When things go wrong…

…it’s best not to panic. Just carry on and do the best one can in the situation in the hope that to some extent, everything will turn out all right in the end.

I wanted to make some quiches for my girl when she came home for the weekend and no, I did not have any particular one in mind. I thought I could just play it by ear, you see – after all, I am hopeless at following any tried and tested recipes, a sure one-way ticket to disaster. So, I went and bought some ingredients that I felt I would need and got down to work hoping to give her a pleasant surprise…

I sieved the flour and rubbed in the butter but somehow or other, I did not quite get the usual breadcrumb-like result when I did that in the past. To my horror, I realised that for the 1kg of flour in the box that I had bought, I would need 500 gm of butter and that block that I used was only 250 gm. Oh dear! There was still some butter in the fridge, more than half a block so I quickly added that in. It did look like there was quite enough but I was not too sure. That was why I decided to just try using less than half of it…and leave out the ham that I had bought – it would be such a waste to throw that away if things did not turn out all right and it sure did not come cheap.

I fried some chopped Bombay onions in a bit of oil, threw in some oyster mushrooms, cut into bits and pieces, and tomato too and a bit of chopped Chinese celery and I added some salt and pepper to that. Once the filling was done, I put that aside to cool while I rolled out the pastry and lined the cups that I usually use to make pies. In went the filling with a lot of grated cheddar cheese and some smoked cheddar cheese that I had cut into small bits as well. After that, I poured in some of the milk and egg mix that I had prepared and once done, I put everything into the oven to bake…

The fragrance filled the whole house and I thought it was going to be really great! Unfortunately, it was a little bit burnt at the sides…

…but I did not think it was the pastry. It looked like the milk and egg mix that had overflowed, probably because I had poured in a little bit too much.

I tried one as soon as they were ready, piping hot from the oven, and it certainly looked like other than those dark bits by the side, the rest was perfectly unscathed…

On the whole, it tasted really great…

…but I did not quite like the bits of Chinese celery when I bit into them.

The pastry turned out just right – nice and crumbly, not hard at all, so that meant I would be able to use the rest of it that I had stuffed into the freezer in the meantime…and the ham that I had bought too but I think I would just use them to bake some pies – I reckon I would do a much better job at making those instead. Luckily, I did not simply give up and assume that it would not turn out good and just throw the whole lot away…