Once upon a time in our kitchen our twice-a-week ‘cook’ – Twias, produced an amazingly good curry on a Friday night. We, the other twice-a-week cooks, were semi-ecstatic and, in our curried bliss, we mentally added this to the list of dishes that we’d secretly labelled ‘unstuffuppable.’ For Twias (= Toss whatever in and see), the total for that list at that time was two. Yes, we know now, it was hopelessly optimistic.
The following Friday, Twias declared that he was going to cook his curry again and, this time, it was going to be “even better than before.” We others groaned as we knew Twias was never capable of repeating his rare culinary successes – mainly because he couldn’t remember what he’d put in his dishes the first-time round.
We innocently suggested he check out a salient Jamie Oliver clip on TV. In all our naivety, we imagined this would guarantee the outcome, but we had forgotten about the penchant Twias has for speedreading everything and, more specifically, that this also extended to his viewing habits. We raised our eyebrows, crossed our fingers behind our backs, and carried on with our own particular pastimes. I think that was our first mistake. The second, was that we’d somehow managed to forget that he had form in the culinary disaster department.
So, he more or less ‘watched’ Jamie Oliver produce an apparently wonderful, and unstuffuppable, curry. Twias was on his phone for most of this time and had also kept walking away from the TV. Long story short, he missed out quite a few of Jamie’s ingredients and suggestions, and what he served up that night was hotter than the proverbial Gates of Hell!
He’d added not one (mind you) but TWO habaneros thinking they were just small critters! We others went through a bucket of yoghurt each, while we tried to be polite and get through the torture that was on our plates. I think we now know what ulcer sufferers must go through!
It was about a week before our taste buds truly returned to normal and Twias knows that he will never live this down… not this side of any Xmas. The upshot is that we’ve had to remove this short-lived third item from the ‘fool proof’ list. Though, come to think of it, the last time Twias cooked an item from one of those last two on the list, we were bordering on removing that one as well!
There’s a new rule in our kitchen now: all chillies and hot spices must remain hidden from Twias until further notice.
There have been no more Friday night dinner disasters – mostly because one of the others have cooked, or we order take-away. But lately, on the other two roulette evenings, we’ve had a few old boots put on our plates (the remnants of chicken tenderloins) with an obligatory salad. And, to think that once-upon-a-time Twias thought salad was “rabbit food” but now he cannot seem to live without it. We others, however, think that if you’re serving a hot meal in winter all of it should be hot! Needless to say, Twias’s tenderloin recipe has not made it onto the unstuffuppable list.
We others are still trying to be polite but, periodically, we decant the remnants of Twias’s famous curry from the freezer and serve him a small portion with dinner – lest he forget!! 😜😂 Suffice it to say we are still alive and, on two nights a week, that’s no mean achievement in our house!