Twist of Yohan

Get Low – Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz

This banger, known from the racing game Need for Speed: Underground (which I played until the disk broke, lol) and featured in more movies and shows than I can count. And if you don’t know the song… well, check the link underneath the title of this post. There’s even a remix by Busta Rhymes and Elephant Man, one of my personal favorites.

But my favorites aside, the lyric “from the windows to the walls” is what I want to talk about today.
You might think, what on earth does that have to do with cooking?
Well, let’s talk kitchen fails, the kind where food ends up everywhere, literally “from the windows to the walls.”

Everyone who cooks has had kitchen fails. And if you say you’ve never made one, you’ve either just started cooking or you’re lying through your teeth.
Mistakes are part of the art called cooking, whether you’re a professional or a passionate home cook. Some are small: too much salt, forgetting a key ingredient. Others are disasters: dropping a pan full of food or forgetting to put the lid on the blender (that one turns your kitchen into an abstract art piece).

When the mess happens, two things can follow. 1. You get angry because you know it’s your fault. Or 2. You laugh and accept it as part of the process.
I’ve done both. Early in my career, I had chefs yelling in my ear. Later, I learned to see the humor in it. Sure, it’s wasted food and money, but it’s also experience. That’s the point of making mistakes, you learn from them.

Let me be a little vulnerable and share a few of my own.

The Cream-to-Butter Debacle

I was a chef-in-training, making a dessert that needed a liter of whipped cream. I poured it into the mixer, turned it on high, and went off to prep something else. When I came back, the walls were covered in what used to be cream,  milk on one side, butter clinging for dear life to the whisk.
This mixer didn’t have a cover, so the explosion was total. From the windows to the walls, indeed.

Lesson learned: take your time, follow your prep, and don’t rush. I actually talk about this in another post, “ABC, as Easy as 123,” about the unwritten kitchen rules that keep chaos under control.

The Bavarois Breakdown

This one’s from one of my students. He was preparing for a practical exam. He had to make a  raspberry bavarois, a French dessert made from whipped eggs, flavored juice, cream, and gelatin. The gelatin is what makes it hold its shape.
He prepped everything, soaked the gelatin, followed the steps, and poured the mix into molds. When I asked if he had added the gelatin, he confidently said yes. A few hours later, he flipped the molds over and splash!! The whole workbench, windows and walls were covered in pink raspberry. He had forgotten the gelatin entirely.

Luckily, it was just practice. We went through his process together, he remembered the mistake, and when exam day came, he nailed it! The perfect raspberry bavarois.

The Takeaway

The key lesson from all of these is simple: know what you’re doing, read and understand the recipe, and take your time. Don’t try to do everything at once, especially when it’s a new recipe. Slow hands make better food.

Now I’m curious about your own kitchen fails.
Have you ever had to clean your kitchen “from the windows to the walls”?
Share your funniest or most painful stories or those epic fails from “a friend,” of course. What did you learn from them?

If you’d like some extra help avoiding these moments, read my post “ABC, as Easy as 123” five unwritten kitchen rules that can save you from turning your dinner into modern art.

Cook fresh, stay creative, and keep your kitchen clean.

Until next time,

Yohan