When things go wrong

Like anything, anywhere, things can — and invariably do — go wrong in the kitchen. Whether it be in the home or commercial kitchen, mistakes often happen — and yes, even to the best of chefs!

The other weekend I was making good old-fashioned apple pie for some friends who were visiting for Sunday lunch. I was making the pastry late the previous Saturday, and following my favourite short crust pastry recipe. The only problem was that I had the recipe details for a large 10kg batch and only wanted to make a small batch of one or two pies.

As it was quite late and I was tired, I decided to roughly halve and halve the recipe until I got to what I considered would be the right amount, but somewhere along the way I failed to halve the flour as many times as I should! As I was mixing the flour into the eggs and butter, I realised it didn't seem quite right; it was all dry and crumbly — not the right consistency at all. I then realised I had 2kg flour instead of 1kg.

I knew I had to be creative; at this stage it was way too late to keep going with the butter, so instead I quickly added some water to make firm dough. I knew to make a nice pastry I needed to add more butter into this dough somehow — otherwise it would be hard and dry — so I decided to imitate a puff or flaky pastry by folding butter into the dough. It meant a bit more work, but it was possible!

So, instead of having a nice, rich, buttery shortcrust pastry, I ended up with a light, flaky pastry instead. The pie ended up okay, thank goodness, because it could have been a bit embarrassing! My mini-crisis actually brought to mind the story of how puff pastry first came about.

As the tale goes, a young cook was preparing dough in a huge monastery kitchen many centuries ago, in the mountains somewhere in Europe. The young cook had forgotten to add butter or fat (sometimes in those days they used dripping or suet) to the dough, and in the panic of his master finding out, he rolled this butter-less dough on to a board, spread the butter over the dough, folded and rolled the dough, folded some more — until bits of butter stopped oozing out the sides — and put the dough in a cool area to one side, until they were ready to make their pies or tarts or whatever they made in those days!

Later, when he baked his dough, much to his surprise and delight, it turned into a beautiful, flaky pastry we now know and use as puff pastry! What a piece of luck! Whether the story be true or not, it's certainly a fact that some of the greatest inventions and recipes have come about through mistakes!

Five most common mistakes in the kitchen

• Over-cooking

• Burning sauce

• Curdling hollandaise

• Over-kneading and under-kneading

• Over-salting or over-seasoning

How to avoid some kitchen disasters