20 October 2008

Milk Calendar Mondays: Sweet potato bake with crispy garlic topping

So...have you yet recovered from last month's MCM guest blogger's post?

Yeah...it was pretty...wretched... the food, not the post.

Fearless, yet fatigued, with this project...okay..., that's not quite right. I am afraid of this project. I'm afraid of lost time and ingredients which I'll never regain nor resuscitate. I'm afraid of what horrid little prank will be played upon me, my sometimes guest and everyone else who innocently tries one of the recipes. It really is quite hit-or-miss as to whether I'll be able to stomach the results.

Anyway...where was I...

Fearless, yet fatigued, with this project I spied the October recipe: Sweet potato bake with crispy garlic topping and thought...hmmm...it looks okay...and it reads okay...but is it really okay? The answer: Yes. It was okay.

In the grand scheme of things, this was an okay recipe. In the grand scheme of the Milk Calendar recipes, it was a phenomenol recipe. It was easy. It was garlickly. It had textures that varied from soft to crunchy. There was even a bit of tang. The only thing I would probably change is to use roughly half the amount of topping. Just too much breadcrumbs. And maybe lower the milk to about one cup's worth.

But that's not the story I'm going to tell you....I'm going to tell you about my craptastic kitchen weekend.

Yes. It's a word. Look it up.

It's also proof that things happen in threes.

Craptastical event 1:
I awoke at 5am (yes, 5am) for no apparent reason. Couldn't get back to sleep, and read a chunk of the fabulous book that lay by my bed. After a while I decided to do something useful with my time and decided to bake yet another banana bread (three breads in one week). Everything was going well until I put my sugar jar back on the shelf.

And it broke.

A 128 fluid ounce jar.....shards of glass...grains of sugar...everywhere...in my pantry, on the floor.

I loved that jar. I really did. It was big and had a big mouth so I could scoop or pour. But now it's in the bin...along with about 2kgs of sugar.

Wah.

Craptastical event 2.
Sunday morning I had a craving for a toasted Montréal-style bagel schmeared with cream cheese. Mmmmm....One of the local bakeries pays homage to the infamous M-style bagel and I happened to have picked some up.

I don't have a bagel slicer...but I do have a very sharp serrated knife.

At some point my knife mistook my left hand's middle finger for the bagel.

10 minutes of profuse exsanguination and who knows how many litres of water later I decided against stitches...at the very least, the blood loss left me a bit woozy so driving myself to hospital may not have been a wise idea.

Do you see how many Es, Ds and Cs there are in this post? I hope you appreciate how much pain I'm enduring to type this. I will say I'm a ridiculously fast healer when it comes to things like this--34 hours later and you can just barely see the gash...but I can really, really feel it.

Owie owie owie owie.

Craptastical event 3:
Needless to say, I was pretty useless in the kitchen, so the exbf had to prepare much of it. Kind of like another cooking by proxy exercise. No big worries. This was a pretty easy recipe (the rest of the meal was slightly more complicated). Everything was going well until I decided to follow the recipe and turn on Beelzebub's broiler.

I'd never used it before.

And what follows is entirely my fault. Not his...either one (exbf or the stove).

It didn't take long to put out the fire. It was pretty small and the universal lid pretty much smothered it. The house was filled with smoke and I had to run around and open windows and turn on the bathroom and kitchen fans (owieowieowieowie). The exbf took care of the smoke alarm...and scraping the charred crust off the gratin.

I suppose that much breadrcumb topping was necesary...otherwise the entire dish would have been ... well ... charcoal. See the little black specs in the photo? Not all the charred bits were removed.

The taste, although barbecuey, wasn't bad...but it would be better without the carbon...both in the air and in the dish.

Oh well...today was a much better day....

cheers!
jasmine




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12 comments:

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

What a totally grand ending!! So glad to hear that part.

I really liked the sound of the sweet potato bake with crispy garlic topping but it didn't seem to live up to those initial thoughts.

You certainly had a weekend there;)

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry about your sugar jar, I totally get the disappointment when you break a kitchen gadget or container that is perfect for your needs, and I'm also sorry about all the craptastic events, but kudos for turning it into such an entertaining post!!

Anonymous said...

Oh my, that is definitely the kind of weekend that would send me to the telephone to order in Chinese dinner number 3!

Deborah said...

Oh goodness - I hope you week has been better then the weekend!

Elizabeth said...

When I read the recipe for October, I too suspected it wouldn't be at all bad. Too bad their photo is really rather appalling. (I just can't help criticizing them for something....)

Your photo, even with the little bits of carbon, looks far more appetizing.

I'm relieved to hear that the dish was indeed edible.

I'm very sorry to hear about the other tragic events. I wonder if there's some way you can blame these calamities on the Milk Calendar - something to do with October being the same month as Hallowe'en with precocious pixies making the sugar jar jump off the shelf, causing the knife to slash your finger (ow ow ow!!! my index finger scar from 3 years ago is throbbing in sympathy) and well, the name for your oven says it all. The oven was clearly trying to ensure that this particular milk calendar recipe would turn out as badly as the others.

-Elizabeth

Jenny said...

Oh my goodness....
I'm glad you and the exbf are both okay from the fire, but is this the excuse you needed to get a new stove?

NKP said...

You really did have a bad day. I hope today is better. Have a bubble bath, glass of wine and go to bed early with your book. (Try to ignore the fact that we had wet snow on Tuesday!)

Inne said...

Wow, all that for an okay dish! It certainly made for entertaining reading though. And I'm sure it will be one you won't forget anytime soon!

Anonymous said...

Ah, as you can see at the bottom, the exbf mentioned this in his LJ. I'm so sorry about the sugar jar! I used to use glass containers for all my supplies before the stroke and I really miss them.

I hope your finger heals quickly, and the broiler, too!

Anonymous said...

Ooh sweet potatoes and garlic -- sounds interesting and different.

Shaun said...

Jasmine, honey ~ What a terrible chain of events. I usually find that if I have awoken at an unusually early time that the rest of the day is a joy (since the day seems longer and pack in as much more or little as I like), except of course if it is a work day. Sorry to hear about all the issues. At least there was no major smoke damage, which would have been more of a headache to resolve than replacing the beloved sugar jar. Thanks for the plug Citizen of the World - I shall pick it up next time I'm purchasing books.

glamah16 said...

What an awful day. I like to believe after concentrated bad events like that something great is around the corner.