I am going to be completely honest and say that there is a loooong list of epic cooking and baking fails I can draw upon. My family will absolutely provide you with an even longer list, the ones I thought were okay but they hated!
I am the main cook in the home. My husband likes to do the occasional culinary masterpiece that we are all to be in awe over, he is the ‘meat and gravy’ man for a Sunday roast, and that’s about it. My son flirted with cooking for a little while I suspect just to prove he could – once he had, he stopped. So, it’s left to me. I am always reluctant to have take aways (though currently, they’ve been more of a staple than I would like – see my other blogs for more on this), so cooking dinner is down to me. And I can sometimes have more ambition than my talents can deliver on.
My father is always keen to remind people of the salmon I cooked one time in parchment. I can’t remember the exact recipe, but I was experimenting before going off to university where I was going to have to cook my own food (obviously salmon wasn’t on the menu at university). Anyway, I proudly served the dinner with all its accompaniments etcetera…and as he got to the middle of his piece of salmon it was to find it wasn’t cooked through. That would have been 30 years ago now, and every time I say the word ‘salmon’ the story is repeated. I would have otherwise completely forgotten all about it, so it’s not an epic fail!
Another time I decided to make some fudge. I followed the recipe to the letter but obviously I did something very wrong because it never set. Ever. Only one person (my father) was brave enough to dip the tip of a finger in to taste it before it was poured down the drain I suspect. That was a real fail it must be said.
I can bake a decent enough cake though I don’t do it very often at all. I used to stupidly volunteer to bake a cake for, say, the MacMillan Coffee Morning events and regret doing so for the simple reason I dislike baking. I can bake nice cup cakes though I’m no artist so the icing can leave a lot to be desired if I’m honest. But, again, it’s not something I enjoy doing so when it came to bake sales at my son’s primary school, I either threw together cornflake chocolate and marshmallow cakes or bought the cakes. In those days, I really didn’t have the time to slave over the oven baking especially as I usually forgot it needed doing until the last minute.
Where I fail with baking is with ready made pastry. I can make a decent beef and ale pie from scratch, that was my speciality in lockdown along with a French apple tart which went well. But bizarrely, things fall apart for me when I use ready-made pastry. Especially puff pastry as I found when I tried to use it to make a salmon en croute. That was such a disaster, on a Sunday of course, that my husband had to dash out to the nearby petrol garage that has a very handy Marks & Spencer food outlet for some dinner. That was a pretty epic fail it must be said.
There was the time when I had a piece of salmon and fancied pasta for dinner but wasn’t sure how to combine the two when I was late home from work and wanted something quick. So, I went to a Tesco Express and looked for a sauce, eventually settling on a Sweet and Sour. It was the most disgusting meal I think I have ever cooked. Put it this way, even the dogs who ate anything turned their noses up it. It was so bad, I couldn’t eat it at all. That was quite an epic fail from my single days.
I have just asked my husband and son what they see as the worst meal I have ever cooked, and their response was unanimous. I cooked a Lasagna one night only instead of the pasta sheets, I used sliced courgettes. And instead of a traditional beef and pork ragu, I used sausage meat. I was trying a reduced carb diet at the time, hence the recipe. In all honesty, I didn’t mind it. It’s safe to say, my husband and son hated it. With a passion. For them it is the most epic fail of any cooking I have ever done.
For me…I think it’s the sweet and sour salmon pasta dish. I have just realised how most of the fails above involve salmon. Maybe I should stay away from cooking it! Quite simply, that version of salmon was the most disgusting thing I have ever cooked and attempted to eat. And my most epic cooking fail.
Louisa Simpson 