Recipe: Disaster, serves four.

11:00  Trot through snowstorm to Strathcona Farmer's Market to purchase lamb roast for supper as we are having guests.

11:09 No lamb as have arrived at market too late.

11:13 Spy really lovely organic prime rib roast. Purchase. Very exie, but will be great.

11:40 Walk back to house. Like roasts to be at room temperature before cooking so place wrapped roast in empty oven so it can warm up but so cats wont get at it.

11:50 Try to take car to Save On Foods to get remaining provisions for supper. Need to be pushed out of snow 4 times on way there. Make it into parking lot at speed of 1 km per hour. Have to push car into parking spot.

12:45 Finally home again. 3 more pushes required to get home. Save On is only 4 blocks away. Vow not to move car again until all snow melts.

1:30 Five whole hours before dinner. Plenty of time. Think I will walk up to K&K  Foodliner to see what's up. Buy completely random stuff including: 3 pkts smoked goose thighs (on sale so a good deal even if I have no idea what I'll make with them), 1 pkt random German chocolate treat (Cakes cannot translate packet label as makes no mention of directions to post office, but photo shows chocolate so must be good, well, at least must be chocolate), 1 carton very expensive (so must be yummy) apple, ginger and cranberry juice, sausages. yum.

2:00 Smugly commence making of soufflees. Because as you will know from my previous post, am very good at soufflees. Even a culinary doofus can make a souffle. Heh.

2:01 Preheat oven to 180c for souffles.

2:50 Misread own recipe for souffle (was trying nifty lemon & ginger variation) and add twice the amount of corn flour called for.

3:05 Why is my souffle base a gelatinous, yet strangely cement-like mass of citrus?

3:07 Break Kitchenaid immersion blender Cakes bought me last Christmas while whisking the lemon and ginger flavoured jellycrete in cool water bath. Telltale metal shavings from stripped gears in little mound on top of jellycrete. Whisk attachment falls by own wieght out of receptacle and clatters to floor. Is completely f**cked. SHIT@!

3:08 Hope against hope that the jellycrete (metal shavings carefully cut from the top) will magically fold into whipped whites.

3:09 Dump bowl of lumpy egg whites with blobs of jellycrete into rubbish.

4:00 Re-read recipe and see that brilliant self accidentally doubled the amount of corn starch. Crap. Am clearly not fit to lick the mixing bowl of culinary doofus referred to snottily in souffle post.

4:30 Decide to have another go. Plenty of time. Roast only needs 90 minutes so can spare some time.

4:42 Maybe should do the roast first and then the souflees after. Prepare roast rub of butter, seeded mustard, garlic, salt, pepper.

4:46 Where's the roast?

4:47 SHIT!

4:48 Remove roast from oven that has been preheating for over an hour. Inspect. Plastic wrap hot but not melted. Roast appears to have begun to steam inside its plastic wrap. Remove plastic wrap and floppy hot styrofoam tray. Scorch fingers on hot meat juice.

4:49 Do not know what to do about roast so will just ignore and hope it goes away.

4:50 Commence making second batch of souffles.

5:39 Decide that as usually roast for 30 minutes at high temperature and then reduce heat to 180C that will just reverse the procedure and roast will be fine. Apply roast rub to top of roast and wait for oven to heat up to 500F.

5:52 Observe that buttery roast rub has melted and run off roast. Unsurprising as roast is still hot from steaming in plastic wrap.

5:58 Pop roast in oven.

6:25 Not usure how long roast originally cooked for so not sure how long it needs. Insert oven thermometer. Reads 120. Need 140.

6:28 Turn oven temperature down.

6:35 Check thermometer. Burn thumb by grabbing it with bare hand because clearly am very smart person. Reads 138. Remove roast from oven. Looks amazingly good. Like one could never tell I bollocksed it up. Smirk. Tent with foil.

6:37 Guests arrive. (they live next door so are very punctual).

6:38 Pop souffle version 2.01 in oven. Notice that batter has deflated a bit as they sat while roast was cooking. Hope they will be okay.

6:45 Souffles rising nicely. They'll be fine. Tops of souffles not brown though so turn on broiler for a few minutes.

6:47 Serve first course.

7:10 SHIT!

7:11 Remove scorched and shrivelled souffles from oven. Observe their resemblance to small brown pucks. Cry into apron.

7:25 Serve main course. While serving, bang together lifesaving desert that can be mixed in one bowl and for which I have everything on hand and which can bake while supper is eaten and can stand a whole lot of overcooking if I forget about them.

Set two timers, just in case.

Comments

[William]

Holy cow. Kudos to you! I think it's a true testament to a cook's skill when they can recover from catastrophe to still provide a proper meal for their guests.

Everyone around me thinks I'm a pretty good cook, but the truth is I've never had a party that went completely to plan. I always seem to grossly misjudge cooking times, forcing my guests to wait till 9:00 to eat dinner. That's why I always have plenty of booze on hand. No one seems to mind after 3 glasses of wine...

[Chantelle]

reminds me of a dinner that started with..."I'm sure v. clever husband has put chicken into the oven so that we can have lovely roast chicken dinner for guests"..."funny, there's no smell of roasting chicken"...plenty of drinks and edamame beans worked wonders. I think the 3 glasses of wine strategy is going to be the first page in my bachelorette cookbook.

[Ian McKenzie]

Apart from a Saturday pm hair appointment for my wife (half a block away at Bonnie Doon) and some shoveling, we did not leave the house between getting home from work Friday and leaving for work Monday. It may have been weather enforced, but it was relaxing.

[Dereck]

Great post, I know its not polite to laugh at others misfortunes however everyone can relate to a cooking disaster. The main this is you recovered with style and your guests were none the wiser.

[Raspberry Sour]

I laughed, I cried, then I got homesick for all my favourite haunts which you just visited and even for all the digging out of snow. I won't even get started on the culinary disaster memories. Thanks!

To the booze trick I can only add my mantra that the guests have no idea what I meant to serve, only what I did serve. Ignorance, thy name is bliss.

[Don]

What this on Saturday? Funny enough, for some reason I decided to head out that day too.

And I made it from downtown to K&K for some smoked goose breast - we had it sliced really thin, with capers and thinly sliced red onion over homemade nutty focaccia soda bread. Yum.

Only got stuck when I had to stop to let people through a residential street. Oh well.

Best investment of last year = winter tires. Even cheap ones are many times better than all seasons.

It lets you get smoked goose whenever you want!

[Atlanta]

U really made my morning with these giggles, hon. I DO hope that Mercury turns dirett soon & eases your culinary & mechanical troubles.

Hope u had a REALLY great glass of wine 2 wash all that down with!

[Pille]

Ouch! But at least the roast was nice, wasn't it?

[kalyn]

Yes, I have had dinner parties like this. It sounds like you managed to salvage things pretty well though. Hate the snow!

[Ivonne]

Brilliantly funny!

[Lyn]

I'm definitely going the booze route next time!