“Oh shit.”

Jaime said it first and when I turned around it became immediately obvious. The white smoke that had been streaming from the three inch gap at the top of the oven was now black. Something was wrong. Something was on fire.

I kill the heat. When I open the oven door to inspect, the rush of oxygen causes the flames above the pool of grease to shoot high into the kitchen air. I try to force the tiny, 30-year-old oven shut in a desperate attempt to starve the fire. But the inch thick Red Oak board is too long, and neither it nor the door will bend to meet my needs.

The flames are now high enough to escape the oven and begin teasing the cabinets above. Amidst all the “Oh my God!”s, Sam has grabbed a small fire extinguisher from beneath the sink.

“Do you want me to use it?”

The duck inside is done. Toast. Fucking history. Now we just have to keep this house and ourselves intact.

I turn to her and nod frantically. She prepares our little red savior and I set my grip on the door. It flies open, the contents of the fire killer are released into the back of the oven, and that is how we get our recipe for today.

How To Properly Prepare A Grease Fire

When I arrive at the girls’ house I take no time leading them back to my car. There I unload a large plastic container, half filled with water. Submerged and pinned under a couple of large cans of broth lay a three foot by one and a half foot Red Oak board. I grab the board and dump the contents into the street.

“Holy crap.”
“This is crazy.”

The idea of cooking on a wet board soon settles in and we get to work.

Jaime prepares some non-instant creamy Polenta on the stovetop. It is her first time doing this and it is delicious.

Sam assembles a spinach and brocolli salad with some kind of vinagrette dressing.

Smoked salmon, capers, and red onion.

I’ve prepped the duck and veggies. All that is left to do is stick them on the board, pop it into the oven, and sip Sangiovese for a couple hours.

But oh no, the oven. It’s this miniature contraption, remnant of the 70′s and surely part of the original décor. The board doesn’t fit sideways. It doesn’t fit the other way either. The door will not shut and a gap remains at the top.

“Should we do this?” Sam and Jaime ask. We’ve gone through all this trouble, damnit. I’m not giving up. Do they have a saw? No. Can we think of any creative solutions? Nope. Fine! We’ll live with the gap.

We sit and pour some wine. And wait.

The next two hours of idle “conversation” prove difficult. During this entire evening, and in fact for weeks before and after, I have not uttered a single spoken word.

40 Days Of Silence

It’s Wednesday night at Downtown Brew in San Luis Obispo. The month of February in the year 2008 is nearing a close. I am at the bar upstairs, drink in hand. I had just met Jaime and Sam the previous quarter (remember, I was still in school at the time.)

“Hi,” they say. I look back at the and smile. After a few seconds, their smiles turn into confused glances at one another as I begin typing a text message. I hand them the phone.

“What?!?!?!”

The text message, addressed to nobody, informed them that, yes: “I gave up speaking for Lent.”

Hand gestures, nods, touches, exagerated body language, and rolling eyes accompany my cell phone as means of communicating with those around me. This silence was not absolute. I could speak for work and school as needed. Emergencies took precedance. And of course, each lenten Sunday I wouldn’t shut up.

Through a long thread of one-side-text and one-side-speach exchanges the girls learned that I cooked, and was in the process of starting a cooking blog. I learned that they had never eaten duck. A few weeks and silent conversations later I found myself in their kitchen. Apparently, trying to turn it into a pile of ashes.

I had gone through with cooking on a plank in the oven once before with mild success. I had cooked several ducks in the past, mostly for the few friends that remained in town for Easter while the college masses fled homewards. I thought it would make a good recipe, a good post. I guess, in a way, I was right.

The Recipe

Do not attempt this recipe in any kitchen which you cannot legally and do not wish to burn to the fucking ground.

1. Take one whole duck and cut inch long slits in the skin at the top of each breast.
2. Take one finger and work it into each slit, separating the skin from the breast. Move your finger in this manner across the whole breast.
3. Stuff this space with ground chile powder and fresh oregano leaves, as well as salt and pepper.
4. Place the duck, along with an assortment of vegetables, on a Red Oak board and place into an oven too small for the board.
5. Place a baking sheet one rack lower than the board to catch all the grease that leaks out of the duck and off of the board, which will soon inevitably warp.
6. Set the oven to 350°F and wait for two hours or until the white steam turns to black smoke from the grease fire on the baking sheet.
7. WTF your pants, then put out the fire with a standard fire extinguisher.
8. Wait 30 minutes for the thick smoke to clear your house. Serve the other remaining food.

