If you cook, no matter how good you are, you make mistakes. Things get burnt, too much salt goes into the soup, soufflés fall, puff pastry overcooks or a sauce curdles. Remember Julia Child's errant potato pancake on her PBS Show? Often, there is a rescue to the problem. Here are a few tips to save the dish.
Too much salt
If you unintentionally add too much salt to a dish there are several of things you can try to correct this frequently made mistake. One of the best ways is to add more of the other ingredients. Obviously, this will produce a larger quantity of food than was originally needed, but leftovers can always be eaten later. If you have more of the liquid such as a soup or stock, pour the salted stock off and add more. Salt can sometimes be removed from a dish, such as a stew, by adding a peeled potato. Cut the potatoes into one inch pieces and cook the potato in the dish for about 15 minutes. Then remove it. This should absorb some of the excess salt, making the dish edible again.
The usual mechanism of getting too much salt in a dish is by directly shaking or pouring rom the salt container. Best practice is to pour the salt into the palm of your hand to get a visual measurement before dumping it into the salt.
Burnt food
A pan left on the heat for too long or on too high a heat will result in the contents sticking to the bottom and burning, especially cream based sauces and stews. Remove the dish from the heat but do not stir or scrape the pan. Take a new pan and pour in about three quarters of the contents, leaving the remainder behind in the burnt pan. If the smokey, bitter taste has infused the dish, your done. Toss is out. Remember, your first line of defense is to use a great cooking vessel and manage the heat source. Always use a flexible whisk to stir thick preparations.
Lumps in Sauces
A fine sieve called a chinoise is the best way to remove lumps from any kind of sauce and is worth investing in. Pour the liquid through the sieve and let it drain into another container to remove any lumps. Such a sieve is also useful for removing seeds from a raspberry or strawberry coulis (puree of fruit or vegetable). You might also try pureeing the sauce in a blender on high speed. Always start the blender by pulsing to avoid a steam explosions that will send sauce to the four walls. An immersion blender can also do the same trick. To prevent lumps in roux based sauces (flour-butter thickened) remember the hot-cold rule. The roux need to be cool if you are adding warm or hot liquid to it or the roux needs to be warm of you are adding cold liquid to it.
Hollandaise Sauce Separating
Typically, a hollandaise sauce will split because the clarified butter was too hot, you added the butter to fast to the yolks or you overcooked the yolks initially. To rescue a split hollandaise sauce, place an egg yolk in a bain-marie, add a splash of water and whisk. Next add the split Hollandaise very slowly using a ladle to drizzle in the broken sauce. If you find it becomes too thick before all the sauce has been added, add an extra splash of warm water before continuing. When making a Hollandaise sauce, it is extremely important to remember to make sure that all the ingredients stay at the same temperature – not too hot and not too cold. Sometimes adding a little crushed ice can revive the sauce or whisking in a little hot water.
How to Revive a Stale Loaf
If a loaf of un-sliced bread or baguette has gone a little stale and dry, wrap it up in a damp cloth for 20 minutes, then remove from the cloth and place in a hot oven at 350F for 2-3 minutes. This will revive the bread and give it that just cooked feel. If it is beyond rescue, make it into croutons or dry out and pulverized for breading.
Warm Bottles of White Wine or Champagne
If you need to chill a bottle down quickly the best way is to put the bottle in an ice bucket filled with ice with a little cold water and a good handful of coarse salt. This should cool the bottle to 45F in less than 10 minutes.
Fallen Soufflé
If you have ever made a soufflé, you know that they will deflate at some point. The old admonition to walk softly, not open the oven door and make sure your guests are waiting for the soufflé and the soufflé not waiting for your guests all hold true. Sadly there is no rescue for a fallen soufflé. However, my friend Chef James Sly invented a dessert called Fallen Chocolate Soufflé that embraces the desserts tendency to surrender to gravity.
From the Ashes Rise the Phoenix
Sometimes a culinary challenge leads to a new dish. Here are a few classics.
Potato Chips
In 1853, American Indian George Crum worked as a chef at Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. One item on the menu was a French-fried potato, which was normally included with dinner. One evening a guest at the resort refused the thick slices of potato, so Crum cut them thinner. Again they were refused. A chef's work is not easy, and slicing potatoes by hand takes time, so in an attempt to further annoy the picky guest, the irritated Crum made the potatoes extremely thin and crispy, rendering them impossible to pick up with a fork, and supposedly over-salted them. But the result was not what he expected - the patron loved them, and they soon became a specialty at the lodge, called either "Saratoga Chips" or "Potato Crunches."
Chocolate Chip Cookies
In 1930, retired dietitian Ruth Wakefield and her husband Ken bought a toll house near Whitman, Massachusetts and added rooms, expanding the house to an inn. Ruth continued the toll house tradition of making home-cooked meals for guests, and was soon known for her desserts. She was in the middle of making a batch of Butter Drop Do cookies (a traditional colonial recipe) when she discovered that she was out of baker's chocolate, so she substituted a bar of sweetened chocolate, given to her by Andrew Nestle. She broke the bar into little pieces and added them, expecting that they would simply melt into the cookie dough while in the oven. Instead, they only softened, forming creamy chocolate chunks.
Puffed Potatoes or Souffléed Potatoes
According to Larousse Gastronomique, the story goes that they were accidentally discovered in 1837. At the inauguration of a new railway line from Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Lay.
There was to be a lunch for the dignitaries at the restaurant in the new station. The train was had problems making it up a steep slope at the final approach to the station.
The chef prepared some sliced fried potatoes at the appointed time, but when the guests didn't arrive on time, he had to remove the half cooked potatoes and allow them to drain and cool. After several attempts the train finally made it, and caught by surprise at the unexpected arrival of the guests, the chef plunged the potatoes quickly into very hot oil and to his amazement, saw them puff up.
