Brian's Night: If it's foreign, I like it

Greetings, Internet!  Alex here, blogging to you live from the planet of Brideb Debri and things are already feeling delightfully otherworldly:

"How could you have forgotten that pizza dough takes time to rise?"

And that, my friends, is how you transform pizza into crepes!

So our meal will apparently consist of...crepes, Gratin de Potiron, Spinaci con Pinoli, and Besan Laddu.  For those of you that don't speak uh...French, Italian and Hindi, that means we're making a winter squash casserole, spinach with pine nuts and chickpea flour sweets.

Anyway, as everyone is starting to figure out what we need for our various recipes, Jim is still glowing from his nascent negotiations with Menton.  They are commissioning a series of plates from him to serve their "modern yet lavish" cuisine.  Modern yet lavish sounds just like Shea Pottery!  And of course, our fancy pants food blog!

Deb is chopping mushrooms on this cutting board, which is worth mentioning for two reasons.  First off, this cutting board is designed for persnickety chefs like myself who say things like "No!  I said brunoise!  Come ON!" and has a little chart of what things like brunoise mean along with graph paper (graph cutting board?) with little measurement squares.  Second, Deb apparently learned how to chop backhand, which is something I didn't even realize was possible.  Way to go, Deb!

Brian is working on the squash cassero- I mean Gratin de Potiron.  This involves a great big pile of squash and...uh...I don't really know what else.  In fairness, Brian seems much more pleased with his recent accomplishments as a scholar, working with a Pullitzer Prize nominee to research Boston circa 100 years ago.  (Personally, I hope that this book will be called Not Fucking Around, but what do I know).

Meanwhile, Bri and Deb saw Django Unchained, which in addition to being superb also spurred that age old discussion of "does Quentin use the N-word too much?"  Read all about it here!

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Spike Lee's on your ass all the time about using the word "n----r." What would you say to black filmmakers who are offended by the use of the word "n*****r" and/or offended by the depictions of the horrors of slavery in the film?

Just for Spike.

By the way, Professor Gates doesn't seem to shy away from the word, but it's been told to me that I definitely can't quote him in print on the blog!  The world is a confusing place sometimes.

What is not confusing, however, is how freaking amazing Ghee smells when it's used to cook mushrooms and zucchini.  Yum.  You can chew on that Spike and Quentin.  Literally!  You're both invited!

So, it occurs to us that our blog might have a lot more hits if we were to take some inspiration from this character.

 

You can always lick your tool if you have too much on there.  Ahem.

The blogger's view of cooking club.

Don't make me pose!

Behold, my egg!

Hey, I'm cooking!

Anyway, due to some pizza to crepe challenges, we have encountered the problem that the Gratin will be done way later than the crepes.  Whoops!  Jim is starting the Besan Balls, which consists of even more ghee and calls for one teaspoon of cardamom.  After knocking over things in five different locations, we have accomplished the following:

1. Turning off Destroyer
2. Finding bizarro black cardamom pods that smell like Bac'os
3. Finding green cardamom pods that smell like cardamom

   

   Jim's crepes.  They got better!

4. Extracting the black seeds from the cardamom pods
5. Determining that the coffee grinder is gone and cannot turn our seeds into powder
6. Determining that the mortar and pestle are gone and cannot turn our seeds into powder
7. Discovering that we have cheese cloth and can wrap the cardamom in it and soak it in the besan goo
8. Pondering whether washing the cheese cloth will cause the besan goo to become besan clumps
9. Finding the coffee grinder
10. Finding the pen which you can stick into the coffee grinder to make it grind
11. Making ground cardamom!

Note to careful chefs: some of these steps may be omitted without adverse effect.  Use your best judgment.

10 minutes to go!  Time to start the spina- Espinaci!  And Jim, the crepe guy in spite of his not-so-very-French heritage, is doing his best!

The Espinaci consists of toasting pine nuts and adding spinach to it.  It's simple and seems like it's going to work without a hitch!

Besan Ladoo Not Try This At Home.
Adding besan to the ghee.

I would like to mention, however, that one thing that may have collected a few hitches around the way is the besan ladoo.  Deb thinks it smells like "burnt carrot...maybe...mixed with us...sawdust...dirt.  Burnt carrots mixed with dirt."  It also has the unfortunate quality that it has not yet congealed.  And it's eventually supposed to turn into a ball!  Right now it's kind of just a puddle that may congeal as it cools, but, given that it still smells like burnt carrots and dirt...yeah.

While we wait for it to cool, we assemble our photogenic meal:

 

Interestingly, the Besan Ladoo is actually cooling!  It's a little uneven, the bottom is quite settled, while the top is still liquid-y, but Jim tasted it, and he even said that he liked it!  Imagine that!  And what does it look like, you ask?  These are the firmest of the bunch.

Besan Ladoo times two.

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Crepes	B.  They were alright.  I really liked the goat cheese, but the overall impact was a bit forgettable.	A-.  They were tasty, bite sized.  We could have had a variety, but since our initial plan wasn't for crepes at all, we did pretty good!	B+.  They were delicious.  They could have used more herbs or a wine sauce, but they were quite satisfying!	B+.  I think they needed a sauce of some sort, but I thought they were pretty darn tasty.  And the crepe itself was beautiful!  Dammit!
Espinaci	A-.  I thought the pine nuts were a really good addition and even though it was cold, I still quite enjoyed it!	B.  We let it cool too much.  If we'd eaten earlier, might have been A,A- range.	B.  It was spinach.  We needed 8 times as much.  It was tasty.	B.  It was pretty good in the crepe.
Gratin	B+.  The bites on the top (with the cheese and breadcrumbs) were amazing.  The bites at the bottom that tasted like mushy squash, were kind of C bites.	A.  I'm pretty pleased!  Bread crumbs and cheese were a great combo!  I'm going to put them on every vegetable I eat for the next month.	A-.  I wonder if a NUT CRUST would have been just as nice...	A-.  I think it needed a little more cheese - really pretty tasty!
Besan Ladoo	B-.  It's not my favorite thing, but it tastes unique and I kind of like it!	F.  I did not know what chickpea flour tasted like, and know I know.	F-.  Burn it with fire.  Kill it with fire.  Burn it sounds stupid, just kill it with fire.	F+.  The first little bit tasted OK, then it went south.