Looks pretty good, don't it?
A few days ago, I said looking pretty was half the battle. I neglected to mention that half a battle does not guarantee a fait accompli.
Tonight, an Emmy-winning episode of Law & Order: Soup Victims Unit played out right in my tiny kitchen.
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| Don't look at me like that, Ice T! |
You're not even going to believe the sheer quantity of time and vegetables it took to produce this cataclysmic abomination. To quote Patton Oswalt, this was the closest I've ever come to a "failure pile in a sadness bowl."
Seriously, I'm so bummed and ashamed that I feel like I should type in a smaller font.
The saga begins thus: I have this wonderful, trusted Cook's Illustrated Cookbook that has really never failed me. Its recipe for "ultimate vegetable stock" has been staring me down for a few years, but I've never had the guts to take it on. The equation of a few hours of fairly active cooking time plus over six pounds of vegetables to yield 4 cups of broth didn't really cut the mustard when put through a simple cost-benefit analysis.
This year, I was determined to conquer my miserly laziness and have my mind blown by this mythic broth, a celebration of all that is vegetal, which promised to be good enough to eat on its own. My plan was to accent this nectar of the gods with nothing more than perfect little pillows of potato gnocchi.
Can you tell I built it up in my mind a little too much?
I started cooking around 6 o'clock. Two and a half hours later, I've finally made it through all the washing and peeling and chopping and caramelizing and glazing and simmering.I set my fine strainer over a big bowl in the sink, and got to pouring from my gigantic stock pot.
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| That owl staring through the steam was an omen. |
Funny thing about straining that many vegetables: They'd rather come down in an avalanche than a steady stream. And in all there was enough there to fill the strainer three times over. Apparently they didn't want to be separated, because they banded together and attacked, spilling into the sink, knocking over both strainer and bowl, and splashing more than a quarter of the broth straight down the drain.
After already shedding numerous tears while chopping that stupid amount of onions earlier, more were teetering at the brim of my eyelids.
But one mustn't cry over spilled soup. I bravely squared my shoulders and finished straining, reminding myself that 3 cups of broth was plenty.
And then I tasted the final product, with years of anticipation quivering in every tastebud.
Meh.
It managed the trick of being both too bold and not flavorful enough. This is a broth to use as an ingredient, not anything I'd like a whole bowl of. This called for emergency services.
I looked in the fridge for what else I had, knowing I could repurpose the potatoes that would have been gnocchi. It was definitely getting hungry around the apartment, and I needed to act fast. Here we go: A potato soup base incorporating some of the vegetable broth and a bit of east Asian flavors, topped with a stir-fry of slivered snow peas, shiitake mushrooms and baby turnips with crispy bits of fresh ginger and garlic.
This last minute contingency plan resulted in what can best be described as a nutritional paste. Or as Logan called it, Potatooooooohnooooo.
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| Oh, the humanity! |
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| Mmmm...slop. |
So, I'll take this as a lesson. Don't cook sad. Don't cook in a hurry. Be present and patient in your cooking and you won't end up eating something this bad at 10pm on a Wednesday.
Only two (very faint) saving graces here:
1) Logan said it wasn't the worst thing I've ever made him -- that honor going to the kale smoothie catastrophe of March 2012 that led to the death of my Magic Bullet. One word: Chunky.
2) He said it was still better than Subway. Even during FebruANY.
Obviously, I won't burden you with this recipe for disaster. Thank God there's always more soup tomorrow.
You are a poet. Godspeed your next soupventure!
ReplyDeleteThis was the saddest, until Logan's comments at the end saved the day. GOOD JOB, LOGAN.
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