The Only Incident So Far
I started this post last week on Wednesday morning and was too busy to finish it till now. Here's a sampling of what last week was like:
It's not even Passover and I've already had a food-related meltdown. It happened last night, around midnight, after I'd been cooking for 6 hours.
I got the turkey after work, but of course D'ag had no other ingredients I needed, including horseradish! What kind of store located on the Upper West Side doesn't carry horseradish the day before Passover? A shitty one, that's what kind. So I had to lug the turkey home and go back out to another supermarket, and to the liquor store to buy a giant bottle of creme de cacao so I could use 1 T for the chocolate souflees for tonight's seder.
I also realized that I hadn't made enough chicken broth, so I bought yet another chicken to suck dry for the sake of soup. I started the soup immediately after I got home. It's not the actual cooking that's hard, its the cleaning and santizing and more cleaning thats involved with raw meat. And since I had to hack up the chicken, there was more santizing to do than usual. But I did it, quite rapidly I might add, and told myself I didn't have to make any more chicken soup for a LONG time.
Then I made the chocolate souffles. These were a lot harder to make than I'd expected, and also need to be frozen until they get baked, which means I had to make even more space in the freezer. Usually I'd get Javert to do this, but he was at a co-op board meeting for our apt. building, so I had to use my best spacial relations skills to maximize freezer capacity. Once I rearranged the freezer I got down to work. You need 6 egg yolks and 8 egg whites for this recipe. This annoyed me. I'd already had to separate eggs the night before last, and ended up having 3 yolks left over (which are now taking up valuable space in the fridge.) So I decided to use 6 egg yolks and only 7 whites, to save an egg. I followed the instructions, otherwise, but at the end I had barely enough batter to fill my 8 ramekins, 4 of which are only 6 oz instead of the recommended 8 oz. Which means I had even less batter than I was supposed to have. I couldn't start over at this point, so I decided to freeze the souffles and try one out after the requisite 3 hours in the freezer, which I calculated would be at midnight.
Then I used part of the newly made chicken broth to make squash soup for tonights seder. At this point Javert came home with 10 chairs borrowed from our neighbors and helped me strain and bag the rest of the soup. I put it in the fridge, since I'll be using it tonight and tomorrow and also have NO MORE ROOM AT ALL in the freezer.
Now here is the disaster part. Javert closed one of the ziplocks and I closed the other, so we don't know who is at fault, or if its the ziplocks themselves. I do know, however, that when I opened the fridge to get the milk out, one of the bags wasn't closed entirely and was leaking. A lot. And when I went to close it, it slipped out from my hands and fell on the floor and soup went everywhere. My newly made, last minute and very necessary soup! Gone!
I screamed for help and Javert cleaned the floor while I cleaned myself, since I too was soaked in soup. And then I kinda lost it, a little bit. I couldn't believe that I'd just spent 4 hours cooking this soup which I really needed and then lost half of it. I was devastated, which in itself is an overreaction, especially when one has a box of storemade chicken broth in one's pantry. For some unknown reason I hadn't used all of the chicken I bought--I'd saved one raw breast--and also hadn't thrown away all the bones I'd used. After much discussion, I decided to use these remnants to make more soup, which I did after eating dinner.
And then comes the real melt-down. I still had the charoset to make, according to my list of what needs to get made when. I don't really know why I decided that I HAD to follow my list even though it was midnight and I was tired. But I did. And I totally pureed it. For those of you who don't know, charoset is NOT supposed to be pureed, its supposed to be more like extra chunky salsa. My charoset looks like vomit. Lavendar colored vomit with little specks of brown it in.
So I had a mental breakdown. Javert had to calm me down, otherwise I'd still be standing over the vomitous charoset (although it tastes fabulous) crying into a dish towel. Mainly he cheered my up by reminding me that we have a box of kleenex in the kitchen. This made me feel much better because I hate dirtying dishtowels.
The only saving grace was the souffle. I had to test one, because if it also got screwed up I was going to have to take drastic measures and totally revamp the seder plan. Luckily it was fine and I had a nice bedtime dessert treat before collapsing into sleep.
