It looked so very simple and graceful in the picture, this Patagonian potato galette: a fine disc of thinly sliced Russets overlapping in concentric circles, golden and crisped to perfection. As I drove back from the farmers market, the provisions for my 17th feast snugly wedged into the back seat, I considered the menu. This was going to be one elegant feast: a boned leg of lamb stuffed with lemon confit and herbs, left to wallow for 7 ½ hours in barely simmering Malbec. Along with this I decided on delicately charred carrots flecked with knobs of melting goat cheese and the ever-so-chic potato galette. As a grand finale I proposed to prepare a recipe for “leche quemada,” a Spanish cousin of crème brûlée. My guests would be suitably awed, I reflected dreamily, by the panache with which I would conclude the meal; caramelizing the sugar-crusted dish at table, using the blazing hot base of a cast iron skillet.
To complete my inordinate glee at the prospect of this performance, I had successfully contrived to drag myself out of a hung-over haze at 8:30 am and shuffle to the farmers market in time to snag the necessary ingredients. This feast was to be the epitome of paradisiacal perfection: locally sourced, posh, flashy, and delicious. That was the dream.
It is the pugnacious tendency of reality to leer malevolently at the dream. But for the lamb itself, the meal was a spectacular series of failures. The carrots, forgotten until the last minute because of my preoccupation with Patagonian potatoes chaos, failed to char satisfactorily outside or soften inside. Furthermore, there wasn’t enough seared goat cheese to make a statement and I clean forgot to toss on the garnishes of dried arugula and garlic chips. But the worst defeat of all was the potato galette. Following the instructions blithely set down by the author of a certain cursed cookbook, I clarified the butter, sliced the potatoes to 1/16th of an inch, and then arranged them in overlapping circles in a sizzling skillet. Everything was coming along right as a trivet until I tried to flip the disc. At this point pandemonium took hold as slices of crackling potato launched themselves in all directions, most missing the aimed for frying pan by yards. The few that did make a successful journey lay in chaos in the butter, all semblance of a galette vanished.
My guest were already sitting drinking wine so I could not give in to the violent urge to wail, stamp my feet, and generally descend into a wholehearted meltdown. Instead, I gritted the old teeth and carried on, although throughout the meal I had to fight the self-pitying tantrum simmering in the pit of my stomach. Luckily the lamb itself was quite good. Had it been otherwise, I would most definitely have caved under the weight of disaster.
Still, one hope lingered in the form of dessert. Surely I could redeem the meal with a stunning tabletop caramelizing act! So I carefully sprinkled the set custard-like concoction with a layer of sugar, placed it on the table, and heated a cast iron skillet on high, as directed by the wretched recipe, until it was smoking vigorously. Then, seized with determination I hauled it off the stove, strode over to the table, and placed the base carefully on top of the circular pie dish containing the dessert. Alas victory was not to be. Despite careful preparation, I had misjudged the size of the dish relative to the size of the skillet’s base. Instead of a satisfying sizzle indicative of the caramelizing process, I heard nothing. Looking closely I realized that the skillet wasn’t even able to touch the sugar, let alone brown it to perfection. Broken spirited I returned to the kitchen and spent a few tedious minutes coaxing a semblance hardened sugar glaze under the broiler.
The moral of the story, I decided tucking my slightly mollified soul into bed, was that the quality of the feast tends to diminish as my desire to impress rises. This time—it is regrettable but must be confessed—I really did quite want to impress. Just a little bit.
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