Alex's Night: Spinach Custard and Mushroom Pate Sushi

Tonight's Deep Space menu continues our collective assault on the world of pudding which did us so wrong a few weeks ago. Having broken the pudding curse last week and yet still consumed by thoughts of vengeance, Alex wanted to continue the attack on congealed food by attempting a custard. 

The other portions of tonight's menu were inspired by a variety of sources: the happenstance of leftover pate, casual leafing through Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for ideas, and Jim's desire for ice cream sandwiches.

Alex's menu evolved into:

Egg and Spinach Custard
Bittman's Yogurt Biscuits
Mushroom Pate Sushi
Snickerdoodles and Cherry-Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwiches

Biscuits
It was one of our easier menus to prep. The biscuits were particularly easy; I know, because, luckily, that job fell to me- only 5 ingredients. I had a fun time rolling them out...I used one of Jim's handmade, fragile tea mugs to cut out the shape, which was probably all kinds of blasphemy to the long and venerable tea ceremony tradition of Japan, but it worked perfectly.  The only problem I had was that I rolled the dough too thin, so I had extra dough left over at the end. I cut out a few more circles and made some double-decker muffins, which is why some came out looking like the muffins on the left here:

Overall, the biscuits were tasty, but I think I worked the dough a bit too much. They were a little on the dense side, when they should have been light and flaky.

Custard
While I was working on the muffins, Alex and Jim were making the custard and sushi. The custard was interesting to see prepared: Jim lined the ramekins with spinach and after the custard was poured in, he folded over the tops of the spinach, thus creating the walls and floor of the custard.


Bittman told us it takes courage to take a custard out of the oven, because you'll think they're undone, but if you wait until they look done, then they will be overcooked.  So if you think they're undone, --they're done! That's what I said to Alex and, courageously, he took them out of the oven. Unfortunately...they probably needed a few more minutes. The custards kept their shape quite well when we upended them out of their ramekins, but the insides were runny. We stand at 1 win 2 losses in the battle for tasty congealed food.


Sushi
That's "sushi", of course--there is no fish in our vegetarian cooking club. Instead we wrapped mushroom pate in long cucumber slices. It gave us an excuse to practice our artistic presentation skills. We painstakingly knotted carrot ties around cucumber rolls that were spread with mushroom pate. I felt like a real chef for a few minutes there.


Unfortunately, from a taste point of view, this texture combination of mushy interior with cold exterior was not delectable. The mushroom pate had a really strong flavor and needed something stronger to pair with it.

Here is what dinner looked like overall: a double decker Yogurt Biscut, an Egg and Spinach Custard and Mushroom Pate Sushi.








Dessert
Dessert was the real star of this meal. The snickerdoodle cookies turned out perfectly since we let the former baker from Charlottesville, VA- Brian- make those.  They came out just the way they used to look at the Rising Sun Bakery, back in the day.

Alex, who has always had a fondness for fruity ice cream, made some delicious cherry/strawberry ice cream before we arrived tonight. Apparently, it was made with ricotta! Someday, I'll have to get the recipe from him.  I thought both the cookies and ice cream were excellent and happily had two of the sandwiches. I'm not sure I would make them like that again, though. I really wanted something like a chocolate mint ice cream in between these cookies. These were much healthier than that, though.

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Mushroom tofu pate rolls	B Good job with presentation, but the cucumber and pate weren't a perfect match.	B+ For our first time, it was really tasty.	C+ Fun to make, but kind of cold. The pate would have been awesome on bread.	B+ Would have been better if the wrapper was prosciutto rather than cucumber.
Yogurt Biscuits	B Flavor was ok. Texture was a little off.	A- Very tasty. Did everything a biscuit should do.	B+ A little too yogurty tasting.	B- Wasn't flaky, but the taste was good.
Spinach Wrapped Savory Custard	C- I ate the whole thing. Has potential, but it was soggy.	C It got spinach into my body and spinach has lots of nutrients so I am healthier as a result.	C Spinach pieces were large and we should have cooked it longer (too much courage!).	D It looked good, but it wasn't that good. Mine was very undercooked.
Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Sandwiches	B Ice cream had a very fresh flavor and the snickerdoodles were buttery and had a great texture, but altogether it was just ok.	A- Cookies could have been flatter, but it held together and was tasty.	A I would each element again, but maybe not combine them together again.	A I thought it was great. Who would have thought that you can make an ice cream type of thing out of ricotta.

Farscape

S01E13, "Rhapsody in Blue"
S01E14, "Jeremiah Crighton"

Deb: "Both episodes were pretty stupid, weren't they."
Bri: "Filler episodes are painful.  It felt like a script for Deep Space 9 with the names changed."
Jim: "Blue people and Space Hawaiians - what's not to love?  Well, these two episodes."
Alex: "I like episodes where three months pass and there are no flashbacks.  Nevertheless..."

