Kitchen disaster

April 24, 2007

I was listening to a podcast by food presenter Victoria Hansen at the weekend and she happened to mention a couple of her more spectacular kitchen disasters – unfortunately on-air ones on TV, not private “if at first your don’t succeed, destroy the evidence” ones that most of us have at one time or another. One involved an espresso machine that virtually exploded live on air, burning her and causing her to resort to colourful language (“I swore, very heavily, as you do”).

My recent bad experiences are largely due to a pretty inferior oven that I have inherited in our current house. The repair man tells me it is no stellar appliance and though he has replaced the thermostat, according to my own portable oven thermometer, the oven gives bizarrely conflicting readings from front to back, shelf to shelf. Batches of biscuits come out pale and wan from one position, or grossly overtanned and charcoal-like from another. I am gradually taming the beast but the question remains – why should I have to? Who makes these sub-standard appliances? (Email me if you want to know one brand to avoid!)

I’ve also inherited a totally pathetic dishwasher that keeps uttering feeble beeps, goes into sulk mode at least once per cycle and doesn’t do much of a job even when managing a total wash without human intervention. And when the door is dropped to empty the machine, it blocks entry to the cupboard designed to hold most of the utility.crockery. (Budding architects can also email me for pointers on half-intelligent kitchen design.)

But let’s not get too paranoid about male-designed kitchens. My most recent kitchen disaster was a really sad story. In fact it almost reduced three adults to tears.

Younger son James is currently doing a spot of country service in a hospital a couple of hours away. He’s been working long hours so when he visited for the weekend I thought I’d make him some goodies to take back with him - a box of pecan brownies and a container of vegetable soup. The latter was one of those grand collections of autumn bounty. Picture it – red and white onions, butternut squash, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots,  celery,  bulb fennel, tomatoes, tomato paste, beef stock and a nice array of Italian-style dried pulses. It simmered away for a couple of hours and when I tasted it to adjust the seasoning, it was superb.

James packed his car for the return journey to Wangaratta and I gave him the box of brownies, and a container of the lovely soup for his supper.

I’d been to the local farmers’ market the day before so I had five “drunken fig and walnut sausages” and a lovely loaf of sourdough bread for The Spouse, elder son Ben and I to share for Sunday victuals - after our soup.

The sausages were cooking in the temperamental oven and the soup was a-heating on the range when all of a sudden there was a large popping noise at the business end of the kitchen. I thought one of the sausages might have exploded until Ben pointed to my pasta pot, which doubles as my soup pot.  The tempered glass lid had shattered. Worse still, it had dumped a pile of glass into the soup.

Suddenly our meal was drastically halved. The lovingly shredded, chopped, peeled and simmered soup had to be discarded.

The sausages were well and truly ready and it was too late to whip up some vegetables or mash. We sat down glumly down to our meagre pickings. We’d all been looking forward to our autumn soup…

Interestingly, I did Google search on exploding glass lids and found other similar tales. And Ben reminded me of the time a soprano was going full throttle on the radio and as she hit high C# a Pyrex lasagne pan sitting empty in the warming oven shattered. Maybe these kitchen items should carry a warning label!

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