Striving for imperfection

[Wilfrid]

Idiocy rather than injury.  I have had my new cooker for about three months.  Having some spare time over the weekend, I finally - finally - located the broiler.  I knew there'd be one somewhere.  At least I found it before I went out and bought a salamander.  It was only after I went out and bought a powerful booster aerial to overcome the radio reception problems in my new apartment that I discovered I had never plugged the old aerial in after moving.

Is there a dumbfuk icon?

[Priscilla]

Yeow.  Guess I check this topic just to re-excruciate myself.

[tommy]

Lamb done, so I grab the Thermometer with bare hand. Large sizzle, much like when the Nazi grabs the Egyptian medallion in the Indian Jones film. Friends were laughing so hard they were sick. May cries of "it's a THERMOMETER you idiot, there is not excuse for not thinking it was hot!". Lamb was good.

adam, do you generally serve hand medium-rare?

[ebraun]

My in-laws had come for a visit and had done their usual trick of making about a dozen soft-boiled eggs and had left some behind.  Well, I prefer my eggs hard-boiled.  So, since they were out of the shell, I figured I could put them into the microwave for a short cooking-time and solidify the yolks.

So, I cooked for around 30 second and let them cool off a bit.  So, on the first bite it was pleasingly warm and thoroughly enjoyable... only egg-white involved.  Second bite I pierce the appearantly air-tight seal around the yolk and kablooey!  The egg exploded into my mouth, onto my face and darn near the whole living room.  It even made a little 'thump' sound when it blew.  I had some nasty burns on my lip and nose from the noxious gas that escaped from the egg.  Of course, none of those hurt nearly as much as my pride.  We still laugh about it today.

[Jinmyo]

ebraun, I had never heard of such a thing. Have to try it.

[Wilfrid]

Sounds like a Paul Liebrandt dish.  (Apart from the burns.)

[oraklet]

lovely thread!

mine dates some 20 years back.

steaks. hot saucepan (clled "look"). in a hurry. steaks finished. grab saucepan by handle to tranfer steaks to plates. mid way between stove and dinnertable: pain. had grabbed too close to pan. had to finish movement so as not to drop steaks.

for years after i had mirror image of "look" branded in hand, slave-wise. kinda "kool".

christian

[Adam_Balic]

Very Droll .

[lizziee]

At the beginning of my days in the kitchen, idiocy was the name of the game.

I was making soft shell crabs. Dinner was to be served at 7:00. By 8:00, I am still sauteeing the soft shells, but they weren't becoming "soft." Why? I had bought hard shell crabs and what crabs look like after one hour of sauteeing is an insult to the crabs.

The first time, I made roast turkey nobody mentioned that there was this little bag inside.

The first time I made steak bordelaise, I accidentally locked myself out of the apartment. Thank goodness, the fire department was just up the street. I ran over, they broke down the door and put out the "on fire" steak.

Of course through the years, burns and stitches have been numerous. My hands and arms look definitely "battle weary."

[Steve Klc]

1. decades ago, trying to be efficient and defrosting a freezer with a chef's knife by chipping out chunks of ice, rather than unplugging and waiting for the ice to melt or using a hair dryer to speed up the ice melting.  Pierced the wall, releasing the coolant, which resulted in the purchase of a new modern marvel, the frost-free fridge.

2.  cooking sugar in a saucepan, covered, for a buttercream or caramel, then walking away from the stove to answer the phone or "quickly check e-mail."  As smoke starts to waft through the hall, quickly pull pan off the heat to realize I've created a cool, new decorative sugar product--something called carbon sugar--thin, airy, crumbly, spongy black material--very, very cool on a sugar showpiece dusted with gold.  Of course, the pan has to be thrown out because the black residue has bonded to the surface and cannot possibly be removed, no matter how you try.

I've thrown out two saucepans because of this over the years.

Now, carbon sugar can be made much more efficiently by "baking" in an oven.

[Jinmyo]

Steve,

1. I've done this. But with a screwdriver. I'd never use a chef's knife to open a cardboard box let alone chip ice. That's what screwdrivers are for.

2. Carbon sugar isn't...edible, is it?

[Steve Klc]

1. now you tell me!

2. yes, it would be technically edible, a creme brulee topping taken to extreme lengths.

[Damian]

Sandymalloy-Good to see I'm not the only one in this group who has sustained the thumb-webbing "bagel slicer's lament" injury.  Mine was none to serious; however, a good friend who happens to be an ER doc told me that this injury shows up at least once a weekend almost without fail.  i haven't done it, but I'll bet a check of the "web" will show that this is a pretty common phenomenon.

My real slicer injury came on Christmas morning at the hands of my grandfather's brand-new folding fish filet blade.  Couldn't this new little beauty open without some serious leverage given the stiffness of the as-yet unused hinge.  Upon opening it, instantaneously cut an inch-long gash into the knuckle partly severing a tendon and losing close to a pint of blood in the process.  Christmas morning in the emergency room!  Cheesed off grand-dad!  Happy freakin' holidays.  

