Welcome to Sunday Sobremesa, a twice-monthly thread to discuss food and culture while sipping on a cafe bombón (or a menta poleo1 if that’s more your style!).
Cafe bombón (espresso with condensed milk) from one of my first visits to Madrid
I’ve been thinking the past few days how it’s ironic2 that I celebrated my six months on Substack and consistent publishing and then basically disappeared for a week and a half. Unfortunately, a combination of family medical issues, travel, adjusting to GMT+1 after being in the US for a month, and an abundance of work at my day job has just made writing difficult this past week. As Alanis sings, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you.
But the good news is, I’m back! And it’s Sunday Sobremesa time!
This week I thought we could talk about our culinary failures. For me, two instances come to mind: one in my early 20s when I blindly followed a slow-cooker recipe I had found online and the chicken almost disintegrated in the soup, and a more recent one from a couple years ago when a tomato soup I attempted oddly ended up both incredibly spicy and exceedingly bland.
Perhaps my favorite culinary failure anecdote comes from my mom, in reference to making fried chicken for my dad for the first time. As the story goes, she places a plate of beautifully golden, crispy chicken in front of my dad… then he cuts into a piece and it’s raw inside. And people wonder why I was terrified of cooking meat for years (until I bought a meat thermometer)!
Culinary mishaps can actually be maddening, so let’s take the edge off of the upcoming holiday cooking stress (there’s nothing like the pressure of having to cook for a crowd!) and share our funniest fails.
On irony and the term “ironic”: Ironic by Alanis Morissette has made me eternally paranoid about calling something “ironic.” Does anyone else remember the backlash of people pointing out that the situations in the song in fact were not ironic in the strictest sense of the term? To those people, I ask: does that stop you from screaming the lyrics when it comes up on your 90s essentials playlist?
Oh too many to count! But my friend Kathryn and I will never forget when I was developing recipes for my first book and she came over for dinner the horror that was an attempt at a s'mores bread and butter pudding! She even brought it up at dinner last weekend... it happened 7 years ago!!!
Welcome back! Years ago, when my mom was a new wife and mother, she made pumpkin pie from scratch for the first time. She proudly served it at Thanksgiving and was horrified when everyone started making faces while eating it. Unfortunately, she'd used whole cloves instead of ground!
Coffee looks delicious, I usually top mine with whipped cream instead of milk! When I was first learning to cook years ago I was frying something, I think it was just vegetables, but the pan became so hot and there wasn't enough oil and somehow I lit the entire pan on fire. I didn't realise but the entire kitchen was smokey, the fire alarm was ringing and I severely burned the pan. Needless to say we had to throw it out and that's how I learned that it's ok to add extra oil to a pan if you feel that it's right.
Oh, no! I’ve definitely let a pot with boiling water on the stove too long and scorched the pan bottom before 😖 Also whipped cream in coffee sounds amazing!
Way back in bell bottom- granola days I tried to make tofu. I did not know how to cook anything, and probably was not used to following recipe directions.
I had a large pot of pulverized soybeans cooking in water on the stove. At some point this had to be strained. Logically I threw out the water and saved the pulp. A sickening feeling when I realized my mistake. It was supposed to be just the opposite!
An honest mistake and I probably would have done the same! I always have to remind myself several times when making pasta dishes to save some of the pasta water because otherwise I forget and throw it all out!
Do a search for something like "uses for pasta water" and you will find a list of surprising uses. We have all been throwing out this valuable resource!
Yes! The coffee does look yummy! I remember that chicken story well. My Mom never fried chicken because my Dad wouldn’t eat it so really I didn’t know how to fry chicken! He grew up on a farm with 9 other siblings so every Sunday they would have chicken . So my Dad would have to kill them and he said they were the nastiest animal he ever seen! So that’s why Mom never fried chicken although when she went out to eat with someone she always had chicken lol
Welcome back! I had a pumpkin pie fail in my last newsletter 🤣 I covered it with whipped cream which is ‘make-up, for pie 🥧’ 😉 that coffee looks so good!
Oh too many to count! But my friend Kathryn and I will never forget when I was developing recipes for my first book and she came over for dinner the horror that was an attempt at a s'mores bread and butter pudding! She even brought it up at dinner last weekend... it happened 7 years ago!!!
Hahaha I love those stories that turn into classics told over and over again!
Welcome back! Years ago, when my mom was a new wife and mother, she made pumpkin pie from scratch for the first time. She proudly served it at Thanksgiving and was horrified when everyone started making faces while eating it. Unfortunately, she'd used whole cloves instead of ground!
Hahaha this made me laugh out loud!
Coffee looks delicious, I usually top mine with whipped cream instead of milk! When I was first learning to cook years ago I was frying something, I think it was just vegetables, but the pan became so hot and there wasn't enough oil and somehow I lit the entire pan on fire. I didn't realise but the entire kitchen was smokey, the fire alarm was ringing and I severely burned the pan. Needless to say we had to throw it out and that's how I learned that it's ok to add extra oil to a pan if you feel that it's right.
Oh, no! I’ve definitely let a pot with boiling water on the stove too long and scorched the pan bottom before 😖 Also whipped cream in coffee sounds amazing!
Way back in bell bottom- granola days I tried to make tofu. I did not know how to cook anything, and probably was not used to following recipe directions.
I had a large pot of pulverized soybeans cooking in water on the stove. At some point this had to be strained. Logically I threw out the water and saved the pulp. A sickening feeling when I realized my mistake. It was supposed to be just the opposite!
An honest mistake and I probably would have done the same! I always have to remind myself several times when making pasta dishes to save some of the pasta water because otherwise I forget and throw it all out!
Do a search for something like "uses for pasta water" and you will find a list of surprising uses. We have all been throwing out this valuable resource!
Yes! The coffee does look yummy! I remember that chicken story well. My Mom never fried chicken because my Dad wouldn’t eat it so really I didn’t know how to fry chicken! He grew up on a farm with 9 other siblings so every Sunday they would have chicken . So my Dad would have to kill them and he said they were the nastiest animal he ever seen! So that’s why Mom never fried chicken although when she went out to eat with someone she always had chicken lol
I always forget that Papaw didn’t like chicken!
Welcome back! I had a pumpkin pie fail in my last newsletter 🤣 I covered it with whipped cream which is ‘make-up, for pie 🥧’ 😉 that coffee looks so good!
Make-up for pie! I love it 😆 I just popped over to check out the newsletter and the whipped cream is doing the trick because the pie looks delicious!