08.02.08
Posted in Disasters, Recipes at 9:25 am by The Chef
From someone going by the name of Slagathor:
2 pounds pitted black cherries
2 pounds blueberries
1 pound blackberries
2 packets of liquid pectin
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
5 cups sugar
pinch of glass from 1 broken candy thermometer
mash fruit with clean potato masher
hard boil ingredients for 1 minute (220 degrees)
jar in sterilized jars and process in boiling water canner for 10 minutes depending on altitude
throw entire batch away after discovering broken thermometer
Apparently, this happened with $40 worth of hand-picked organic fruits.
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07.19.08
Posted in Disasters, Recipes at 5:56 pm by The Chef
Over at poe-news.com, one of the most notorious posters, Gibbs, was recently banned for repeatedly breaking one of the rules. Sadly, that rule had nothing to do with his odd culinary senses, which one poster took it upon himself to make a tribute to.
Gibbs, you will be missed, but your legacy will live on forever.
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03.06.08
Posted in Disasters at 4:11 pm by The Chef
Man stabs self, dies while cooking. (link via poe-news)
Some helpful advice: Jacques Pepin often discusses proper knife technique on his various PBS cooking shows. I’m not sure he ever goes over “don’t touch a hot pan while holding a knife stupidly” thing, though, so, don’t touch a hot pan while holding a knife stupidly.
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10.09.07
Posted in Disasters, Recipes at 1:11 am by The Chef
To get things started, why don’t I share a story about a nasty kitchen mishap which left me a few utensils short in the end?
Roux is a mixture of flour and fat, and is usually prepared by taking equal parts of each and putting over a low flame and stirring it constantly. The flour slowly toasts and develops a rich, nutty flavor and aroma.
It is a staple of French and Cajun cuisine, and many years ago I was going through a Cajun cooking phase, and made variations of gumbo and jambalaya fairly often. However, I was usually rather conservative in making my roux, and would often just keep it fairly pale, or sometimes even just toast flour on a baking sheet in the oven.
One night I decided to see how dark a roux I could make.
It started out well enough. One cup of flour and canola oil, put into a non-stick saucepan, put on low heat. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes: first, I got impatient, and second, I used a Teflon spoon.
It took several minutes before I realized anything was wrong. The roux was toasting quickly, but didn’t develop any dreaded black spots. However, while stirring it, I noticed my spoon was getting shorter, little by little, but speeding up. I pulled the spoon out to see what was going on, and of course the end was melting, leaving behind a trail of plastic. Realizing my mistake, I quickly threw the spoon into the sink, and rushed to the drawer to find a more appropriate utensil — at which point the roux began to burn.
I grabbed the first non-metal stirring utensil I could find, a rubber spatula, and began stirring again. This second utensil began to melt immediately.
At this point I realized the roux was lost and put the saucepan into the sink. Fortunately, I was smart enough to not immediately try to rinse the pan out (which would have certainly caused a lot of steam and hot oil to splatter everywhere, and would have most likely ruined the pan), but if the spoon had been salvageable at that point, it was certainly lost now; I had placed the very hot pan on top of the spoon.
Since then, I have always made roux in a stainless pan with a metal or wooden spoon.
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