Paula Deen Cried

I burnt "burnt butter sauce." I mean really burnt "burnt butter sauce." Two sticks of wasted butter with garlic carbon bits and charred capers. I know somewhere Paula Deen felt the butter's pain and cried. With the burnt-ness I got on that sauce, the two sticks deserve a memorial service. The bottom of the pan was a harden shell of crusted black butter.

Yet, since the sauce foams as it cooks and I could not see to the bottom of the pan, I was in happy land because the foam was a golden amber color. I started to mentally pat myself on the back for turning my cheap SAM's Club gnocchi into a delightful, late night meal as I poured the sauce on to the gnocchi. Then the blackened garlic remains stuck to the gnocchi, as a warning sign of a plagued sauced.

I panicked. Trae tells me to wash off the gnocchi. The Good Eats worshiper is telling me to wash a pasta.

Alton Brown would not be amused by this idea. Starch is the binder that holds together the pasta party. But I did have black death infecting my pasta party. I took the chance. I washed the pasta.

Then I pulled out the last clean pan in the kitchen, and quickly whipped together a sauce of butter, marsala wine, balsamic vinegar, dash of white wine and flour to thicken it. I always keep marsala wine and balsamic vinegar in the pantry. The last tablespoons of butter had a prayer said over them as they plopped into the mixture, that were christened with the white wine. Topped the sauce and salvaged gnocchi with parmesan cheese. The result was good...surprisingly so and tasty!

Moral of the story: Sometimes you can do everything wrong and yet still come out right, or at least with a good pasta dish.