Some very funny incidents occurred along the way to my becoming a good home cook. My first attempt at the stove was a complete disaster.
In my day, junior high-school girls were required to take cooking and sewing. At age 12, I entered the "kitchen" at Ardmore Junior High ready to make my first dish. We were required to bring aprons to shield our stitched-down pleated skirts and cotton blouses and ghastly hairnets to cover our flips and pageboy fluffs. The kitchen was a large, antiseptic, whitewashed room with counters, stoves and equipment circa World War II.
The teacher, a short, stocky white-haired spinster, spoke in a squeaky voice. She showed us a film about nutrition and then announced we were going to learn to make carrots. We peeled fresh carrots with a swivel-blade vegetable peeler and cut them into coins. I was given a thin, battered aluminum pot and told to cook the carrots. Since I never cooked carrots before, I assumed you put them in the pot and placed the pot on the stove. I turned the heat to high and started talking to my friends. As we chatted, we began to smell something burning. I burned the pot and the carrots.
No one told me to add water to the pot.
Fast forward to post-Thanksgiving 1983 and what my husband Edward likes to call "The Turkey Croquette Disaster." He will never let me live it down.
Here’s the scenario: I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey and it came out perfect. Because it was a hefty 18-pound bird, we were fortunate to have lots of leftovers. "Let’s have turkey croquettes," I suggested when Edward came home from work. "Horn & Hardart made the best turkey croquettes. How hard can it be to make them?"
They’re not hard to make, but they will taste like glue if you omit a necessary ingredient. I didn’t know about the necessary ingredient.
I assumed you make turkey croquettes the same way you make salmon croquettes. Canned red salmon is very moist. It gets chopped in the food processor, then mixed with a beaten egg, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper.
I cut the turkey breast into strips and chopped it in my Cuisinart. I placed it in a bowl, added a beaten egg, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. I formed the mixture into patties and placed them on a plate. When I was ready to cook, I heated about an inch of vegetable oil in a large nonstick skillet, added the patties and cooked them for a few minutes on each side. I was so proud of myself as I placed them on a pretty serving platter. I anxiously watched Edward take his first bite.
"How are they?" I asked.
"They’re dry and tasteless," he said.
"Pour some gravy on them, they will taste better," I said as I passed the gravy boat to him.
No amount of gravy could make the croquettes moist and tasty. I didn’t know I had to make a classic white sauce, or b�chamel, and add it to the turkey mixture. I found this out while leafing through The Joy of Cooking. We ended up ordering a pizza.
Another turkey story has to do with a gathering at a friend’s apartment. We roasted a turkey together, but when it was done, many guests had not yet arrived. We should have left it in a warm oven, tented with foil. We made the big mistake of carving it and placing it in a 350-degree oven. By the time everyone was seated at the table, the turkey was a dried-out, stringy mess. We learned a lot about timing and oven temperatures on that occasion.
Baking has never been my forte. I just don’t like to bake. Still, each Hanukkah and Purim, I baked a carrot cake from a recipe in The Frog Commissary Cookbook to bring to the Novack family parties. I usually baked it the day before the party, but on one occasion I was harried and left it to the last minute. I also lost track as to the freshness of some ingredients.
"I’ll just bake the cake early Sunday morning and it will be ready to go by mid-afternoon," I thought to myself. I gathered the ingredients and began to make the cake. I shredded the carrots in the Cuisinart and set them aside. I should have looked at the expiration date on the baking powder. I did not know baking powder loses its potency after a period of time. I should have paid attention to the two cartons of eggs in my fridge as well.
I mixed the dry ingredients and put them in the Cuisinart. I broke an egg into the mixture and it smelled dreadful. "Ooh, rotten eggs," I thought. "How did this happen?" I ruined the batter. I had to start all over again. And since the baking powder lost its potency, the cake did not rise as high as it should.
Moral of the story: "When in doubt, throw it out." It’s also a good idea to crack eggs into a small bowl when baking or cooking before adding them to other ingredients.
My first attempt at making lasagna was not so hot, either. It was a meat version and I used too much sauce. I never had a nonna to tell me to add a beaten egg to the ricotta cheese to bind it. So there I was in my kitchen, happily layering the ingredients and getting mighty hungry. I could not wait to pull it from the oven and let it rest for a few minutes before slicing and serving it with a green salad and garlic bread.
Edward opened a bottle of Chianti and I cut into the lasagna. It was a soupy, unappetizing mess. "What did I do wrong?" I asked my husband. "I let it sit so it would solidify." I learned of my mistakes from reading several Italian cookbooks and my lasagna is now quite tasty, never runny nor soupy. More often than not, I make lasagna roll-ups.
Then there’s the topic of "mystery meat." This is the tag my husband Edward gives to cuts of beef and roasts that carry a strange moniker. To this day, I still don’t know what a beaver roast is. I’m not quite sure about a sirloin tip roast, either. And forget bottom round roast. Edward despises it.
In my culinary travels, before I acquired some knowledge about different cuts of beef, I have tried my hand at "mystery meat." I didn’t know lower-priced cuts of beef required braising, several hours of cooking and gravy to tender them up. I simply placed the sirloin tip roast or bottom round roast in the oven, let it cook for about an hour on high heat and brought it to the table.
Edward took one bite, gave me a huge smile and said, "Never make it again." It was tough. So tough we had a hard time cutting it with steak knives. Now I save my dollars and splurge on a fillet of beef or rib roast for special occasions.
Friends and family also have had funny things happen to them around food. One day many years ago, while working in his dad’s deli, Edward pulled a whole strawberry cheesecake from the display case. The cake slipped from his grip and promptly fell to the floor.
"Half-price for cheesecake," he laughed to his customers.
My sister Sandy once dropped a potato kugel, which crashed to the floor, scattering shards of glass all over her kitchen. The first time she roasted a turkey, she forgot to remove the plastic containing the giblets. "Do you think the plastic contaminated the turkey?" she asked me with wonder. I didn’t know the answer.
My friend Giovanna Cavaliere of South Philadelphia is a fine cook. She recently told me a funny story. Giovanna took the required cooking and sewing classes at Thomas Junior High School. She was so excited about making biscuits, she could not wait for her family to try them.
"Giovanna, you could make a lot of money with these biscuits," announced her brother Alphonse, who went on to become a famous Broadway conductor. "Really, they are that good?" she asked. "No," he teased. "You can sell them to the Phillies so they can use them for baseballs."
Kitchen disasters aren’t really disasters if you poke fun at them. All fine cooks have a bad moment from time to time. I often think of two funny statements when it comes to cooking dishes that just don’t turn out right.
My husband Edward says, "There’s always pizza."
My favorite Julia Child quote is, "No matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize."
