Great Culinary Saves

[xxchef]

Every once in a while, despite great care, long experience, and best efforts, something goes terribly wrong with a dish. This, of course, usually happens to the key component for a important meal with the guests arriving any moment.

But all is not lost. Through intimate knowledge of the science behind cooking, creative epiphanies or just plain luck, we can sometime rescue these dishes (and dare I suggest, even improve them occasionally).

With necessity being the mother of invention, what's your best Culinary Save Story?

[ruthcooks]

One night back in the 80s, I was expecting a local food critic who was going to do a review of my small restaurant. It was in my home--and legal!--by reservation only on the weekends, and the menu changed almost every week. The dessert that evening was to be angel food cake with a "tunnel" cut out and filled with whipped cream and strawberries or raspberries, I forget which.

The whipped cream mixture had a bit of gelatin to hold it together, but when I cut it, the filling was too soft and it ran out all over, a big mess. I cut up the cake into one inch squares, folded into the filling, and served the dessert in parfait glasses. No one was the wiser.

[xxchef]

Good one Ruth!

Just this weekend I was making a big pan of pecan sticky buns for one breakfast for the overnight participants of a 3-day cheese-making workshop we were putting on. Trying to mesh cooking all the meals with teaching the various course modules is always a juggling act but it usually isn't a problem.

For whatever reason I had a major fail on the buns this time. When I turned the them out of their pan, the sticky-gooey topping grained-up completely. It tasted great but looked more like streusel then smear. I could here the group in the other room oooing and ahhhing over the smells and knew they would be finishing up in there and coming back to the kitchen for the next session in just a few minutes. They would most certainly be expecting to see a luscious pan of goodies and all I had was a mess. I suppose I could have faked it and said "These are pecan crumb buns" but had already told them what I was supposed to be making.

I quickly scraped all of the still-hot crumbly topping and pecans off the rolls and into a sauce pot and put it on the stove to start re-melting. I dropped in a couple ounces of butter and a little real maple syrup and turned the heat up to high. Within a minute it had all melted down to a thick syrup. I added a few drops of lemon juice (acid is supposed to help prevent recrystallization) and poured the whole mess back over the buns. A quick swipe with an off-set spatula and it looked like brand new - just as the group came through the door. Phew!

I hadn't had time to test the syrup to see how it was going to set-up but got lucky and it was gooey perfection. The rolls were a big hit.