Kitchen triumphs and tragedies

I go through these spurts of culinary creativity to rival the most experienced of Iron Chefs.  I normally don't mind cooking and am pretty good at it.  But every so often I get the urge to dive in and create something totally new.  Sometimes it's just reinterpreting an old recipe sometimes it's just letting go with what's at hand and making up a new one.  I must admit to some great dishes but every so often I come up with a flop.

One of my major triumphs is my chocolate mint bread pudding with Peppermint Schnapps sauce.  This one is totally elegant and totally delicious.  It's never gotten a bad review.  This was one of my reinterpretations.  I absolutely hate traditional bread pudding and always have.  A friend of mine had a recipe for chocolate bread pudding and shared it with me.  Her recipe called for orange liquer and the standard rum sauce.  Not being a fan of orange liquer or rum I decided to give it a new spin.  Some a little mint extract and the Peppermint Schnapps fixed the bread pudding itself and it was great without the sauce.  But a sauce pan some butter Peppermint Schnapps and few "secret" ingredients and I had a sauce that went perfect with it (My own creation).  That sauce also works great on chocolate ice cream!

But there are also the times when it backfires.  I still remember the first time I tried to cook Conch.  As my daughter called it "Goodyear Surprise"  yes as in Goodyear tires.  That was the toughest, chewiest most tiring thing I ever tried to eat.   An then there was my first experience with venison.  Can we say "gamey".  Of course the fact that it was a big buck that had led the guys on a merry one hour chase probably didn't help either.  I have since learned tricks to cut the gamey flavor of deer meat. 

I have given up on certain foods.  Goose has been crossed off the list along with duck and rabbit. Shark will never find it's way to my table again.  Conch likewise has been banned and we won't even go into calamari. 

But give me normal seafood, shrimp, crab, clams, mussels, scallops and fish and I'm in heaven.  There's nothing like creating a new seafood dish or jazzing up an old one.  You want comfort food try a spicy shrimp and crawfish pie.  Or a good Seafood Bisque.  Bisque is really versatile too.  You can serve it as chowder or add a little cornstarch to thicken it into a great pasta sauce. 

It's been a while since I've gotten a good kitchen workout.  One of these days soon the urge will hit me.  And voila! another triumph hopefully, not a tragedy.