Car Crash Cookery
I’ve had my fair share of culinary catastrophes along the way. As a student I attempted a risotto without realising you had to add stock. I watched as the grains of rice turned transparent (this is going well!), then black…
I followed recipes slavishly after that, but that wasn’t enough to disaster-proof me. I remember with toe-curling embarrassment the long evening my prospective in-laws sat around waiting for a dish of chicken and almonds to cook, and the impressive thespian skills they put into making appreciative noises about the anaemic offering set before them.
I dare say Dame B still remembers the appalling South African dish of aubergines and cheese I served up, sandwiched between a starter of rock-hard avocado pears and rock-hard dessert pears – a double-whammy of poor menu planning and lousy shopping. It’s a wonder we’re still friends.
But even faithful adherence to recipes can’t guarantee success. It’s taken decades of grim failures on various cookers to see through some of the myths peddled by recipes, many of which are remarkably consistent in their misinformation. Here are some of the secrets chefs apparently don’t want you to know:
- any dish of layered potato will take twice as long to bake as it says in the recipe – and you can add to that if you want it brown on top
- every salad dressing recipe produces a dressing that is too sharp – you can safely halve the amount of vinegar and mustard
- lentils cook in half the amount of time stated in the recipe
- onions take longer than five minutes to fry.
Do all these chefs cook with nuclear energy? And yet when it comes to cakes, if you take their instructions literally you will end up with burnt offerings.
Then there’s the problem of mistakes in recipes. As a beginner you are unlikely to be able to spot them, so imagine the palate-busting results of a dressing for four made with a tablespoon of horseradish sauce. Thankfully I picked that one up, but I didn’t notice the error in a recipe by the great Ottolenghi: honeyed sweet potato – slices of sweet potato poached in honey and butter for 40 minutes, till most of the liquid has been absorbed. After about 20 minutes it dawned on me that the vast amount of fluid swilling around the pan was never going to be absorbed, and that when Ottolenghi said 700ml of water what he really meant was 70ml…
I like to think I’m experienced enough to cope with moments like these, and even to improvise with what’s to hand, but I’m afraid I’ll go to my grave without really having conquered meringue. What no cookery writer warns you of is that egg whites can smell fear. If I whip a couple that have been hanging around because I might as well plonk them on a couple of baked apples for me and Mr Verity, they’re fine: light, firm, turn-the-bowl-upside-downable. If I want to do a set-piece pavlova, and wipe the bowl with lemon juice, bring the eggs to room temperature, etc., etc. you can guarantee they will be flaccid and sloppy – and I can even hear them sneering at me. Paranoid, me?