Disaster!

Blogging is basically a form a bloviating, and when I look over my past recipes/blog entries, they sometimes read like a victorious general bragging about one triumphant battle after another.  So, a dose of humility is sometimes called for.  This comes in two forms.

The easiest way to consume humble pie in relation to one's blog is to check on the usage statistics.  They are never going to be as good as you hope, and often are nil.  (One of my favorite T-shirts bears the message "More people have read this T-shirt than your blog."  How true.) Another way of stepping back from culinary triumphalism is to report on the all-to-frequent disasters that one doesn't easily share with others.

A number of months ago, I posted an easy wonderful recipe for deconstructed kadaif which I actually served to guests for Shabbat dinner last week.  When you bake the shredded wheat, it should come out looking like this:

If anything, this is slightly undercooked.  This is because the last time I tried to make this dish was over the summer when my cousins were visiting from France.  Though they are extremely laid back, being from France, it was important that we impress them with our food, and we decided to make the kadaif for dessert one night.  The shredded wheat was probably still a little frozen when I put it in the oven, so it took a long time to turn the nice golden color.  So rather than turn up the heat, I turned on the broiler, and forgot about it for a few minutes.  The fire alarm started screaming "Fire! Fire!" and I remembered that I had forgotten something. The apartment filled with smoke. I saw the shredded wheat on fire through the oven window, and locked the oven using the self-clean lock and waited for the flames to die down and the smoke to stop pouring out, which took about 10 minutes.  This is what came out of the oven:

  A little humility is a good thing.  We had sorbet for dessert.