We opened the doors to clear the house and moved outside to clear our heads. Nerves still shaky, I looked around and said, aloud, “Oh my gosh, why didn’t I speak?!” So ingrained by that time was my silence that we had gone through the fire without my saying a word. And without their thinking twice about it.

Considering I almost killed everyone, we managed to enjoy the rest of the evening. The girls would graduate the next quarter and I haven’t spoken to them since. I wonder if they would even believe that 9 months later I would finally launch this food blog I was snapping photos for, or that 15 months later I would finally write their post. Maybe I’ll give them a call.

In the end I learned my lesson. This year for Lent I gave up web comics.

What we have here is the baby born out of my first draft of Gumbo. Just like last time, this was influenced heavily by a recent post at No Recipes.

What we also have here is a new category on Food Goes In Mouth: Oops!.

I think a good percentage of food bloggers subscribe to a philosophy of “If it aint good, don’t blog it.” That’s just fine, and I understand why. Personally, I don’t want this blog to become one of a million databases of amateur home recipes. I find it boring. I imagine you, my tiny band of readers, would find it boring.

Honestly, I fuck up food more times than I get it right, but usually in small, controlled doses with one or two ingredients. Little experiments. But if I shared every minor success and failure that would be both boring and exhausting. I don’t need to post multiple times a day because I successfully microwaved a burrito or added too much pepper to some rice.

I’m just going to divulge in the true disasters. Like this:

What I Used

• Chicken Stock, homemade
• Celery, chopped
• Red Bell Pepper, sliced
• Yellow Bell Pepper, sliced
• Onion, sliced
• Flour
• Goose Fat
• Sage, fresh
• Bay Leaves
• 86% Cacao Chocolate, chopped
• Andouille Sausage, diced
• Crab Meat, fresh
• Sweet Hungarian Paprika
• Cayenne Pepper

What I Did, Part 1

1. In a cast iron pot, render one part goose fat. (That’s it in the picture above.)
2. In another pot, bring the chicken stock to barely a simmer.
3. Slowly add equal part flour and stir like you’ve never stirred before for about half an hour over medium-high heat until the roux reaches a chocolate brown.
4. Add vegetables, herbs, spices and sausage then reduce heat, letting the roux mixture cool.
5. While stirring, add 6 parts chicken broth. Bring to a boil and if the gumbo seems too thick, add more broth until desired consistency is reached.
6. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove bay leaves.

Earlier that afternoon I went to Port San Luis, picked some fresh live crabs out of the tank at Pete’s Pierside, and had them cooked for me. At this point I pulled some of the cooled crab meat out of the refrigerator and stuck it on top of a bowl of this Gumbo with some steamed rice at the bottom. This is delicious. This is what you see at the top of this post.

But wait, the chocolate! Everything so far, except for the goose fat, is pretty standard. The addition of some chocolate was the one serious deviation I had planned, so when a roomate said, “Hey, did you put any of the chocolate in here?” I said, “Oh shit!” I was excited to add this in and see what happened.

Now, in my head the chocolate would primarily change the color and consistency of the sauce more than the flavor. This may still be a good idea or a horrible one, but I wouldn’t know, because this is…:

What I Did, Part 2

1. Blow culinary load prematurely and add too much chocolate to the Gumbo. Change dish name to Nicely Spiced Chocolate Soup. Ruined.

How frustrating! I took so much care bringing a roux to that color for the first time. How could I just go dumping so much of a strong ingredient in with reckless abandon? Ruining a dish with that much love in it can knock the happy out of you, and it took me a full day to come out of it and say: Screw it. You learned. Time to move on.

So there you have it. Go ahead and do all the steps but the last one. Hell, go ahead and do the last one without foolishly rushing things and let me know if a little chocolate does work well to finish a Gumbo. Or if it doesn’t work well, I’d appreciate knowing that as well.

I have another “Oops!” I need to share with everyone soon, but it will require a story…