Deb's Night: DIY Quiche

Do it yourself quiches! Deb was kind enough to chop up a million vegetables for us before we came, and even prepared a loaf of "real French bread" to be baked. And it's our inaugural blog post! Alex (me) is writing up the post, and somehow, we'll try to also watch our beloved trashy sci-fi (Farscape, this week) and eat, while writing the blog entry.

Bread

Deb had prepared a loaf of bread that was touted to be "really French", whatever that means! It was fun to watch the beautiful loaf get moved, and turn dramatically less beautiful, but the bread turned out just fine in the end. This recipe differs from the artisan bread style that I've used, as the dough was super dry, and there was no gluten cloak or steamed oven or anything like that. We finished the dough with an egg wash, which gives it a nice sheen. The interior wasn't super moist, but was warm and delicious! Deb was disappointed with the crust, but then again, after eating all of the quiche ingredients, she wasn't hungry and can't really be trusted!

Salad

Ok, our salad was actually pretty boring, because we put all of our chopped vegetables into the quiche instead of the salad! Whoops! It's alright though, because we had some adventurous dressing experiences. Deb has this goofy collection of really flavorful vinegars, and we made a "spicy pecan" vinaigrette, which was a freaking disaster. We replaced it with a regular balsamic (with some parmesan added in) and it turned out just fine. And it goes great with a slice of fresh-baked bread!




Quiche

For the quiche, we started with a cornflake-butter crust, made with goofy Whole Foods cornflakes that looked like they were giving dirty looks to the Kellogg's cornflakes...It called for a short prebaking, and we dry-sauteed onions and mushrooms to add to our quiche. Since it was DIY, we each picked our own style. I added a ton of chard and cheese to mine, Brian went for a few red peppers, and with Jim, had some bacon inside too. Deb I think was going into 'dairy-averse' mode, and did more veggies than I did, if that was possible!

It took us a little while to cook the quiche - maybe 35 minutes - and we weren't super careful about keeping the egg amounts the same in each quiche, but it looks like things turned out OK! Well, the small ones finished first, but they look beautiful!


This one is Jim's quiche - arugula, corn, Jarlsberg, mushrooms, onions, bacon, faux-sausage and chives. It looks pretty delicious! Mine was a little too overcooked, I thought. I feel like quiche is supposed to be creamy, but mine was definitely not creamy. Maybe not enough cheese, they say...each quiche had its own flavor, though, so I probably can't judge everyone else's.

Pudding

So, in cooking club, we've had some problems with puddings. Jim found this cornstarch heavy chocolate pudding from a friend, and it definitely worked! We fortified with chocolate chips and vanilla, and it was thickening even on the stove. Maybe that's the secret - lots and lots of starch. In the past, we tried to add agar too, and man, that can give you a gross texture.

The pudding was rich, and pretty creamy. Definitely had a good texture. I thought the flavor was pretty good, but the complete absence of spices was a little bland. I'll give Jim points for a beautiful picture though. Take a look at that vanilla bean! Sometime, we have to try cooking with them, too!

Final Thoughts

Well, there was a lot of waiting in this meal! Different cooking times for quiches, a late arrival, a post-9:30 entree starting time. That's the price you pay for a fancypants home cooked dinner...when you start at like 7. Oops.

Farscape Episodes

Deb: "I'm really glad we don't have to watch those again."
Bri: "So much better than Star Trek. Even a bad episode is so much better than Star Trek."
Jim: "Each episode had a great guest actor, but neither episode thrilled me until 'I love you D'argo'"
Alex: "They almost died, but then they didn't. I was shocked!"

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Salad	C+ Dressing was alright, and I love arugula, but nothing was special about it.	B+ Good blend of fixings	B Needed more stuff. Beans would have been good.	A My mix of ingredients was just right and dressing was quite tasty.
Bread	B It’s hard to give fresh bread a bad rating. Who cares where it comes from!	A- Delicious Italian bread for anyone expecting Italian bread it was a treat.	B Bland and not crispy. That was not French Bread.	A- I’m glad it wasn’t French bread.
Quiche	C- My quiche had a crappy texture and just an ok flavor. Jim thinks I mixed it too much.	B+ Fixings make the quiche.	C “Not sophisticated at all.”	A- Bacon.
Pudding	B Plain jane chocolate pudding. It worked! But it didn’t sing to me.	A+ Well, for supper club. B It was thick, it had a skin on top. It was a functional basic pudding. Bill Cosby might have been enthusiastic.	B+ “Needed alcohol or something - something different in the taste”	B It was a good basic pudding but we could have bammed it up.