Truely words to live by when cooking... failure breeds success!
- When things go wrong (link to the entire article By MELISSA CLARK: NY Times - Published: October 5, 2012)
Excerpt below:
...It’s the desire for perfection, however unconscious, that causes many otherwise practical cooks to think they must recreate entire meals — amuse-bouches to petits fours — from, say, the Alinea cookbook, when one dish would have sufficed. And perfectionism can breed performance anxiety, a cloud hovering over the kitchen counter. Sometimes I wonder if home cooks put so much pressure on themselves that they become reluctant to have friends over for dinner at all.
If the dish looks funny but tastes fine, the solution is easy: rename it. Over the years, I’ve served my guests “blackened carrot salad” (I added pomegranate molasses too early when roasting the roots), “melting, garlicky green beans” (I forgot about them on the stove and they almost dissolved), “molten fudge brownies” (under baked, that is). Butterscotch pudding that never quite solidified in the fridge was rechristened butterscotch crème Anglaise, and poured over fruit.
- Of course, if the dish has truly failed in that you over salted or -spiced it, or if you’ve overcooked the meat, or if the cake stuck to the bottom of the pan, you need to do a little more than just rename the thing. But it, too, can be saved.
1. Overcooked meat or fish is rejuvenated when it is chopped into small pieces and fried in a crisp potato pancake. Call it rösti for maximum elegance.
2. Over seasoned or overcooked vegetables gain new life from being folded into unseasoned eggs to make a frittata, quiche filling or soufflé.
3. And pretty much any sweet pastry recipe that didn’t quite work out is born anew when it is made into crumbs and layered with cream into trifle."
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