Recipe for Disaster

A made a re-entry into my life months ago armed with apologies and flowers in prodigious quanitities. We won’t go into the details. That’s not the disaster I’m referring to here.

Tired of the inevitable pizza-burger night because the cook had been MIA for a couple of days, we decided to try our hand at cooking something for ourselves. Pasta (not Sunfeast) and mashed potatoes were penciled into the menu. Some grocery shopping ensued where we were unable to find most of the ideal ingredients and seasonings. We decided to make do with the basics such as butter, cheese, flour, salt with some peas, corn and chicken salami as extras.

I must tell you that my accomplishments in the kitchen are limited to tea, french toast and maggi. A’s may be even less than that but to hear him talk, you’d think he’d apprenticed with Julia Child in his youth.

And so the underconfident and the overconfident set about to make the meal.

I wanted to read the instructions carefully first and make all the ingredients ready to throw into the pot before we actually started cooking. A gleefully started boiling everything in sight before I downloaded the recipe.

When it was time to make the sauce, the instructions specifically said to add the milk right after adding the flour to prevent the flour from turning brown. I told A to hold off on adding flour till I opened the carton of milk and poured the first cup. After I retrieved the carton of milk from the fridge, I turned to see A diligently pouring two spoonfuls of flour to the butter/garlic mix in the pan. A blur of yelling, panic and milk spilling followed. A rather meek and subdued A followed instructions to the letter thereafter.

We finished the rest of food processing relatively smoothly. A burnt his hand and the breads in quick succession.

Some minor disagreements and several dirty dishes later, we surveyed our resultant white sauce chicken ‘n’ corn pasta and mashed potatoes with satisfaction. The disaster struck kitchen with piles of discarded packaging and sink full of dirty pots and pans were surveyed with a somewhat lower degree of satisfaction. A’s younger brother bounded into the kitchen, did a double take at what must have appeared to be the aftermath of a particularly bad fight between A and myself. He recovered quickly enough to focus on what was important – the food, wisely pronounced it awesome, devoured it and made a hasty exit resolutely averting his eyes from the mess in the kitchen.

The maid was not happy the next day. But that’ll teach her for taking an unannounced leave of absence.

We’re doing thai curry next. Pray for us.