My husband and I love to cook, but we'd had little spare time before receiving this book for review. We took a four-day weekend to celebrate our anniversary, and we decided to cook up a true feast on Monday. This seemed the perfect opportunity to test out Andy Husbands and Joe Yonan's "The Fearless Chef: Innovative Recipes from the Edge of American Cuisine." Reading through the recipes, they looked like exactly our kind of food; we couldn't wait to try them out.

One of the recipes turned out absoluteley spectacularly--a soy glaze that we put over noodles. Other recipes were good but not great; a mango and cabbage salad and some beans both tasted a bit unbalanced in flavor. In particular, the beans tasted overwhelmingly of the beer that went into them (I'm sure some would see that as a plus!).

Dessert is where the excitement came in. We made a bananas Foster-like recipe that involved a full cup of rum (I had to triple-check the amount because I found it so hard to believe). When we opened the oven at the end of the baking time I heard a whooshing sound and the slam of the oven door. Then I smelled burnt hair. I whipped around, and when my husband turned to face me all I could say was, "umm, you should look in a mirror." His eyebrows and eyelashes, and the front row of his hair, had all been burned partially off. A gout of flame had apparently shot straight out of the oven when he opened it up.

Nothing like that has ever happened to us before.

Dessert was still edible, believe it or not, but once again, just like the beans, the taste of alcohol was so overwhelming that I almost couldn't taste anything else. And no matter how much I love that soy glaze, I can't quite get past that fireball!

Full review at ErrantDreams ( )