Yesterday afternoon I cooked a homemade vegetable soup – A consommé so bland it led me to question the validity of the old adage ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’. Yours truly concluding the culinary combo’s flavour to be so meagre that assistance from additional chefs couldn’t possibly have spoilt it anymore. To my mind their input would’ve only improved the dishwater like qualities of the dish I’d produced.
Yes, it’s fair to say that on this occasion I was living proof that a collection of cooks didn’t hold a monopoly on broth ruination. The afternoon’s efforts confirming one chef is perfectly capable of making a right pigs ear of the watery vegetable amalgam…… Coming to think of it, using a pigs ear for stock may’ve lifted the soups taste beyond the realms of meh.
Ordinarily, I’m not a bad cook. However, as late Wednesday afternoon handed over the chronological baton to evening, GJ Strachan mused the only way he’d have received plaudits for his rancid root veg concoction is if the BBC commissioned a programme called ‘Not Masterchef’.
A show seeking candidates whose cuisine skills are the very antithesis of those who on a weekly basis produce magnificent culinary delights to judges Greg Wallace and Jon Torode on TV’s ‘Masterchef’….. Wallace the fella who looks like a bespectacled tortoise without a shell. A man (or tortoise) who’s lost so much weight it looks like the show’s food, which he sits frostily faced in judgement of, is the only scran he gets all week.
Yours truly going on to conclude, if the Beeb decide on broadcasting a show called ‘Not Masterchef’, or )if aired after the 9pm watershed) ‘You Don’t Expect Me To Eat That S***e Do You?’, I’m sure Greg and Jon (if they wanted the presenting gig) would be mightily unimpressed if I entered and managed to recreate such insipidly flavoured broth.
Remember, though, unimpressed with food which turns to dust in your mouth is good on ‘Not Masterchef’, or ‘You Don’t Expect Me To Eat That S***e Do You?’ Winner of this clambake the contestant who commits the biggest culinary crimes. The crown going to the ‘chef’ who knocks up fodder which is so rank even that greedy b*****d on ‘Man Vs Food’ wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.
Subsequently, my soup, which couldn’t even be saved from a serving bowl named ‘Rancid’ by adding half a kilo of cracked black pepper and enough salt to de-ice my driveway, would’ve surely kept me in the competition for at least another week.
Anyhow, I’m not overly disheartened by my broth flavour aberration. Ordinarily, as alluded to above, the fodder I bring to the dining table is pretty decent. Since leaving the marital home my culinary repertoire has broadened; not to mention my overly skillset has improved markedly from cooking meals on a daily basis.
I now generally create flavoursome tuck, instead of havoc, while kitchen in situ. No more will you witness faux pas such as endeavouring to cook minced beef on a standard BBQ grill, or utilising herbs and spices to keep my feet fresh when wearing sneakers without socks.
Tonight’s dining piece de resistance is halloumi stirred fried with noodles, spring onions, red pepper and Szechaun sauce, which if it tastes as magnificent my effort at the recipe last weeks will be a treat….. Well, with the bloody soup starter being off the menu, I’m hoping that main course turns out palatable anyways!
