Welcome to our Deep Space Supper Club (so called because of our fascination with science fiction, the future and what the aliens are going to think about us when they finally get here). Tonight's plan is to watch some more True Blood, which doesn't really qualify as science fiction, sadly, but it's really good, nonetheless. The other plan for tonight is Brian's: he will once again attempt to recreate something that he read about somewhere, but never got to try and goshdarnit, that just stuck in his craw.
[Craw? Doesn't that imply he DID eat it, you ask?Whatever.]
Corn Bisque
We'll be opening tonight's festivities with a Corn Bisque. The menu that Brian was drooling over when he made this decision was one offered on the Boston Restaurant Week website: 49 Social. Since we don't have access to their actual recipe (or cilantro oil.... and no doubt the idea of a 'jalapeno emulsion' scared Mr. I Hate Anything Spicy right off...), he's using one he found at JustAPinch.com Nice, hearty, safe and not spicy at all: this recipe is exactly Brian's kind of thing. Surprisingly, it was also the sleeper hit of the evening, as you will see in the reviews below.
Salted Chocolate Caramel Tart
Brian had a brief panic attack just before Jim and Alex arrived when he realized that the dessert he chose (getting the idea from Aquitaine-Chestnut Hill) has 3 different chilling times, totaling 2 hours, overall. He moved around the kitchen like a whirling dervish getting the dough ready as fast as possible. It's about half way through the first hour of chilling and it looks just like gingerbread, but Bri tells me he is making a chocolate tart crust. This dessert has a fairly simple but -as it turned out- delicious chocolate/flour/egg crust. It also involves making your own caramel, which you do by melting sugar in corn syrup and water and stirring for a really long time. Then, on top of the caramel layer, there is a thin spread of a chocolate cream sauce, which is easy to make: you just melt the chocolate in the microwave and add cream. In the Restaurant Week menu, this dessert is described as coming with "Nutella powder" and espresso ice cream, but we skipped those as being too over the top.Moroccan Cigars
That's Alex with his ever so logical ideas that don't occur to other people. Alex and Jim have arrived and are hard at work getting the other main entree prepared: Moroccan Sephardi Cigars, which, usually, are deep fried, spring roll-like packets of spiced ground beef, but as vegetarians we are substituting in some fake meat we found at Trader Joe's (Note: We couldn't find Gimme Lean in time, but that would have been our fake meat of choice.) We used a recipe Brian hunted down on another Blogspot site, which is written by a guy with an impressive vocabulary. (Degustations? I had to look that up, but now I want to work it in everywhere.). The spices smell wonderfully Moroccan as the "meat" cooks. This turned out to be an extremely easy dish to make...right up until it was time to put the filling in the phyllo. Phyllo is really hard to work with, and I can't say anything we've ever made with it has ever turned out pretty, and tonight is not much of an exception, but hey, that's not really one of our highest priorities, anyway, right? Right. This recipe idea came from The Beehive in the South End (Boston).
" Since this meat is completely fake, we should add a lot of fat."
Jim splashes olive oil into the meat mixture as it cooks and some into the corn bisque just for good measure. Alex wants to smear butter on the outside of the finished phyllo cigars, then midway through the cooking we brush them with more olive oil. It's enough to make this diet conscious, vegan wannabe cry, but sometimes it's hard to put the brakes on three hungry men.
"Should we keep these cigars vegan?" Alex asked me. Who am I kidding, even I said no. The Hunger is upon us. Butter smeared phyllo? Sounds great! On the positive side, I "accidentally" bought whole wheat phyllo dough, earlier. That's got to count for something.
Other than Alex, who is painstakingly making all the cigars by himself, the rest of us are having a remarkably easy cooking night. So we start to have fun.
Jim is singing along with Regina Spektor:
"It breaks my heart art art art art art art art art art art art art art... Naturally, an argument ensues on how many 'art's are in the chorus, and it took us a long time to decide on 14, let me tell you.
Alex mentioned at one point in the evening that all he wants in a trashy novel is for it to be at least more intriguing and unpredictable than, say, the average Deep Space Nine episode. I say, "Yeah, or, like all those werewolf novels." This seems to be going Too Far for Alex, because he asks how I can jump from his Deep Space Nine comment to wiping all werewolf novels off the table. Jim says, "Hey, she extrapolated!" Damn right, Jim.
We paused to appreciate a Luscious Jackson song. "Wearing nothing is divine... Naked is a state of mind..."
This got us talking about music, which somehow got us talking about Kate Bush and this bizarre and wonderful video and her amazing dance style:
And THAT got us talking about another favorite of ours, the amazing Marquese Scott, who has taken dub step to a whole new superhuman level. Did you even know human beings could do this?
Oh, yeah, but this is supposed to be a cooking blog, so back to the food...
Soup
"I've never heard of putting cornmeal in a soup. That's kind of ...interesting...." Between you and me, it sounds terrible, doesn't it, but again, wait until you read the reviews below. This soup won us ALL over, even Alex.
Cigars
"Oh hell no. We're not deep frying anything in oil. " Unlike Romney, we are pro-biofuels. We used butter, instead, and we lathered the hell out of those cigars with it, but at least we didn't cook them in a vat of oil.
We baked them.
Dessert
Brian made the whole thing while we were distracted by the phyllo dough process. After the dough chilled for an hour, Bri divided it into four pieces, rolled each out and spread it into a tart pan. Then the crust was baked for an hour. Meanwhile, Bri began the laborious stirring of the caramel in a saucepan- that seemed to take an hour, too. The tarts needed to cool for a long time after they baked, then the caramel was poured in and they were placed in the refrigerator. Too soon, we took them out again to pour the chocolate on top. That didn't work out too well, so back they went to chill some more and we went off to eat dinner. Another hour later, we spread the chocolate and chilled it for another half hour or so. That damn dessert took forever to make. When we finally did eat it, it was STILL too liquidy.
The Results of the Degustations
Moroccan Cigars
Deb: A- I loved them. To improve them, I think we could add mushrooms, or something more than just meat and onions, but the taste was incredible.Bri: A Needed mushrooms, maybe. Or actual MEAT meat.
Jim: B+ Needed salt, hot sauce. Maybe needed to be deep fried.
Alex: B+ Needed nooch, soy sauce, something Umami. Umami-ish? Umamamesque? Umamoid?
Corn Bisque
Deb: A I liked the fact that it was chunky. Great texture. Tasty. The hot sauce added a lot. These are 2 recipes we should definitely put up on the blog because people need to KNOW about these.
Alex: A- Maybe it needed more fat. [Ewwwww! -Deb]
Jim: A With Trader Joe's Chili Pepper Sauce, an A+
Brian: F. Hahahaha. Just joking. A.
Deb: OMG if you eat the whole thing, you will die. I tried a bite of it and the sugar nearly put me into a coma. ["Welcome back, Full Deb!" -everyone else.]
Bri B- Given another 6 hours to chill properly, this could really be amazing.
Alex: B crust is really good. Caramel- too much, Chocolate topping very good. Needs some spices to make it a bit more sophisticated.
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| The cooks tonight: Alex, Jim and Brian. (I mostly sat around and typed.) |
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