I will never again . . . (Part 4)

[gfweb]

@JoNorvelleWalker I avoided it like the plague.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

19 minutes ago, gfweb said:

@JoNorvelleWalker I avoided it like the plague.

 

Alas I eventually had to pass...because.

[andiesenji]

14 hours ago, chromedome said:

 

At one point when I was in culinary school, we were working in the Pastry lab. It was sugar work, that day. We reheated discs of prepared sugar on a cut-down Silpat, in the microwave. After zapping it the prescribed number of times and seconds, you'd reach in, take the back of the Silpat, and use it to tip the reheated sugar out onto your own working Silpat. 

 

Yeah, I absentmindedly did it with my hand. The crust of the sugar cracked open and spewed sugar lava onto my fingers, and sent me at high speed to the opposite side of the room where the sinks and cold water could be found. Fortunately, the lab contained no elderly persons or small children to be trampled along the way. 

 

...and, just for the record, I *have* never done that again.

I learned sugar work back in the '70s (before microwaves were as versatile and no silpat)  I was making a spun sugar "dome" to set over a large croquembouche and as I did a pass over the top, my helper opened the door, across from me and the breeze blew the hot string over my arm.  I had to set the pan I was holding in my left hand down before I could turn and get my arm under cold water.  The string stuck to my arm and burned what looked like a crease the length of my forearm.  At least I didn't damage the cage.  I slept that night with an ice pack taped to my arm.  

My catering job went off without a hitch.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

1 hour ago, andiesenji said:

My catering job went off without a hitch.

 

andie,

 

I liked your post because of the quoted part. So great that you soldiered on through your injury to success!

 

I know the kitchen can be dangerous, but hot sugar work sounds especially scary. 

[lindag]

On ‎8‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 8:30 AM, Darienne said:

So three times this week I have dropped the lid of the small pepper shaker into whatever I was making along with a fair bunch of ground pepper.  The last shaker had a removable lid and top...this one you open the top bit...unless you are too tired and you simply take off the lid and let fly.  I should use gorilla tape and fasten the tape on.  Not too aesthetically pleasing...but useful.

 

 I have done that too although not lately.  What made me maddest tho was the laughter that ensued by my husband.

Of course, in retrospect it was very funny but not at the time it ruined my lunch..

 

 

[ElainaA]

4 hours ago, lindag said:

 

I'm not sure what happened to  the quote, which seems to have disappeared, but in response to @Darienne and @lindag -  Been there, done that.

Edited October 17, 2016 by ElainaA (log)

[andiesenji]

6 hours ago, lindag said:

 

After ruining part of a very expensive dish of lobster chowder many, many years ago, by doing something similar, I learned to grind my pepper into a small dish and add it to the dish with a small spoon - or by the "pinch" which gives me much more control.   I was able to skim off much of the pepper but some of the lobster chunks that were floating, got peppered significantly.  I rinsed them off and ate a couple but they were really peppery.  I added some more heavy cream to the chowder and it was okay.

 

Same with salt or any other spice.   

 

[chromedome]

22 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

andie,

 

I liked your post because of the quoted part. So great that you soldiered on through your injury to success!

 

That's the desired end state for any "war story," and most pros have a few. 

 

There was the night I took the end off a pinkie finger with a mandoline (I was in fact using the grip, but the veg in question tipped over and I rammed my finger onto the blade)...got it bandaged up by the landlord's niece, an RN, and finished service with the aid of a larger-than-usual number of gloves. 

 

There was the weekend when I shucked 200 lbs of cooked lobster, and got an invisible scratch on my thumb that turned into a nasty infection and blew my thumb up to the size of a nice plum. Couldn't get in to the doctor (I was in a remote fishing town) until after dinner service needed to start, so I lanced and bandaged it myself and served dinner. 

 

I tried to work through lunch service the day I passed a kidney stone, too, but that didn't work out so well. Apparently it alarms the customers when you turn white and collapse to the floor, clutching your abdomen. Who knew? 

 

The two I was proudest of, though, didn't involve personal injury but last-minute panic. One was a lost catering order for 40 people, discovered exactly 23 minutes before the delivery was supposed to leave. Pulled that one together out of what we had on hand (luck was involved...I needed beef gravy to fill the order, and we happened to have a huge batch of beef stew as one of the lunch specials). The other was many (Canadian) Thanksgivings ago, at the same job, when we got a sheepish last-minute call from a local call centre, asking if we could do a full-on turkey meal with all the trimmings for 800 people...the very next day. They'd planned on just paying for everyone to eat at their building's cafeteria, you see, but didn't reckon on the cafeteria (like every business in the building except them) being closed because of the holiday. I checked my walk-ins, told 'em to take the order, and delivered it on time the next day. That was a proud moment, and management gave a nice little bonus to everyone involved in pulling it together. 

