Corinna's culinary cures

You have disregarded all the good advice which everyone gave you over the years. Never try out a new recipe for a dinner party. Stick to simple food. Making more than three courses is not a good plan. Do most of the cooking in advance. Your mother told you, your cookbook told you, your girlfriends told you, and you didn’t pay a blind bit of notice. You had an elaborate, complicated, exotic menu worked out, none of which you had made before, and you have important people coming for dinner.

And here you are: six p.m. The cream has curdled in your cream sauce, which is a perfect adjunct to your burned ragout and your scorched potatoes, perfectly finished with a little boiled wine, which will go well with the pastry with cat footprints trailing the whole length of the table. Right next to the tumbled vase, ruined gladioli and jar of tamarind preserve which has smashed on the priceless table linen your great grandmother personally embroidered. You have two choices. One is to shove the whole mess into the bin, put the tablecloth on to soak in cold water and salt, and confess all. Make it a funny story. One disaster is sad, ten is comic. Then order lots of takeaway or sweep everyone out to dinner somewhere cheap and local - Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian - where you can order a banquet. This is expensive but pleasant. And you really don’t feel like cooking after you contemplate your kitchen, do you? You may, indeed, never enter that room again.

But if this isn’t possible, if you really need to make an impression on these guests and you can’t possibly confess domestic disaster, then seize your partner and press upon him/her this shopping list, mentioning that they have half an hour, and if anything is left off the list, they will be the main course as you have just found a really good recipe for Long Pig. With chestnuts. While they are gone, clear away the mess and get a working surface back. Open some windows and let out the smoke. Change your table settings by placing a little bowl with a lemon slice in it next to each place - a finger bowl, which you will later fill with hot water. Find a big baking dish. Melt the honey, the butter and the ginger together in the microwave and set it aside and light the oven. Pierce and microwave a lot of potatoes and then oil and salt them and shove them in the oven - they are patient and take a long time to over cook. Find a big china dish for dessert and remove spiders. Find a big salad bowl and mix together 1 part lime juice to three parts olive oil in a jam jar. Shake. While waiting for the shopper, you can always chop up some fresh parsley and thyme. It will get you out of the house and into the garden, at least. Take deep breaths. This will work. Don’t get out the brandy yet.

When the shopper returns, rip the chickens into bits and put them in the baking dish. Pour over the ginger butter honey mixture. Cover with foil or a lid and stick in oven. Fling the salad mixture into a big bowl along with your chopped herbs and the pine nuts and pears. Use a vegetable peeler to make slices of the parmesan. Breathe. Your main course is now secure. Lay out the smoked salmon on a flat tray, along with capers and sour cream and a lot of the rye bread, cut into bits. Voila. Entree.

Pour all the berries into that big china bowl and sprinkle them with sugar and any liqueur you have in the cupboard (except kahlua). Put the dish in the fridge if you can make it fit. Leave the ice cream in the main body of the fridge. You now have dessert.

You probably bought cheeses and mints etc, and unless you have a really cunning pet dog or dairy cat they are probably still all right. Now you can pour yourself a restorative brandy and greet the guests. If asked about the recipes, you may tell them that they are Moroccan. Embroider freely. Let people serve themselves from the smoked salmon. Bring in the salad, the ginger chicken and the potatoes and serve with sour cream and a lot of black pepper. If you have children who are easily cowed or bribed, you might have them bring in the water for the finger bowls and hand each guest a towel. This always impresses. Don’t do this unless you are feeling lucky. And you probably aren’t, at the moment. Pour the whole bottle of champagne into the berries and give them a stir - they foam up like magic. Serve with ice cream. Then the cheeses and nuts etc and not only have you survived, but your menu will not be composed of all the recipes which everyone has just read in the latest Donna Hay or Gourmet Traveller.

Next time, make recipes you know how to make, in advance. Or only dine with people who can cope with surprises. Both are good.

Shopping list

two packets or a whole side of smoked salmon
sour cream
capers
two loaves of rye bread, sliced for sandwich if possible
packet of ground ginger
honey
butter
proportions: (half cup honey, half cup butter, teaspoon ginger, per chicken)
two cooked chickens
three packets of frozen berries
tub of vanilla ice cream
half kilo of salad leaves
lime juice
parmesan cheese (in a slab, not powdered)
olive oil
tin of pears
bottle of dry cheap champagne

Corinna's culinary maxims

  • After a dish is ruined, anything added to it to improve it will make it worse.
  • Every week or so make a big soup or stew or stock out of all those sad vegetables at the bottom of the fridge. Or fling them all in the compost, depending on mood.
  • A sausage which smells dubious out of the packet must be thrown away instantly.
  • Use a pair of scissors to cut up herbs. They can’t get away and it’s easier to get an exact snip than an exact cut.
  • Pounding spices in a mortar is very therapeutic.
  • Only make pastry if you have naturally cold hands. Otherwise buy the stuff.
  • If the cat won’t eat it there is possibly something wrong with it.
  • If the dog won’t eat it there is definitely something wrong with it, and it should be wrapped carefully and placed in a BIOHAZARD bin immediately.
  • Any unpronounceable ingredient which can only be found at the East Woop Woop Farmer’s Market on second Wednesdays when the moon is full, or is purchasable only from one reseller in Bangladesh at rates similar to gold dust, can be entirely omitted without changing the taste of the dish.
  • When in doubt, don’t add salt. It hardens the veg and meat and may lead to over seasoning. You can always put it in later. Adding salt while cooking was the reason why my fresh peas tasted like BB shot.
  • Identify the fashionable ingredient in the recipe - balsamic vinegar, chilli , wasabi, harissa - and leave it out. Unless you are a wasabi fiend, of course. Or you are making chilli con carne. This indiscriminate use of chilli flavouring has got out of hand. They are now making chilli ice cream. There ought to be a law.
  • Have the ingredients for your favourite dishes either packeted or frozen, so you can make them easily and without fuss. You don’t need any more stress.
  • Best recent idea: brush the inside of an uncooked pie crust with egg white and stick it in the fridge for ten minutes before adding the cold filling. It seals the pastry. And you can glaze the top with the egg yolk so you aren’t wasting a whole egg.
  • Almost all kitchen operations can be carried out with three implements and a pot of some sort. Imagine you are going to cook your dinner over an open fire. You can then give an awful lot of those pots which are clanging around the kitchen to the poor, who could do with them.

Bon appetit!

Try some of Corinna's recipes