I Suck

So...lesson of the day: Baking Soda is NOT the same thing as Baking Powder.

Over the weekend we went to the market and picked up a chicken which I figured I'd roast sometime during the week. But I always forget that it's hard to roast a chicken mid-week after work since more recipes take about two hours to cook. So I decided to go with the Zuni-chicken since this recipe consists of cooking a chicken at a high heat for about an hour. You do need to salt the chicken in advance (the recipe calls for 2-3 days) but that's easy as long as you plan ahead.

ANYWAY. I wanted to try out some tips that I'd seen on a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen that were supposed to help achieve a crispy skin. It involved separating most of the skin from the chicken before hand (this is kind of gross. At one point pretty much my entire hand was in the chicken-skin) and also incorporating baking powder into the dry rub....ugh. Now I'm an experienced enough baker that I know the difference between baking powder and baking soda. I didn't just run out of baking powder and assume that they could be substituted for one another. Somehow I just got it into my head that I was supposed to use soda and led to completely disastrous results.

Luckily the actual chicken was relatively unmarred and tasted fine (deliciously flavourful and juicy, even). But my favourite part, the skin? Completely inedible. I actually spit the first piece out it was so bad. It also ruined the drippings which is a crucial ingredient to the Zuni bread salad. So sad :(

Anyway, the funny part is that I spent the majority of the evening convinced that the baking soda was a bad idea and that maybe we just used too much. I don't really take cooking failures well so was kind of depressed about it when I realized that I was actually supposed to use baking POWDER! Idiot!!

So anyway, Zuni chicken is delicious but don't use baking soda in your rub. Actually maybe skip the baking whatever altogether as it's not even an ingredient. But please....don't repeat my mistake. It was gross.

Another day, Another Burnt Pizza

Let's quickly refresh the scoreboard here...Pizza - 5, Jess - 0

Today's lesson is: don't do ANYTHING but stand anxiously outside the oven and check your pizzas every thirty seconds while it's under the broiler on the very top rack. It takes a surprisingly short amount of time for them to burn.

Luckily it wasn't the DINNER pizza, but just the "oh let's be clever and make extra pizzas for lunch tomorrow" pizzas. And they were just on pitas as we only had enough dough for the dinner pizza. So it could have been worse. But I'm still not over it.

By the way, the dinner pizza had SPAM on it. And it was delicious! I'm calling it my "true" Hawaiian pizza. Hawaiians love their SPAM. So do Koreans. Yum.

On common sense (and a lacking thereof...)

Occasionally triumph arises out of adversity.

More often, though, things happen the other way around.

After successfully recreating el Bulli type spheres of deliciousness (about sixteen different varieties – including a pea sphere which was turned into the filling of some fresh ravioli), I was left with a couple of pints of algin bath.

Which I absentmindedly poured down the sink without so much as a blink before commencing with Mount Washmore (seriously, I don’t know how two of us create so much washing up).

‘Hon, why won’t the shower water drain away?’ my girlfriend asked, her tone heavy with innocent confusion come Sunday morning.

‘I’m not too sure,’ I replied, ‘but the sink is taking ages to empty as well.’

The answer didn’t elude us for long.

‘Erm, the outside drain seems to be full of jelly,’ she shouted through the kitchen window. I went cold and turned a distinct shade of rose that can only be associated with a realisation coupled with guilt and a heavy dose of stupidity.

She was right. It looked like a jellyfish massacre had taken place just outside the back door.

Forgetting my initial travails regarding the effects of hard water on alginate solution, it was with gay abandon that I’d disposed of the liquid down the sink. More than once.

‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘You’ve blocked our drains with molecular gastronomy. YOU’VE BLOCKED OUR DRAINS WITH MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY.’ If the entire scenario hadn’t been so comical I’d have been more scared.

As it was, she could do little to stop the beginnings of a smile gently touching at the corners of her mouth. My fear gradually fell away.

But it didn’t alter the fact that our drains were blocked with what looked like the contents of the world’s largest sneeze.

‘Do you not remember what happened when you tried to mix that stuff with tap water?

I hadn’t. But now I did.

‘Oops,’ was pretty much all I could manage. It was followed by a sheepish ‘Shit.’

Google was no assistance. Results for ‘dissolve calcium alginate gel’ were unhelpful aside from telling me that it wasn’t heat soluble. The four kettle-fulls of water I’d already poured through the drain cover had probably exacerbated the problem then.

I turned to eGullet and posted my query.

And the good folks there brought answers like the postman delivering a letter to a wartime bride.

‘You could try using an auger or drain snake,’ came one outstanding suggestion.

It’s good to know that when all else fails, brute force is still a veritable option.

After much pushing, shoving, wiggling and dry-heaving the blockage was dislodged and came sailing down the pipe followed swiftly by assorted detritus. No details necessary. I’m sure your imagination can stretch to picturing a giant ball of jelly that had possibly been clogging the pipes for weeks.

And all that followed in its wake.

Success. And like an episode of Thundercats I shall end with a moral. Perhaps one that I should have learnt after watching ‘The Fly’ aged 8: Those with only a rudimentary understanding of science shouldn’t play with forces whose power remains unknown

Jeff Goldblum should probably have taken heed too. Honestly, he should have known Jurassic Park was going to go wrong.

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