 

Apologies for derailing the thread, but it's at least somewhat related. 

[lindag]

I am stunned!  You have extraordinary endurance and skill!

[chromedome]

No, not really.

 

At my own place I was basically a one-man show, and if I didn't work my guests didn't get fed. So I worked. I'm sure in a union environment there would have been paperwork to do and suchlike, and possibly a workplace safety inquiry if the injury was serious, but in the case of those injuries they were of the "bandage will take care of it for now" variety. It did take almost 2 years to get full sensation back in that fingertip, but it was physically healed up in less than two weeks. 

 

As for the catering orders, I had a well-drilled and rather large team around me (we did a million in catering that year, and $3 million out of the storefront) so it was more a matter of assessing our stock of ingredients and what slack we had in our existing commitments. Mostly it amounted to more of the same (admittedly, rather a lot more of the same) but we had the production capacity to handle it. 

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

On 6/21/2016 at 2:04 PM, Arey said:

I will never again buy chorizo from a grocery that doesn't know whether it's making Mexican or Spanish chorizo, and didn't know there were two types until I asked which type they were making.  I wanted Spanish because all the recipes I see call for that type, and I wanted to have it with the saffron rice I make.  Well, they're making Mexican (fresh) (uncooked) Chorizo, so I now have a cylinder of Mexican chorizo weighing over 1 lb. freezer and don't know what to do with it. and I need to decide before the Laughing Gulls migrate back down South in the Fall.

I also bought andouille while there because I've always wanted to try that. I don't know what anduille is supposed to taste like. but if that is what it's supposed to taste like I don't particularly care for andouille.

This all came about because  the Atlantic City Press had an article on a small grocery down in Cape May Co. known for its sausages, Especially for its bratwurst and kielbasa. On the way there I stopped at the Cape May visitor information center for directions, ad there was a pleasant young state trooper passing a pleasant moment or two with an equally pleasant young  (and attractive)  woman.  When I asked for directions to the market, the young woman pointed at the trooper and said "he's the one to ask" and he said "Your going for kielbasa"  and gave me excellent directions which the young woman wrote down for me.

So I have a frozen raw Mexican style chorizo I don't know what to do with (I did some intensive googling of it and didn't find anything that appealed), and what passes for andouille in Cape May Co.

I also bought some bratwurst and smoked Kielbasa and I know what to do with that and how it should taste. I'm still looking to try Spanish style chorizo and andouille, but I'm not going to look for it in Lower Twp. Cape May Co. NJ., or even Middle or Upper Twps. even if I read of places in those two twps. known for their sausages.

 

Mexican chorizo is good fried with scrambled eggs; in fact that's a classic breakfast preparation. I also do a chorizo and cabbage thing cooked together and served as a tostada with either Mexican crema or queso fresco on top. (See page 137 in Diana Kennedy's My México.) I've added it to a meatloaf. There are people who use it on pizza but I'm not one of them. You can cut the long tube into smaller links and grill them as part of a mixed grill dinner. Think of it less as a sausage than as a spicy ground meat product. Take it out of the casing, of course. One of our carnecerías here in Pátzcuaro does a chicken version that I like.

 

Don't get me wrong--I like Spanish chorizo very much but the only place I see it is in Costco. Some years ago we went to a matanza (a slaughtering of a pig) in Mallorca, and most of the pig was turned into a soft sausage that was heavily seasoned with red pepper and then hung in a cool place to dry. Seemed to me very much like Mexican chorizo.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

Sorry to have hijacked the thread. Here's my contribution--

 

I will never again light my gas oven and forget to turn it up to bake my bread--it's very disappointing. I will never again neglect to carefully read the recipe and discover halfway through that I don't have a critical ingredient, like eggs, for instance. I will never again use my mandoline bare handed--that's something I only did once and will forever remember.

 

Who am I kidding? The top coming off the salt shaker, the big pile of curry powder in the pot, the misreading of recipes, adding a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon--it's one of those "aw jeez" moments that we've all had in the kitchen. We try to learn from our mistakes but we're only human, or at least I am.

 

Now we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

[IndyRob]

I don't know if I can say 'never again', but I really don't ever again want to click on any YouTube video advertising itself as 'the best ever...', 'the worlds' best...' or 'the perfect....' something or other.

 

It only ever seems to confirm how small the poster's world is.

[liuzhou]

I strongly recommend not doing what I did today in the middle of cooking Christmas dinner.

 

Somehow I elbowed an almost full bottle of oyster sauce off a shelf and watched it smash into the floor. Mopping up glass and sticky oyster sauce while simultaneously making sure your Christmas dinner isn't being ruined is not the best fun ever. Especially when the bottle-free sauce managed to shoot across the kitchen and land right beside the oven containing my beautifully roasting fowl.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

I strongly recommend not doing what I did today in the middle of cooking Christmas dinner.

