De La Sauce of Garlic

I believe we have all made different cooking mistakes before.  Even great chefs like me make a very few mistakes.  I remember once I tried to branch out my baking abilities and decided not to use a recipe to make cookies (I think most of this inspiration came from being too lazy to go look up a recipe, yes, I can be that lazy).  Cookies have a specific texture that is created from a certain amount of butter and eggs and flour—a texture which I did not get right.  My cookies turned out half cookie and half sweet biscuit and when my roommate got home and tried one she couldn't decide what they were supposed to be.  I have since learned to use recipes when I attempt making cookies.

I also once made a batch of brownies (while using a recipe) without putting any flour in them.  How did I do this?  I'm not sure.  I put in what I thought was all the ingredients, mixed up the batter put it in a pan, and cooked it.  I didn't realize anything was wrong until the brownies never cooked into brownies and the toothpick never came out clean.  At this point my mother sat me down and grilled me.



Her: Did you put oil in the brownies?

Me: Yes

Her: Did you put eggs in?

Me: Yes

Her: What about baking powder, did it call for that?

Me, begining to feel frustrated: Yes

This went on until she finally stopped, cocked her head to the side and looked at me for a moment.

Her: You put flour in the brownies didn't you Laura?

Me, blank stare: flour?  Oh, I think that's what I forgot to put in them.

If you are ever looking for an interesting chocolatey fudge recipe, look no farther, just don't put any flour in your brownie recipe.  As chance would have it my gluten-intolerant grandmother had come over to visit that day, so we all just laughed and said that I had made it for her so that should could have some too—it sounded better than admitting that I had simply completely forgotten to put in the most dominant ingredient in the recipe.

There is one story that beats even this story though.  At my work in the hot kitchen there was one specific boy who was just a little ditsy, he was what you would call book smart, not particularly street smart.  Common sense sometimes evaded him.  On one particular day I handed him a recipe for a fennel and tomato sauce, told him to measure out the ingredients, mix them together as the recipe directed, and cook it.

The recipe was for twelve people, so we only needed about four cups of sauce.  He was gone for about an hour, which I imagined was due to it simply being him who was making the sauce.  I finally caught sight of him just as he was getting ready to put the sauce away—it did not look like a tomato sauce, in fact it did not even look like a sauce.  All through the sauce there were small white blobs, I stared for a moment, and finally realized what they were.

Me: is that chopped garlic?

Him, nodding: yes

Me: why is there so much of it?

Him: the recipe called for that much.

Me: Really?

Him, showing me the recipe and pointing: Yes, three pounds of garlic.

Me: it says three teaspoons.

Him: Oh.  Yah.  I thought three pounds seemed like a lot.

Three pounds is about six cups of chopped garlic.

Needless to say we remade the sauce and threw the garlic stew away, and I continue to be exceedingly amused by the entire situation.