Day 20: Fail again, Fail better.
I’m peeling almonds, and I have been for the last hour. And I will be for the next hour.
Soak them in warm water, the skins will come off easily, they’d said.
They hadn’t and they weren’t.
But the pads on my finger tips have and are.
As I dip my hand into the huge bowl of warm water and grab another fistful of almonds, I glance up the clock.
Lunchtime is an eternity away.
It’s Day 20 of my 100 Day Chef Stage and I thank my lucky stars most days aren’t like this, but not everything can be flames and fire and sea urchins.
No, today is going to be one of the slow ones.
What’s more it will end, in failure.
Normally, I love almonds. Especially these Spanish Marcona Almendras, grown around Alicante. Each Spring, the pink and white blossoms of the almond trees are an awesome sight – one that always makes me think of making an ajo blanco.
Almond Gazpacho (ajo blanco) is a creamy, cold soup with a touch of garlic against the buttery backdrop of almonds.
Last summer, I did some extensive ajo blanco recipe testing, putting on a couple of kilos (but hey, that’s alright it’s unsaturated fat packed full of iron and vitamin E, right?) in the name of research.
Here is the recipe, if you’d like to try it.
But, that’s not what we are making today.
In fact no-one is sure what these almonds will be used for. When I ask Victor, he just shrugs, he thinks they might be for an experiment.
So I peel, until eternity arrives.
“Will this be enough?” I ask Victor.
The result of the morning are underwhelming; a small bowl of unpeeled almonds.
“It’ll have to be,” he answers, and eats one.
Later, the almonds get fried in sugar and spices, by head chef, Federico who is testing a new recipe.
But, it doesn’t work.
Federico takes one taste, grimaces, shakes his head, and my morning’s work gets tipped into the bin.
Great. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back. The skin on my finger tips might grow back, but the time is gone. Thrown away. In the bin, along with the almonds. Wasted.
But is it? Is it wasted time? Has this morning been a complete waste of time?
Fail, again. Fail, better
It sure feels like it.
Like that moment when you re-write an article, discarding paragraphs of carefully constructed words, leaving nothing on the page, just blank space to start again.
Or when you lose a contest, and it’s back to the drawing board, to learn from the mistakes.
As Samuel Beckett says:
No matter. Try again. Fail, again. Fail, better.
Failure can be useful, as long as you learn something from it, just one thing.
Even if that something is not to do it again.
Like never to peel almonds again. Ever.