 

Somehow I elbowed an almost full bottle of oyster sauce off a shelf and watched it smash into the floor. Mopping up glass and sticky oyster sauce while simultaneously making sure your Christmas dinner isn't being ruined is not the best fun ever. Especially when the bottle-free sauce managed to shoot across the kitchen and land right beside the oven containing my beautifully roasting fowl.

DAMN. 

[lindag]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

I strongly recommend not doing what I did today in the middle of cooking Christmas dinner.

 

Somehow I elbowed an almost full bottle of oyster sauce off a shelf and watched it smash into the floor. Mopping up glass and sticky oyster sauce while simultaneously making sure your Christmas dinner isn't being ruined is not the best fun ever. Especially when the bottle-free sauce managed to shoot across the kitchen and land right beside the oven containing my beautifully roasting fowl.

 

Did that same thing with a big bottle of Worcestershire...it broke and splashed inside my corner carousel!  Could not believe that cleanup and how the smell of Worcestshire lingered for a really long time.

[liuzhou]

6 hours ago, Anna N said:

DAMN. 

 

Almost what I said.

[Anna N]

14 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Almost what I said.

Yeah. Right. 

[sartoric]

I will never again touch the meat thermometer which has been wedged in a turkey thigh for 20 minutes in a 180 C oven. I'm not sure what I was thinking, it's a new meat thermometer...and perhaps I'm a special kind of idiot.

I have white stripes on the fingertips of my index and middle fingers, plus the thumb of my right hand.

It used to be the most helpful hand, but not so much now. I'm pleased to have ice. It still hurts....a lot.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

@sartoric Ouch! Feel better soon.

 

 @liuzhou I can't think of anything I hate worse than having something go badly wrong in the kitchen when I'm under time constraints. I had such a thing happen to me on Christmas Eve...

 

I was going to grill a rib eye steak outdoors for Christmas for one, and then I found I would have a ride to go visit my husband in the nursing home on actual Christmas day. Plans changed. I knew I wouldn't be getting back before the early winter dark on Christmas so switched the grill out to Xmas Eve. I have a light on the porch, but it's just inadequate, especially with me between it and the food on the grill, and I've tried to grill by flashlight, but this is highly unsatisfactory as well.

 

So I washed a potato and baked it in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes. This was destined for twice baked potato. I sliced and oiled some nice little zucchini to grill alongside the steak and took butter out of the fridge to soften for some of the great store bought bread I've been trying to eat up. I seasoned my steak with salt and pepper, started my charcoal, and let it go. All was in readiness.

 

All was on schedule except the potato. Still a little hard, so I took it from the oven, put it on a glass plate and went to microwave it for a bit to get it to soften up. DO NOT DO THIS! Within 15 seconds on high, I heard a muffled boom. I immediately went over and hit the stop button on the nuker, but it was too late. Exploded potato was everywhere on the surfaces of the interior of the nuker.

 

This mess took me a good fifteen minutes to clean up, and meanwhile my fire was marching along it's inexorable path and daylight was fading. The potato was beyond salvation. I nuked another potato and made my stuffed potato and stuck it in the oven for the second bake, was able to grill the zucchini and steak before complete dark, but it was a very close thing.

 

So... nuke potato, finish in oven good. Bake potato, try to finish in nuker very, very bad. 

 

 

 

 

[cyalexa]

5 hours ago, sartoric said:

 

I will never again touch the meat thermometer

 

I have done the same, more than once. 

[liuzhou]

15 minutes ago, cyalexa said:

I have done the same, more than once. 

 

Me too!

 

[chromedome]

In my first year at culinary school, I had a pot of stock that was bubbling a little too freely so I pulled it partially off of the burner. A few minutes later I pulled it back...using the handle that had been above the flame. That was good for a few rather large blisters. The instructor used me as his illustration for the kitchen aphorism that "every handle is dangerously hot until/unless proven otherwise."

[Kerry Beal]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

Me too!

 

And I!

[Tri2Cook]

2 hours ago, chromedome said:

In my first year at culinary school, I had a pot of stock that was bubbling a little too freely so I pulled it partially off of the burner. A few minutes later I pulled it back...using the handle that had been above the flame. That was good for a few rather large blisters. The instructor used me as his illustration for the kitchen aphorism that "every handle is dangerously hot until/unless proven otherwise."

I haven't had any bad handle burns at work but I've had more than one (which means I apparently don't learn from my mistakes) nasty steam burn across my wrist from popping a lid up on a pot to take a peek while in a hurry. One wrist has what seems to be a now permanent tattoo that looks more like a bruise than a burn where the blister usually appears each time it happens. Each time, after the requisite discouraging words are uttered, I tell myself "lift it the other way, dumbass". But somewhere deep inside, I know I'll do it again. So there's really no point in me saying "I will never again..." for that one.