JOIN USPoor old Kirk Broadfoot. I mean, to have egg on your face, quite literally. It's no laughing matter. No, it isn't. Mind, you, Kirk's up there with other soccer luminaries when it comes to unfortunate accidents. Remember how Rio Ferdinand strained a tendon in his knee when he put his leg up on a coffee table while watching television? Then there was goalkeeper Dave Beasant who dropped a bottle of salad cream on his foot, severing a tendon in the process. And who was it that drilled a hole in his toe with a Black & Decker to relieve a swelling?
Anyway, I have great sympathy with Kirk. In the annals of kitchen disasters I've always thought of microwaves as devices of the devil, and my experience of them bears that out.
You see, I never meant to have one. I couldn't understand the point of them. A microwave couldn't do anything that you couldn't achieve through conventional cooking. I was wrong, of course. On every count. First of all, a microwave arrived in my kitchen, unbidden and unannounced. I came back from a trip to Sweden, and there it was, gleaming, rectangular, purposeful, crouching in a corner of the kitchen. My kitchen. 'We decided to get it while you were away,' said my wife blithely. 'It makes life much easier.'
Microwave horrors
Easier?! EASIER!!! Hah! So what's easy about the super-heated custard that erupted all over the inside? It took weeks to clear up properly. Or the third degree burns to my fingers when I thoughtlessly picked up a mug of coffee that I had put in to warm through? I wasn't able to chop onions for a couple of weeks after that.
I tried cooking beetroot in the microwave, but they just collapsed to a barely edible mess which caused the skin to peel off the roof of my mouth. I thought to part-cook baked potatoes in the microwave based on the theory that, as microwaves work by using electro-magnetic radiation to cause the molecules in water to fizz about like anything, cooking a potato in a microwave would be akin to steaming it from the inside, and so would preserve the flavour of said potato etc etc.
I'm sure you know the theory. Of course, they would need to be finished off in the oven to give them the desirable crisp skinned appeal, but never mind. So why did my potatoes develop curious hard, goitrous lumps in certain places? I never did find out.
My patience finally broke after the famous incident of the exploding fish. Someone had told me that if you want an odour-free kipper, you cook it in a microwave.
Now, as any kipper-lover knows, this is the holy grail of the breakfast routine. God knows how many domestic tensions would be resolved if only this most divine of cured fish did not have such a penetrating pong. However, if you place your kipper on a plate and cover it with clingfilm, so my informant told me, and you pop it in the microwave, and press the magic button, hey presto, the kipper would be cooked to perfection and all the odour is trapped inside the magic machine.
It seemed logical enough, and the end forever of those 'Do you have to stink out the whole house every time you want to eat those disgusting things' discussions that so disfigured my domestic harmony at the time.
Kitchen calamity
So I did as instructed. As I sat musing over Saturday's paper (I always eat kippers on a Saturday) and waiting for the magic ping, there was a muffled pop from the direction of the microwave. I looked over.
The inside of the glass window appeared to have been subjected to a dirty protest. It was covered with brown sludge. I opened the door. The clingfilm had been cast violently aside as the kipper had risen up from the plate under the influence of the fizzing molecules, and exploded like one of those scenes from films about mutants with hideous powers, pebble-dashing every conceivable surface with kipper flesh and its attendant oils.
The smell raced out through the open door with terrifying force, filled with its own energy, the kipper smell amplified a thousand times, or so it seemed. Worst of all, it was my only kipper, and breakfast was ruined. Fellow kipper lovers will know what an utter catastrophe that is.
So that was it with microwaves as far as I was concerned. Actually, that was it as far as that particular microwave was concerned as well. In spite of repeated cleanings, kipper-taint affected anything put into it, and eventually it was consigned to the appropriate skip at the dump for recycling.
I am sure that I'm not alone in my experiences. I'm sure that there are plenty of you out there who have endured exploding kippers and even worse. I think it time that we stood up and were counted.
Word of Mouth (The Guardian food blog)