Improvising in the kitchen... uh oh

 

HALLIE EPHRON: I love to cook. And experiment with whatever I have leftover in the fridge. Sometimes the results are fine. But….

For example, whenever I roast a chicken (or, to tell the truth, buy a roasted chicken from the supermarket) I take the leftover carcass, skin, and whatever… and turn it into a soup.

I sautee onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms. Add the leftover chicken carcass, broken up. Add salt and pepper and any herbs I have kicking around (e.g. parsley). Cover with water. Throw in 3-4 tablespoons of chicken bouillion. Bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours.

Cool. Remove the chicken from the soup. Return every scrap of meat to the pot; toss the bones and skin.

Usually I then boil handfuls of flat noodles and add them to the soup.

Voila: dinner for another week, and like eating for free.

But the last time I made the soup I got the bright idea: why not boil the noodles with the finished soup instead separately in its own water.

Why not, indeed.

Turns out the noodles DISSOLVED when I cooked them in the soup. And the resulting “soup” was the consistency of wallpaper paste.

Not yummy.

Do you like the experiment in the kitchen, and have you ever tried something that turned out to be spectacular, or a big mistake?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ohhhhh I used to make–(and I don’t know why I stopped, they were delicious) double-stuffed tiny tiny new potatoes.

I’d boil the potatoes til done, then when cooled, scoop out the middles with a melon baller, then mix the scooped out potato with sour cream and chives and salt and pepper, then put that mixture back into the potato cups, and top with crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese.

DEEEEELICIOUS.

So once, preparing for a party, I decided that it would be much faster to put all the ingredients into the Cuisinart, and mix them that way instead of with a big spoon and a big bowl.

And, indeed, it was easy.

But it was also a disaster.

The potato mixture turned into TOTAL GLUE.

I cannot begin to describe the texture further, except maybe to say, Play-Doh.

I have since learned that you can’t mash potatoes in a blender thing or food processor, because the speed of the blades tears the starch molecules and releases them, and they mix with the liquid in the potatoes, and the result: a gummy horrible UNFIXABLE glue.

I regrouped, used the oven to make potato chip-like things from the skins, and after they were crisped up, I added sour cream and bacon and cheese and no one knew.

And I learned a big lesson.

JENN McKINLAY: The only thing I cook these days (Hub took over during the pandemic and I said “no give backsies” when he returned to work) is the smoothie that Hub and I have for breakfast every morning.

The extent of my experimenting is putting a fistful of spinach or beet greens in the smoothie, which I tell my husband is kiwi to explain the green color as he is not a vegetable guy. LOL.

RHYS BOWEN: When we were newly married and had to entertain a lot my husband despaired that I always cooked recipes I’d never tried before.

Most worked fine. Some didn’t. My most spectacular failure was a turban of sole, stuffed with shrimp and mushrooms. In the picture it looked fantastic. A real show stopper.

I turned mine out onto the plate and it came out–swoosh–in a heap. A disastrous mess on the plate.

Business guests were sitting in the next room waiting to ooh and ah as I carried it in. Quick thinking required. I made a roux with sherry, added a little ketchup for pinkness, and served it over rice. Nobody knew but me!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The thing I learned not to experiment with? Holiday meals. One of the first Thanksgivings we had in This Old House, I got carried away and decided to add an authentic Pilgrim pie, which was essentially a vegetable tart.

It was a disaster! Not because I messed up the recipe, but because the Pilgrims’ ate crappy, undercooked veggies in a thick pastry shell that tasted like overcooked bread mixed with sawdust. Now I know why they were such a grim people.

It was a true penance to eat. My father-in-law, God bless him, actually downed a piece and proclaimed it “Interesting!” I chucked the rest out and next year, saved the pie slot for pumpkin and pecan.

HALLIE: So time to 'fess up... what's your most spectacular kitchen improv failure?