The other night I decided to try a recipe I had seen on facebook. It was spiced roasted potato and cauliflower with chickpeas on a layer of hummus. It sounded yummy as well as being protein rich.
So I set about getting it prepped and had to guess at the spice quantities because the recipe didn't give them - it was a video with commentary but no written instructions. So I was quite generous with the paprika and the cumin, and when it said to add more after the original tossing of the ingredients together to coat them evenly, I did so, also generously.
Into the oven it went and then I put the ingredients away. WTF?! What I thought was paprika was actually the cayenne pepper, dammit! All of my spices are in square jars with red lids, and the cayenne lives on the top of the rack on the far left. It's the one I use most because it's in my cheese scones.
I had automatically reached for it and not even checked its label...
Sure enough, the roast veges and chickpeas were too hot for me - I knew they were going to be because I had to turn the rangehood on to remove the chilli choking phenomenon that occurred when the heat of the oven released the pungency of the cayenne...
I did give it my best shot at eating them - smothered in plain yoghurt! Even so, I had to give at least a third of what I'd served myself to David.
The next night, he had the leftovers (I still have not mastered cooking veg meals with a quantity suitable for two) and I had roasted a kumara, a small carrot and a small parsnip with a little bit of paprika (yes it was) and thyme from the garden. I made a guacamole to go with my plate of veg with just a small amount of hummus. I didn't need yoghurt ...
Another cooking blunder that I made a couple of weeks ago was when I made pastry in the food processor. I was so enraptured with how quickly it whizzes into breadcrumb-like texture that I kept whizzing. Doh! The pastry tasted fine but it was a bit tough. And we had guests that I wanted to impress, dammit.
To be honest, I am not sure if it was over-whizzing or if egg wash and cooking the pasties at 190 deg C were the problem. I'd usually cook pastry a bit hotter and faster than that. Either way, I'll be whizzing for a far shorter time in future!
2 comments:
Ha, that reminds me of the time many years ago when I was making tomato sauce/ketchup to bottle, I was using a very old recipe book which everything was listed in the recipe in ounces and pounds, oh and I didn’t have my glasses on, read the recipe for 1/4oz of cayenne…….found out later it should have been 1/4tsp, that was one hot hot sauce. However I did calm it down somewhat by making another batch of sauce, this time without any cayenne and mixed the two batches together. It was edible!
Bernice, That is a more egregious and bum burning error than mine - you win!
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