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..."
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