Sometimes my culinary skills are legendary only in my mind. I am reminded, not infrequently, that my cooking talents could use some professional assistance. I could sign up for a local cooking class but I think my deficit is so large that I would be better served by living abroad for a year and attending an international cooking school.
Watching the Food Network has helped me gain some skill and has most certainly given me lots of tips and ideas on food preparation and presentation. My days of rhubarb limp, green eggs and ham, ultra-green creamed asparagus over toast and too many variations on a quiche theme are a thing of the past. In fact, I had been gaining the culinary self-confidence to try different recipes and was feeling more secure in the kitchen (in spite of my electric stove), until last night.
You see, yesterday I had a total flop, cooking-wise. Well, the day was dotted with several other frustrating incidences, but the kitchen calamity was the icing on an otherwise not-so-good day.
Several weeks ago I found a recipe, in a local newspaper, for making soup stock. My SO and I enjoy soup all throughout the cold-weather months and I make a large pot of some type of soup about every two weeks. Soup is good for many things: the soul, a head cold, cold-weather chills, a meal that can be ingested quickly before leaving the house, using up veggies from the fridge, or clearing space in a tiny freezer. All of our soups involve fresh (or fresh-frozen), lo-fat or no-fat ingredients, including plenty of legumes.
I was very excited and interested in trying to make my own soup stock and, for the past three weeks, we have been collecting just what the article's author told readers to do: Save your veggie scraps and your apple/orange peels. It felt rather odd freezing what would normally go into and through the garbage disposal, but, what the heck.......it was worth a try. Yesterday came, and with it, a note on my calendar to make soup stock. Since it was written on my calendar, therefore it had to be done.
I found the recipe, assembled all of the pots/pans/accessories necessary, and rummaged through the refrigerator and pantry for the additional ingredients suggested. Throughout the process, small snafus came and went, and should have raised my warning radar that, perhaps, this was the prelude to a flop. And, what a flavor flop it was! Decorum does not allow me to describe what the end result tasted like. Suffice it to say, after about six hours of work and attention, the watery substance masquerading as possible soup stock was dumped, unceremoniously, down the drain.......along with the pseudo-confidence in my gourmet cooking ability.
May I add that the soup stock you can purchase in the grocery store will not be replaced in my pantry any time in the near (or far) future.
I have just one word for yesterday's kitchen experience: Yuck.
Ancora imparo
