Culinary disasters

-
Writing about sorbets reminded me of one of the less glorious episodes in my culinary career. I am not immune from disaster now. I do, even though I've now had years of experience, still burn things because I am prone to try and do too many things at once. My children are used to coping with this, though now my son's knowledge of chemistry far exceeds mine, he takes issue with my statement that carbon is the building block of protein and that burnt offerings are therefore good for you.

The particular disaster I am thinking of was a lemon sorbet; at least that was what it was intended to be. It put me off doing sorbets for decades (in fact until last weekend) as I was convinced they were terribly difficult and it wasn't worth trying again. Having made a rhubarb sorbet, I now know the difference between the two types: easy, which has a lot of actual fruit in it, and trickier, in which case you have fruit juice but not the actual substance of the fruit.

Lemon is, obviously, the second type. You are supposed to whisk egg white lightly and mix this into the semi-frozen mixture to give the sorbet its texture. I never normally try something new on my unsuspecting guests, and I'd done this sorbet before. It was a tricky supper party in some ways, as my first marriage had just broken up, and I was still navigating the slightly choppy waters of socialising as a newly single person, so had invited over old university friends who were, I hoped, unphased by my rackety private life. I did want to show that I hadn't entirely lost the plot and was actually surviving on my own...

So, the sorbet. I'd made the sugar syrup, done the stuff with the lemon, and attempted to whisk in the egg whites. Egg whites and I have a bit of a history as I was then going through a long fallow period of being unable to get meringues right, and I think it was the egg whites that failed here. They sort of combined with the mixture, but they sort of didn't. Never mind, I thought. Another whisk will sort them out. I duly did another mix, but it still looked not quite as it ought. Always hopeful, I thought all would be well once it was properly frozen.

Except it wasn't. I duly flourished the sorbet out of the freezer, only to find out it was even worse than when I had last seen it, and had separated out into a fluffy tasteless layer of egg white, and a completely rock like layer of lemon ice which resisted all attempts to remove it from the container. Eventually, after waiting around quite a bit and drinking a lot of coffee, the mix did free up a little. I was hoping that after the fluffy layer had been scraped off, the lemon layer beneath would be rather like a lemon ice lolly, but I was wrong. No one ate it.

Fortunately they laughed, and I do still see some of them so it wasn't the end of our beautiful friendships.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Reminds me of an occasion where I rushed my lemon meringue pie and the meringue sort of melted and slid off the pie and on to the floor in front of everyone!
6 July 2010 at 23:05
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more