Food Fumbles Failures–Fantastic!

Cooking is pretty much like everything else you do.  You’ve got to go through a few failures, and I mean some pretty nasty ones, before you get good at it.  I’ve had some spectacular failures, mostly because I was not paying attention to what I was doing, or not following directions, or not using the right ingredients.

Here’s a good one.  My Mom and Dad had a recipe for the most perfect custard pie with a silken consistency and just the right sweetness.  Since my husband and I both love custard pie, I thought I would try it.  Dad said I couldn’t possibly go wrong with the no-fail recipe.  That should have been a tip off. OK, I figured I would give it a try but I wouldn’t attempt the crust.  At that time in my life, I was just not a pastry chef type person. Not that I am now.

I bought the pre made 9 inch crusts that come two to a package. I mixed up the custard ingredients and had the oven preheated. Everything was on target. Then, I got the pie shells out of the refrigerator, opened the package, discarded the wrapper, separated the two pie shells and poured in the custard. I sprinkled on just the right amount of nutmeg, then carefully put the pies in the oven. All was well. The reason this recipe works is that it starts out at a high temperature to set the bottom crust, then the temp is decreased for the custard to cook.

After the pies were cooked and out of the oven and cooled, I sliced into the first one and it was, as promised, perfect. Unbelievable. I had done it. We ate the pie that same day. Yes, I know that was gluttonous. We couldn’t help ourselves. Next day we were having company and I was so happy to have an excellent dessert to serve them. Fortunately we had controlled ourselves enough not to dig in to the second pie.

Here’s where the disaster came in. I was chatting with our friends as they were sitting at our kitchen counter/bar and I got the pie out. It was beautiful. I put the knife in and felt a little pull back as I was slicing. Sure enough, I had left the paper liner in the bottom of the pie shell. Well at least I got some laughs and we all have a story to tell. I don’t like to be the butt of this type of story but maybe it was just my turn. The neat thing was that I managed to lift out the custard part of the pie, remove the paper, and slide the ‘guts’ back in to the shell. It still tasted good and we had some fun over the deal.

I remembered with some embarrassment that I was the one laughing the loudest when a friend left the package of giblets inside her Thanksgiving turkey. She was mortified that she did that and served the turkey to her in laws. At the time I thought, ‘How stupid. I would NEVER do anything like that.”

Live and learn.