On a positive note, have since used the same knife to filet live fish right into Captain Martin O'Berry's proprietary beer-batter, so the venerable Captain (a Chesapeake legend and former Navy Seal) could quickly fry them up and serve them while we were still fishing.  Flounder, blue, spot, croaker, perch, they all tasted the same - absolutely incredible.

[Niall]

Apart from the usual burns and cuts, all similar to what has been discussed, I have had one other bad experience;

About 6 years ago, having never touched them before, I was chopping chillis. I scraped the seeds out with my fingernail. About 30 minutes later I rubbed my eyes. OOOooooowwww.... I ran straight into the shower and stood there fully dressed with the water running cold for about 20 minutes. Even after that it still hurt. I was wandering around with cold wet cloths held to my eyes all day. A while after this, we were haviung this very conversation at drinks one friday, and I told this story. Another friend said that something similar had happened him; although instead of rubbing his eyes, he visited the toilet... even bigger OW. I now make sure to never touch chilli seeds with my hands, and after cutting chilli I check how hot my fingers are by sucking them..

[jaybee]

Saturday morning in the country.  Two weeks ago. The big coffee maven is making a pot with the French Press and his new, imported coffee from Julius Meinl.  Ten tbs of ground coffee and thirty ounces of water just off the boil.

Steeps for four minutes and I begin to press the plunger.  Very hard going.  Like pushing against mud.  Put two hands on top of plunger and exert much of my 230 pound upper body weight.  Yes, you guessed it.  Coffee, gounds and almost boiling water are expelled from the spout with the pressure of a fire hose. The stream travels at least ten feet across the room.  Kitchen covered with wet ground coffee, hands beet red, shirt and pants wet and stained. Feel like a complete jerk.

Out comes the trusty Braun Aromamaster.

[Wilfrid]

One of the funniest things I ever saw:  my father, unaccustomed to washing dishes, scrubbing really hard at a saucepan but making no progress.  On close examination, what he thought was a Brillo pad* turned out to be a used teabag.

*Soap-filled wire pad, in case the brand name means nothing.

[mamster]

I teach a class on Wednesday mornings.  Yesterday a student came in and, with a pained look, asked me if we had band-aids.  I opened up the first aid kit and offered him his choice, noticing that he had a nasty gash in the webbing between his thumb and first fingers.

"What happened?" I asked.  He had a bike helmet, so I figured he would say bike accident.

"damn bagels," he muttered.

[oraklet]

jaybee, an advice: pour the water onto the coffee. let rest for 2 min. gently shake the press. leave for 1min, and watch in amazement as the coffee settles on the bottom. press down. et voila, no problems! (only make sure the coffee is not too fine-ground)

but espresso/cappuccino is a lot better!

[Peter B Wolf]

Four days ago, Saturday, inside garage, loading back of van with five/six casseroles for a church pot-luck. Driving out of the garage, heard that crunching noise, forgot to close hatchback door on van. Millions of pieces of tinted glass looked like Demerara Sugar on those dishes. The garage door opener looked sort of bent out of shape too, so was my wife. Total damage about $1,400.00. Good thing they always bring too much to church suppers anyway. Our food was not missed, I was p....d.

[Damian]

Peter.  Argh.  I feel your pain.

[lizziee]

I am blaming this mistake on e-gullet. I put 2 eggs in my favorite all-clad pan to boil - went into the other room to see what was happening on e-gullet, started responding, completely forgetting about the eggs and 25 minutes later went back into the kitchen. Needless to say, I need another pan.

[Julliana]

Frying up a few pounds of chicken cutlets without realizing the "flour" I used for dipping was really the powdered sugar.  Nuff said!  

Julliana

[heyjude]

Has no one but me been dumb enough to pour the stock through the colander and down the drain, having neglected to place the strainer over another pot?

[tommy]

Has no one but me been dumb enough to pour the stock through the colander and down the drain, having neglected to place the strainer over another pot?

hehe.  that rings a bell.  

something recent:  it's smart to have 2 propane tanks for your grill.  one for backup, and one for cooking.  it's *not* smart, however, to have 10 people over for a BBQ and not have the backup filled.  as a friend said as i was rushing out to the closing filling station halfway through cooking dinner, "dude, the backup tank doesn't really help if it's empty".  ugh.

[Julliana]

Has no one but me been dumb enough to pour the stock through the colander and down the drain, having neglected to place the strainer over another pot?

No, but I have been dumb enough to try and strain a 12 qt pot of chicken soup by myself and helplessly watch as the soup sloshed down the counter tops and and ran down the doors as I tried to get control of the pot.

This reminded me of the time I had made a huge batch of tomato sauce and was ladling it into a large zip lock bag and the bag got away from me in a few seconds and started sliding.....well....you can imagine that I cleaned up that red sauce in my all white kitchen for hours.  This was before they had the pleated bottom zip lock bags.

Julliana