Kitchen Nightmares

A couple weeks ago I had an interesting cooking experience.  And I mean interesting as in, my smoke detector should have gone off (hmm, I wonder why it didn't?).  Everyone needs those stories though - about how you almost burned the house down or accidentally used salt instead of sugar - they make things interesting, and the successes more meaningful. 

One time I was making some pasta with a salmon cream sauce (one of my go-to dinners), and I had accidentally bought a carton of skim milk instead of whipping cream, which I didn't realize until I poured it into the pan.  At first I just thought the cream had separated in the carton, so I kept pouring.  But alas, I had mistakenly picked up the light blue carton which means skim milk for the generic Jewel brand, but whipping cream for Dean's (a brand of milk in Chicago). Why anyone would bother packaging skim milk in a pint container I will never know.  I thought I could salvage the dish by adding some butter, so I went to open a new package of butter and gave myself a nice deep "paper" cut with the corner of the cardboard package.  With blood everywhere I decided to call it quits for the night and scrapped the project.  The story continues with my search for a band-aid but I won't go into it because it's rather PG-13.

This more recent event was less traumatic, but still definitely a learning experience.  I decided to roast some chicken thighs, using oven temperatures and cooking times from this Williams-Sonoma recipe.  Remembering a Barefoot Contessa show where Ina rubs the chicken skin with butter, I decided to switch out the olive oil for butter, forgetting that butter has a rather lower burning point than olive oil. My Pam spray must have gotten lost when I moved so I greased the pan with the room temperature butter I had lying around.  Pretty much immediately after putting the chicken in the oven I realized my mistake as the butter started to burn and my oven started smoking. I turned down the oven a little, but the chicken still came out with a distinct smokey flavor - a smokiness more evident when the smell in my apartment cleared and I microwaved the leftovers for lunch the next day. 

My second mistake of that meal, was in the conception of my risotto. Maybe I'm just discovering I don't care for risotto much, but this attempt was starchy and boring. I went for the monochromatic, using onions and fennel. I was underwhelmed.

This project did give me an excuse to practice my picture taking skills. What do you think?