This week Birgit and I had some business visitors. So I asked my husband to cook lunch for everybody.
Knowing better than to leave the choice of menu entirely up to him, I whizzed down to the supermarket and bought the kind of ingredients that any culinary ignoramous can’t mess up. Right? Pasta, mushrooms, cream, salad. Everything that you’d need for a nice pasta and mushroom sauce with a crisp salad on the side.
But I hadn’t reckoned with the ambitious cunning of my husband. You see, as he rarely gets chance to cook, whenever he does get free rein in the kitchen, he likes to add a little flair to his recipes. So while the rest of us were sitting around a flip chart talking about business processes, he was searching the internet for exotic ways to jazz up a mushroom sauce.
When we came in for lunch, I have to say though, that he was looking a little nervous. My fourteen year old son was standing by the cooker declaring: “It’s inedible. It’s a complete disaster!”
On first inspection though, I thought it didn’t look at all bad. It was recognisably a mushroom sauce, and the pasta was done to perfection.
What I’d failed to spot was the mysterious addition of “ingredient Z” to the mushrooms.
On first taste it was obvious that something was very wrong.
“What did you put in this?” I asked, appalled.
Birgit piped up immediately: “Is this an English speciality? What else can you expect from a nation that lays carpet in its bathrooms!”
“Have a guess.” I can see my husband starting to sweat.
“Marzipan?”
“Erm. No. Actually it was Baileys.”
“Baileys? You put Baileys in the mushrooms?”
Trust me, readers, this is not a recipe recommendation. Baileys and mushrooms goes together about as well as would marmelade and prawns, or banana and pickled gherkins. I know, I’ve tried it. I hope you never have to.
Praise be to the spare jar of pesto in the cupboard!
Planet Germany 