Fire in the Hole!

Things have been a bit busy around here lately - both personally and professionally - but, here I am and ready to tell you a little story this morning! I am sharing this for several reasons, the main one being that I think every aspiring home (or professional) cook needs to understand that kitchen disasters happen to the best of us and when the unexpected happens, you do your best to roll with the punches and salvage your meal. The story begins like this: my husband's 38th birthday was last weekend and we decided to invite our parents over for dinner that evening. My husband has an odd fondness for Cornish Game Hens and so I have developed several different ways of cooking them for him. My personal favorite is to have the butcher at my favorite specialty foods store chop them in half, after which I just bring them home and lightly marinate them in whatever I am into on that particular day. I then grill them on my natural gas grill which saves my kitchen from being overheated during the hot afternoon. For my husband's birthday dinner, I had decided to marinate the halved Cornish Game Hens in a light Dijon-herb vinaigrette. I lovingly clipped basil, chives and tarragon out of my herb garden, added a couple of tablespoons of Dijon mustard, a splash of red wine vinegar and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. I generously seasoned each hen half with salt and pepper, then slathered on the marinade and let them sit while I fired up the grill. I planned to serve the hens with horseradish mashed potatoes and peas with caramelized pearl onions.

By the time the grill was heated and ready to go, most of the other prep work had been done. The onions were golden brown, crispy and sweet, just awaiting their addition to the pot of simmering peas; the potatoes were ready to be riced (pretty much my new favorite way to mash potatoes); and the Cornish Game Hens were seasoned with the tart and tangy marinade and ready to cook on the grill. I had ten hen halves, which I anticipated would take up most of my grill space, so I had the thing on full blast so as not to lose too much heat when I started cooking. I carefully arranged the halves on the grill grates, skin side down, closed the lid and left my husband and his father on the back porch to monitor the grilling process. I came back inside and began dealing with the potatoes and peas. Not five minutes passed before I turned around to look at the grill (which tends to smoke a bit when I do Cornish Game Hens on it - those things are a little fatty when you leave the skin on). I noticed a fair amount of fire in the bottom grill pan and also noticed that my husband and father-in-law were crouching down to get a better look at it. I thought to myself, "hmm...that is not what it is supposed to be doing". At that exact moment (or so it seemed), the fire when from small to kind of engulfing the grill pan. The grill starting belching out this thick, dark black and billowing cloud of smoke. I realized that my first reaction was a bit of an understatement and as I noticed the black smoke creeping into my kitchen, I ran to open the windows on the front of the house so I could avoid the obnoxious fire alarm from going off. My kids watched all of this with rapt attention and then started running around asking me if we needed to call the fire department. My mother-in-law distracted them while the rest of us dealt with the fire and they had a great time with the open windows (which lack screens right now), playing "apartment". (They were neighbors talking to each other out their windows.)

I walked outside and asked my husband, "are they f*****?" (I have a bit of a sailor mouth when it comes to food getting messed up in my kitchen. Also, I had spent almost $25 on those things and I kind of wanted them to turn out well, especially because it was my husband's birthday dinner.) Upon opening the grill, we waved away the remnants of the smoke and were horrified to find that the Cornish Game Hens were about as black as could possibly be. We examined them closely and decided that some of the damage the smoke had done could be washed off and the rest we would just eat around.

So, that is what I did. I took my lovingly prepared Cornish Game Hen halves back inside, scrubbed each one individually and placed them on a pan to roast in the oven to finish cooking. When they came out, I served them, as planned with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy and everyone at the table (including our two daughters) declared that they were very tasty. I have to admit that I was surprised by how good they did actually taste. To be sure, they were smokey and quite overcooked in spots, but they had crisp, crunchy skin and juicy, sweet meat that was, oddly enough, still fairly nicely seasoned. The Dijon-herb flavor was just about obliterated, but the resulting salty-smoke combination was not too bad.

As I said, kitchen disasters can happen to the best of us - especially those of us who, because we have professional training, think that we can make grills which are in sore need of cleaning/tuning up work for us. I knew that grill wasn't working right - the gas doesn't light immediately and I often throw matches into it to make it light (NOT smart, by the way) - but I decided to use it anyway. Professional training brings with it a sort of arrogance that, "hey. I know EXACTLY what I am doing", but it also creates the ability to, as I said before, roll with the punches and salvage what you can when things go wrong. Any professional chef will tell you that. They all have a thousand stories of what has happened to them and how they managed to pull off a spectacular meal anyway. For me and this time at least, my kitchen disaster happened in front of my family, so, as an audience, they were pretty forgiving in any case. We had a wonderful birthday dinner and I ended up with a good disaster story to tell. Until next time!