CHUsday and the One That Got Away
I hate wasting food. Which is why my husband and I smiled over burned salmon last week and pretended to smack our lips.
Truth is, neither of us was willing to throw away a pound of wild caught salmon, even if the glaze, for which I'd held out so much hope, was now a layer of charcoal on top. "Yum," I said, "it reminds me of meals straight off the barbecue." He, of course, (the man who DOES the barbecuing) couldn't dispute this since right before I burned the salmon, he burned a pot of rice–the residue, of which I'm still trying to get out of my Green Gourmet saucepan. He knew that one word of criticism, and rice would become the next conversational topic. Wisely he swallowed salmon and criticism together.
Oh, did I mention the artichokes weren't quite done either, at least his wasn't? Mine was perfect. I wonder how that happened?
This all started with an online recipe from Once Upon A Chef, a website I mentioned two weeks ago. For the month of October I'd suggested here that anyone who wanted to enter the CHU giveaway, could also enter with a new online recipe. I wanted to be right in sync.
The recipe, Broiled Salmon With Thai Sweet Chili Glaze, not only sounded simple and good, it made use of the Thai sweet chili sauce I'd mistakenly bought for another online recipe, Thai Sesame Noodles, which actually called for spicy chili sauce. I used the sweet sauce for the noodles anyway, and the result? Well, it's not a recipe I'll hurry off to make again. It was surprisingly bland, even though I used sesame oil with hot peppers. But it's hard to critique a recipe if it's not followed exactly.
In all fairness to Chef, I think this salmon recipe's probably a keeper. But I learned my lesson. When broiling fish, never leave the room to watch the news, not even if you've set a timer–which I had.
Never walk away from the broiler, period.
So why all the cooking errors when we're usually pretty adept in the kitchen? It's actually pretty simple. Chalk up my mistakes to 60 hour work weeks in October as I finished One Mountain Away and did my final revisions before sending it off to my editor.
Maybe authors just weeks from deadline shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen. At the end of the next book, I'll just look up restaurants and not recipes. The world will be a safer place.
November's here. Dig out that old cookbook and make a new recipe. We only have two months left of the giveaway, so get cooking!
