As my friends know, when I host a dinner party it means I'm in the mood for experimentation. Despite my mother's sage advice, when I invite people over, we generally end up eating creations I have dreamed up and tested for the first time. Most of these risks pay off. But once in a while, I make something bad and occassionally I make something awful.
Like the ugly child born to supermodel parents, this week's fig spread is a dreadful melange of otherwise tasty ingredients. It was inspired by a recipe I saw almost a decade ago in my hometown newspaper. It was so awful that my dinner guests made me promise never to make it again.
I don't doubt that the original was tasty, but this version contains the same ingredients in different proportions. This illustrates an important learning experience - some dishes and some ingredients are more forgiving than others. For example, I believe you can never have too much cinnamon, garlic or ginger. You could not say the same thing, however, about baking soda, salt or chili. Similarly, some dishes are very flexible and you can generally add or subtract ingredients - soups and salads are good examples. Others are predicated on a finely tuned balance of flavors and even a minor change can ruin a dish.
Another important lesson for me is that more is not always better. For example, if I had used far fewer olives and tomatoes, they may have been a better complement to the sweetness of the figs. In my recipe, however, the flavors seemed to be equally weighted, which ended up cancelling out the good.
Disasters like this can be embarassing, especially when you are serving a crowd, but I think you can learn a lot from your failures and it sure makes for a good story. In the worse case scenario, you order in pizza...
I wasn't sure if I should provide this disastrous recipe, but I figured some of you might be curious...
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 fresh figs, finely chopped or 1/2 cup fig spread
200 grams feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup olives, finely chopped
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped
freshly ground pepper
parsley, for garnish
Directions
1. Mix all ingredients and serve as a spread on bread or crackers.
6 comments:
It is OK if we go wrong once in a while, as u said we can learn from the disasters we created :)
No worries and give it a try once again, may be u will succeed !!!
The recipe sounds pretty good, if it comes out well :)
Hey...hugs to u. It was great learning experience wasnt it ? And like cinnamon said, try it one more time and trust me sweetie it will b v delicious.
Thanks for the cool fig spread. I'll try to put it together on my slice of bread
It's nice to finally see someone...esp a fellow foodie blogger admitting that she does cook up not-so-perfect dishes sometimes. It takes guts to admit something like that on a public forum....and I appreciate you for doing it.
fig spread sounds great. and its okay, we all mistakes :) esp with cooking, you never know!
LOL -- Aly at least you were humble enough to admit you messed up on this particular recipe. I am pretty certain you'll come with something amazing while on your trip.
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