopping earlier because I was in school and had to send my less knowledgeable friend (whose mom's oven my meatloaf threatened to incinerate) It can always get worse.
I have to agree with Kayc about the worst ever kitchen experience... although I do appreciate this latest story of yours quite a bit.
I know I could never top any of your culinary escapades, but here's one of my shining moments:
I had not been dating Rudy very long. He was working late and I was at his house watching the kids, so I decided to totally impress him by having a fabulous red pepper pasta dinner ready for him when he got home. But... when I put the new box of farfalle into the pot of boiling water, I realized it was crawling with little worms!!! Without thinking, I dumped the whole pot down the drain. I found some rigatoni and thought that would work just as well even though it wouldn't be as cute. It also contained massive amounts of i vermi. I had to settle for spaghetti (so not impressive), but that's not the bad part. As I was trying to wash some dishes I realized the sink was not draining. Um, that's probably because I dumped an entire pot of uncooked pasta and water down the drain. It apparently filled up the disposal and pipes, etc, then slowly expanded, clogging everything. The disposal stopped working. Soon, the sink was full of dirty wormy pasta water that would not drain. It started pouring out the bottom of the dishwasher and into a giant puddle on the floor.
The kids came into the kitchen wanting to know why there was a puddle covering almost half of the kitchen floor. I politely informed them that if they didn't ask questions, I wouldn't make them help clean it up. They thought that was a good deal and decided to go to bed.
So, I cleaned it up the best I could, bailing water out of the sink and throwing it out the back door. Anyway, Rudy came home after a 15 hour work day to find he had cold spaghetti for dinner and a major plumbing problem he had to fix. It didn't quite make the impression that I wanted.
Luckily, he forgave me for ruining his kitchen and trying to feed worms to his children. He still married me, and I have successfully made the red pepper pasta several times since (although I still get nervous every time I open a package of pasta).
Of course, that's still nothing compared to your wonton soup experience...
Okay, so when I posted this amazing story I never thought that the thought process from "vanilla" to "molasses" was going to the bone of which everyone could not quite get enough... again, in my defense, I have to state the following:
I have never had molasses. I have never experienced molasses in a raw form. I don't even know what molasses is, only that it's "slow." Is it some sort of sugar? Is it even sweet?? The bottle labeled "Molasses" in my cupboard was unopened, and dark brown and shaped exactly like the bottle of dark brown Mexican vanilla My Roommate had let me borrow back in the day.
But yeah, I truly have a charitable Posse that loves me (I think) even after the biohazard, and I to this day have never attempted wonton soup since. One of these days I shall have to face my fears...
PS-- Megs, I dunno, I think the time I tried to pan-fry a frozen solid chicken breast, it nearly exploded, and I forced you to rememdy the situation ranks up there too...
...and I remember the wormy pasta story. To be honest, the thought of your red pepper pasta dish has never been appealing since...
AK - if you remember the big soft ginger cookies I sent you while you were in Taiwan, those had molasses in them, so if you can remember that taste, you know what molasses tastes like. Molasses is a by-product from the sugar refining process
The cookies!!! I loved those cookies. The molasses sure tasted better than it smells in an unbaked form though...
Hey Jen!!! I just found your blog and have to say that this is one of the funniest stories that I have ever read. Kind of reminds me of Jessica in the MTC. Don't worry, I already told Christian, Sister Young and Melanie all about your baking eposode. They really enjoyed it. You should check out my blog sometime, although I don't update it all the time like you. CCsierra.blogspot.com
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