Accidents in Cooking

The score, assuming you keep track of these thins, is horrible things in the kitchen 2 and me 0.

Two culinary horrors occurred yesterday that left me dismayed, disappointed, and down a few ounces.

For the record, I'm a pretty good cook. Not as good as my dear wife but not bad. I also preface that I choose "cook" instead of "chef" because I feel the latter implies a certain level of professionalism that I clearly don't posses. I don't believe it shows in my final product which tends to be both creative and darn tasty, but rather in the little battles. Such as the one I had with the vegetable peeler last night. I thought I might be able to exert some amount of control over the hand-sized contraption but on the last swipe of the last sweet potato it gained the upper hand. Unlucky for me, that upper hand was actually my thumb. So some paper towels land several band aids later it still hurts like hell but at least the bleeding has stopped (the picture is not my actual thumb, it's a compensated actor). Just remember Peeler, I know where you live!

Speaking of kitchen disasters, I tried out the newest offering from Food Network last night. The show, "America's Worst Cook" debuted to a lukewarm review on my part. The show is essentially a cooking competition featuring everyday Americans who want to cook but produce stuff so bad that Sally Struthers wouldn't even put down that Ethiopian child she's eating to pick at the plate. My thoughts were at first the two professional chefs would take the contestants through all sorts of skills demonstrations (knife skills, working with spices, how to boil water) but I was disappointed and dismayed to see these neophytes of nori be tossed right into the kitchen-aide processor blade and have to replicate one of the two dishes created by the show's professional chefs. if these are truly "The Worst Cooks in America" then surely they should learn the basics like boiling vs blanching and baking vs broiling before stepping up and creating a dish. I would point out that the dishes they made weren't so complex as to cause a culinary student to sweat but for this crew PB&J might have caused a panic attack. I'll give it a few more episodes but I'm just not sure about its staying power. But the chefs have to change. The male, Beau MacMillan, looks like a slightly slimmer Louie Anderson with a Boston accent and the female, Annie Burrell, well, she looks like the love child of Guy Fierre and Mr. Clean. Scary