Kitchen mishaps stir memories, teach lessons

Mom made pesto from what she thought was garden-grown basil but turned out to be evening primrose, which – we were all thankful to learn – is entirely edible.

So that little mistake wasn’t a complete disaster – unlike her gritty, cracker-like wheat germ pizza crust or pot of exploding noodles, which ended up – according to family lore – stuck to the ceiling of Grandma’s kitchen.

For years, Grandma would point out the grease stain above the stove – we never really could spot it, but we would squint, strain and nod – to show us what happens when you don’t know what you’re doing but want to impress a man with your cooking.

Grandma was not without fault. She made mean, old-country cabbage rolls, pork-filled potato dumplings and poppy seed bread. But she never could master the classic American chocolate chip cookie; her tooth-breaking batches consistently turned out as hard as bricks.

Of course, I’ve had my fair share of kitchen mishaps, too.

There was the pot of homemade – but burned beyond recognition – gnocchi I had planned to serve at a dinner party, my first batch of scratch-made pierogi, and the Easter ham I glazed with honey and cooked with pineapple – right along with the vacuum-sealed plastic wrap I had failed to remove. One Thanksgiving – or two or three – I couldn’t find the bag of giblets inside the turkey until after it had been basted with bourbon, roasted and carved. My first two batches of homemade marshmallows didn’t cure properly – and I ended up blowing out the motor of my handheld mixer in the process.

Another night I created an opaque pink “sauce” out of raspberry balsamic vinegar. Of all of my culinary offenses, this might have been the worst.

With shallots, rosemary and freshly cracked pepper, a little raspberry balsamic vinegar would make a savory, subtly sweet glaze. But, for some reason, in my inexperience but desire to experiment, I added flour, creating a thick and clumpy, grayish-pink gravy that, if it were prettier, would have resembled Pepto-Bismol. Still, I proceeded to glop it on top of otherwise perfectly good steak. The sickly, cloudy pink concoction tasted sort of fruity and acidic and had the mouthfeel of wet cardboard.

At least it wasn’t dangerous.

An old friend ended up in the emergency room after singeing her eyebrows and scorching her ceiling in a stovetop fire, which could’ve been so much worse. Another put a pizza in the oven then promptly fell asleep, waking to an apartment filled with smoke and dinner charred beyond edibility.

Whether the mishap was a close call, destroyed dessert or ruined entrée, frustrating, funny – or both – most home cooks have experienced kitchen catastrophes on some scale at some point.

Using salt instead of sugar. Failing to remove pits from cherries in a pie. Forgetting about the plastic wrap on a tray of cinnamon buns until after it’s been baked and melted.

It all makes the stuff of good stories.