disasters

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FIXING COOKING DISASTERS

How do you fix things in the kitchen when they go awry? We have touched on these concepts, but we wanted to give you some specifics.

In your cooking life, you will make some mistakes. While experimenting, sometimes things will not work out as well as you had hoped. And sometimes you will create something so fabulous that you and your friends and family will enjoy that recipe for years.

Tip: When you create that fabulous thing, write it down. You even can keep a cooking journal if you tend to misplace recipes.

Perhaps one of the best cooking mishap stories is the one about the lady who dropped her Thanksgiving turkey in front of the guests. Big oops. Said she'd be right back. She took the turkey into the kitchen, brushed it off, made cosmetic repairs as needed and sailed back with it to her guests. "Here's the other turkey!" she said.

The moral: Don't panic. If you're entertaining, you'll only make your guests feel uncomfortable if your ice-cream pie is runny and you spend the rest of the evening apologizing. Make do. Turn on the creative juices. If it's beyond salvaging, serve fruit or make a fancy cup of coffee instead.

Few desserts are beyond salvaging. Be flexible. Keep ice cream in the freezer for dessert emergencies. Also keep pasta and sauce in the pantry for main-dish disasters.

Here are some tips on how to turn those experimental mistakes into, well, something edible.

• Runny fudge, goopy brownies, crumbly cookies: Spoon or sprinkle over ice cream.

• Cake falls apart: Break into chunks and layer in a glass bowl or glasses to make trifle or parfaits. Layer with fruit, ice cream, custard, dessert sauces, liqueur-laced whipped cream. Top with something decorative, like cherries or nuts.

• Cake or souffle fails to rise: Frost it and give it a new fancy name.

• Runny pie: Serve in individual bowls with ice cream.

• Burned pie: Remove burned part and serve in individual bowls with ice cream.

About the only thing you can't fix is something that's burned through. However, you can trim off burned edges from baked goods if enough is left. You also can use the unburned portions for trifle or cut what's left into squares and then frost or add sauce to them.

If you've burned something in a pan, you sometimes can scoop off the top layer into another bowl if you're careful to get none of the scorched stuff. Taste it to see if it's edible.

White sauce or gravy that's lumpy: Pour or mash through a strainer (also good cure for curdled sauce); beat vigorously with a whisk or run briefly in food processor with metal blade.

• Dry meat or poultry: Serve with a sauce; use in stir-fry. Or shred and add liquid to make a burrito filling.

• Dry fish: Crumble and bind with an egg and some seasoning to make croquettes.

• Sauces or entree too thin: Thicken with 1 tablespoon cornstarch per cup of liquid. Or with mashed potato flakes or buds.

• Vegetable dish is blah: Have you added a little salt? If yes, try pepper, a dash of hot sauce, a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of something green such as chopped parsley. Don't do all these at once!

• Mushy vegetables: Puree into an elegant side dish sprinkled with an herb or spice. Or mash and serve in a cream soup.

• Increasing the volume can be a solution. For soups that are oversalted, double the broth amount. If your salad is overdressed, add twice as much lettuce. Or if the lettuce isn't limp yet, drain out what dressing you can, then dump the salad onto paper towels, cover with more paper towels and rub off some of the excess dressing.

• Salty soup, broth, gravy or stew can be fixed with sliced raw potato. Cook until the potato is translucent, then fish it out and discard it.

• Entree too spicy: Add milk or cream or increase the volume with an unspiced batch.

• For doctoring purposes: Keep these ingredients in your pantry - sherry, tube of tomato paste, basic spices, instant vanilla pudding, cheese sauce or cheese soup, mashed-potato flakes, dehydrated onions.