Saturday, July 14, 2012

Disaster Kitchen Week:# 2 Salt & Pepper Squid

This past week has been about kitchen disasters. They will be common in most households and I’m sure even in some top chefs home and restaurants (remember the last time you heard an Executive Chef yelling at his staff in the kitchen – that was probably over a kitchen disaster!). My kitchen disasters always happen for two reasons:

1. I don’t read the recipe properly

2. I rush

Whenever I rush or fail reo read that a pastry needs resting for 2 hours, or the protein needs marinating for 5 hours, my dishes fail. It’s a shame, you’d think I’ll learn from these mistakes but some days, they still happen.

This past week I tried to cook four things in one morning. Silly, I know! One disaster (the others have been blogged here) was my lunch. I just wanted to something simple and easy and thought to myself, as I walked around the supermarket, I’ve never made salt and pepper squid before. I bought all the ingredients, and made my own salt/pepper/spice mix made up of rock salt, ground pepper and allspice which I crushed together in my little mortar and pestle. Looked good enough so I stirred the flour in, still looked good, and then I coated my squid and it still looked good.
"Battered" squid
Everything was going so well until I dropped my pieces of coated squid into the vegetable oil. My “batter” started falling off the squid so I was left with deep fried and not very appetising squid.
The vegetable oil cooking the batter and squid separately
Of course, it only occurred to me afterwards that my batter had no binding agency like eggs. So it’s back to the recipe books for a recipe I can actually follow next time!
What it looked like in the end
Have your good intentions ever been dashed by a kitchen disaster?

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2 comments:

  1. Had to chuckle as I read this post... I never read recipes through... and usually take things out one at a time as I am putting them into the bowl... only to find out that I have a vital ingredient missing....But some of my "disasters" have become to be masterpieces.... only to have me not know what I did so I can't reproduce them for another time... Marlys @ this and that.

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  2. Thanks for the comment Marlys, I know what you mean. The ingredient I'm usually missing is the butter, I never have enough. This time the salt and pepper squid didn't turn into anything I wanted to eat, which was disappointing but just makes me want to try again (with a recipe this time!)

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