Musings of a Wench

Cooking failure

I am a really good cook. That sounds like bragging, because it kind of it, but it's also true. I enjoy cooking and I have become pretty darn good at it. Hell, this year already John and I have taken 2 months worth of Indian cooking classes from one of his coworkers, in her kitchen. Every Saturday morning we'd go over, learn to cook food, and then eat it. Good times. Also, I can make naan bread and that's so beyond worth any amount of money and time. Plus two types of dal, chana, roti, biryani, saffron rice, tandoori fish, stuffed parathas and much more. Never had a failure while doing our 'homework'.

A while ago I started making a really nice Sunday meal and enforcing stay at home Sunday evenings. No matter how busy or quiet our lives, I want Sunday nights for us. (Yes, I will flex this rule for birthdays, but that's about it.) So during the week, some meal idea will pop into my head and during the weekend I'll shop for groceries for the week and on Sunday I'll cook. I've made nice things like steamed shrimp and turkey dumplings, Moroccan tajines, Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, chicken curry with a layered rice dish, and so on. John often helps.

This last week I made a dish from a Jamie Oliver cookbook I'd borrowed from the library a while ago. (I think it was Jamie's Dinners, which was stuffed with recipes I really liked the looks of, unlike Jamie's Kitchen which didn't do much for me.) I copied the recipe and thought it looked great - jumbo tortellini with a Thai chicken filling. Lots of ginger and garlic (which I love and use constantly. I buy at least a palm's worth of ginger everytime I go to the store.), plus an egg, some oil, some cilantro, and a few water chestnuts. Almost exactly what I used for the dumplings a few weeks ago, actually, minus the shrimp. I made my pasta from scratch. We followed the recipe, except for the lemongrass that Co-op didn't have and I wasn't going to go to Superstore just for one ingredient. The final result? John will eat them but I find them completely inedible. Yuck! It took more than 2 hours of work, too. And is so gross I can't eat them.

I am very upset by this. It's been years since I've cooked something inedible. Sure, I've made things that have been followed by loosing the recipe, but never not being able to eat it. Not since that disaster of Indian peanut butter soup that I made, following a recipe!, that was so gross. And even that we all had a few bites of, before deciding it wasn't worth it. (I was 15, my mom was out so I made a 3 course Indian meal and 2 of the courses were great and the other was peanut butter soup. What were the odds that would go badly?)

I know it seems silly to get this upset over a bad recipe, but I am! I'm worried that I have lost my mojo. On Monday, in an attempt to feel like I could still cook okay, I made pork buttons* and a butter lettuce, candied walnut, pear and blue cheese salad. And it was good. But I'm still upset. Weird the places I get my ego all tied up in...

* Pork buttons are the best deal on meat ever. It's like, the end of ribs. The meat comes in long strips studded with buttons of bone. For enough food for a large meal for 2 and a lunch, it cost $3.50. All you do is boil them for 45 minutes, drain, slather with bbq sauce and bake for 20 minutes, flipping once. It tastes exactly like ribs, but costs $20 less at the grocery store.

posted by Morgan @ 3:52 p.m.