Deb notes that she has a lot of experience passing out, including once in school when she took out an entire row at a choir, so she's naturally attuned to this particular medical emergency.
Our official menu tonight is a British theme in honor of Sherlock: shepherd's pie, welsh rarebit, salad and flourless chocolate goat cheese cake! Jim is steering us away from mushy peas, though, so this is more like Variations on a Theme of British Cooking. For additional British flavor..wait, that should be flavour... we tune the stereo to the 'Underground 80s U.K'. station, and prepare to do some maths as we convert our recipes. Pip pip!
The link for the Shepherd's Pie is here: www.food.com/302120. We are five minutes in and already adapting it, though: to quote Alex,"What kind of bullshit recipe calls for only one onion?" We double the onion, vegetarian-ize it, and kick things into gear. Next note: we lack tomato paste, so we're going to take some canned tomatoes and puree them down. Deb's adding some milk to the potatoes while mashing to get a better texture. Alex adds salt...in general, the debate between the saltophobic Deb and the sodium-loving Alex is one of our most potent recurring collisions, like the East Coast/West Coast rap feud but with less rhyming. Deb shows off her special potato-blending technique, which involves using her hand to shield the rest of the room from being coated in potato.
Nik Kershaw comes on! This song was the first music video I ever saw. Thank you, England.
Deb, by the way, Does Not Want To Hear From You if you dislike Malcolm Gladwell, who's written a book that she's loving right now. Deb DOES want to hear about adding either golden raisins or dried cherries to the salad--she's in favor of both.
The rarebit recipe is an Alton Brown special from the Food Network, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/welsh-rarebit-recipe/index.html . Please note that the recipe calls for porter beer--we look at the various varieties we have, note that Bass is British, but eventually decide to go with the Red Rock Ale.
For the salad dressing we're going to take an orange and mix it with some dark balsamic vinegar. But hold onto your keisters, because we're then going to reduce some and use it as the glaze for the chocolate cake! The cake, by the way, was created by Alex "in my mind!", so no link is available. (Unless you're reading this in 2050 and the neural jacks have been installed... in that case, we bid hello to our cybermancer overlords.) He generated a copy and printed it out, though, leading to an apartment-wide hunt for the recipe...aha, found it!
Feast your peepers, geodes and gamites, it's the Cake Recipe:
8 tbs unsalted butter
2 packages of Taza Mexican Chocolate
4oz Chevre
5 large eggs, room temp., separated
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsps vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
Directions: Preheat oven to 350
Grease 9" springform pan with butter, dust with flour
In metal bowl over double boiler, melt remaining butter (7 tbs) and chocolate, remove from heat
Use mixer to beat yolks together with sugar and vanilla
Beat whites and salt together until stiff
Fold chocolate mixture into yolk mixture a little at a time.
Fold in egg whites.
Pour into springform pan.
Bake 40 minutes, until spongy.
Remove from oven, remove springform, cool completely.
GLAZE
Blend two oranges and strain pulp
Add 1/8 cup vanilla balsamic vinegar (yes, such a thing exists!)
Reduce on stovetop until it coats the back of a spoon (remember, it will thicken as it cools)
Sarah arrives! INXS comes on! Coincidence? (Yes.) We assign her the rarebit.
Alex is improvising at the stove as he combines pie ingredients, and expresses a little worry about this. Deb, the recipe-holder, teams up with Jim and Alex rotates to begin the cake. We're experimenting with Taza Chocolate (there's goat cheese inside!) for the cake--Alex has been wondering whether previous desserts were held back by mediocre chocolate, but notes that the difference between mediocre chocolate and Taza for this one recipe is a $15 difference. Which, not that I'm of a different mind, but if my dessert next week tastes like a melted-down leftover chocolate Easter bunny from the sale bin at Costco, there's a reason.
We're also using special sugar that's been stored with vanilla beans, which smells amazing. The cooks pass the melted chocolate around before mixing it into the yolks--Jim thoughtfully provides the blogger with a sample, because he is awesome. This paragraph is dedicated to Jim. <3
"Okay, stop talking, start smiling"--Alex to Jim, during the pose with the shepherds pie
Music note: As someone who was alive in the '80s I feel like I should apologize for "Fun Boy Three & Bananarama". I don't know what I could have done to stop them, but from what we're hearing right now I obviously should have done more.
Jim (<3) slices up a loaf of fresh whole wheat sourdough bread; Alex is working on the rarebit that we'll be pouring across the top of it. NOM.
The Shepherd's Pie is out of the oven, and despite being vegetarian looks like a big pan of corned beef with cheese grated across the top. The potato layer at the top being purple is the culprit. (The CSA that provides Jim with potatoes gave him purple potatoes...what's a guy to do?)
"That doesn't look pretty at all, does it?"--Jim "It looks British!"--me
As a sidenote about tonight's TV viewing, the BBC has Watson's character maintaining a blog (http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/), and it's been torture NOT looking at it for the next few months for fear of getting spoilers.
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| The full meal: Salad, Shepherd's Pie and Welsh Rarebit on Toast |
THE SCORES
| Alex | Brian | Deb | Sarah | Jim | |
| Shepherd's Pie | B+ pretty good, really nice flavor, the fake meat was very good; if the presentation and texture were better (a crispy top) it would've been in the A zone. | B+, purple potatoes have their place, but not in my shepherd's pie | A, would make it again! Less cheese, less salt, more vegetables would be her key for next time. | B; thought it needed more texture. Everything was so mushy. A crispier top would have helped. | A-; purple potatoes are not the kind of thing that should be mashed. If it had been broiled it would have been better. |
| Welsh Rarebit | A- --it was pretty good. It would have been better with better cheese, like a stronger more interesting sort, and a better (fresh!) bread. | A! Damn good. | It was fine? It tasted like cheese sauce on bread? I'm not a cheese fan, but I'd say it's a B+ | A+ Rarebit's so good! Crispy bread, melty cheese, best part of the meal. Delicious. | B+...if we had broiled it, let it get a little brown, that would have made it even better. |
| Salad | B-...it was fine. It was not special. I ate it. | C+...it was a salad. Salad is a salad is a salad. In the new millenial version of J. Alfred Prufrock, we measure out our lifespan not in coffee spoons but in salad bowls filled with green leafy bland morsels.....maybe C+ was too high. | C+ I don't remember what the dressing tasted like, but it wasn't offensive. | C. Mediocre. What Alex said. | It earned a B--should've put some arugula in there. Other than that it was a perfectly fine salad. |
| Cake | The texture was Not Right. However, the chocolate flavor was really nice, the goat cheese gave it a nice hint without being overwhelming; it was a great match with the glaze, and had a lot of potential. B+--I would try to make it again, but I don't think it was in the A range. | B--It was a cheesecake without a solid crust, so texturally it was disturbingly similar to the shepherd's pie, just sweeter. I'd use elements of it--the glaze is fascinating--but it's a work in progress. | A- --especially loved the top of the cake. If it'd been well cooked, it would've been even more amazing. The glaze wasn't anything I'm a fan of--powdered sugar would've been just as good. | [She had to leave in the middle of the show due to some impending houseguest.] | B--the glaze on it was really good, but what it needed was like an orange zest. The next stage would be a goat cheese cheesecake/cake marbleized together. But it has potential. |
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| Alex's Flourless Cake |