It's not even Passover and I've already had a food-related meltdown. It happened last night, around midnight, after I'd been cooking for 6 hours.
I got the turkey after work, but of course D'ag had no other ingredients I needed, including horseradish! What kind of store located on the Upper West Side doesn't carry horseradish the day before Passover? A shitty one, that's what kind. So I had to lug the turkey home and go back out to another supermarket, and to the liquor store to buy a giant bottle of creme de cacao so I could use 1 T for the chocolate souflees for tonight's seder.
I also realized that I hadn't made enough chicken broth, so I bought yet another chicken to suck dry for the sake of soup. I started the soup immediately after I got home. It's not the actual cooking that's hard, its the cleaning and santizing and more cleaning thats involved with raw meat. And since I had to hack up the chicken, there was more santizing to do than usual. But I did it, quite rapidly I might add, and told myself I didn't have to make any more chicken soup for a LONG time.
Then I made the chocolate souffles. These were a lot harder to make than I'd expected, and also need to be frozen until they get baked, which means I had to make even more space in the freezer. Usually I'd get Javert to do this, but he was at a co-op board meeting for our apt. building, so I had to use my best spacial relations skills to maximize freezer capacity. Once I rearranged the freezer I got down to work. You need 6 egg yolks and 8 egg whites for this recipe. This annoyed me. I'd already had to separate eggs the night before last, and ended up having 3 yolks left over (which are now taking up valuable space in the fridge.) So I decided to use 6 egg yolks and only 7 whites, to save an egg. I followed the instructions, otherwise, but at the end I had barely enough batter to fill my 8 ramekins, 4 of which are only 6 oz instead of the recommended 8 oz. Which means I had even less batter than I was supposed to have. I couldn't start over at this point, so I decided to freeze the souffles and try one out after the requisite 3 hours in the freezer, which I calculated would be at midnight.
Then I used part of the newly made chicken broth to make squash soup for tonights seder. At this point Javert came home with 10 chairs borrowed from our neighbors and helped me strain and bag the rest of the soup. I put it in the fridge, since I'll be using it tonight and tomorrow and also have NO MORE ROOM AT ALL in the freezer.
Now here is the disaster part. Javert closed one of the ziplocks and I closed the other, so we don't know who is at fault, or if its the ziplocks themselves. I do know, however, that when I opened the fridge to get the milk out, one of the bags wasn't closed entirely and was leaking. A lot. And when I went to close it, it slipped out from my hands and fell on the floor and soup went everywhere. My newly made, last minute and very necessary soup! Gone!
I screamed for help and Javert cleaned the floor while I cleaned myself, since I too was soaked in soup. And then I kinda lost it, a little bit. I couldn't believe that I'd just spent 4 hours cooking this soup which I really needed and then lost half of it. I was devastated, which in itself is an overreaction, especially when one has a box of storemade chicken broth in one's pantry. For some unknown reason I hadn't used all of the chicken I bought--I'd saved one raw breast--and also hadn't thrown away all the bones I'd used. After much discussion, I decided to use these remnants to make more soup, which I did after eating dinner.
And then comes the real melt-down. I still had the charoset to make, according to my list of what needs to get made when. I don't really know why I decided that I HAD to follow my list even though it was midnight and I was tired. But I did. And I totally pureed it. For those of you who don't know, charoset is NOT supposed to be pureed, its supposed to be more like extra chunky salsa. My charoset looks like vomit. Lavendar colored vomit with little specks of brown it in.
So I had a mental breakdown. Javert had to calm me down, otherwise I'd still be standing over the vomitous charoset (although it tastes fabulous) crying into a dish towel. Mainly he cheered my up by reminding me that we have a box of kleenex in the kitchen. This made me feel much better because I hate dirtying dishtowels.
The only saving grace was the souffle. I had to test one, because if it also got screwed up I was going to have to take drastic measures and totally revamp the seder plan. Luckily it was fine and I had a nice bedtime dessert treat before collapsing into sleep.
posted by Emil at 3:33 PM
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