Jim's Night of Homemade Pizzas, Where Nothing Could Possibly Go Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Pax East!  Chocolate cherry cupcakes, Deb's ever-growing feet, niece Katie possibly wandering around outside dressed like a minotaur, make-your-own-pizzas, and a possible kale salad hampered by the lack of kale.

That was a supper club lightning round!  And now for a bit more coherence.

Greetings, friends and neighbors and welcome to another Supper Club post.  This one's coming to you on Friday night instead of Saturday, due to the fact that Deb and I will be spending tomorrow at my old family home up in Maine helping my Mom and Dad move.  (Pause for ANGST).  So since today was a work day for some of us we've gotten a bit of a later start than usual; but we're compensating with a slightly easier-than-usual recipe batch, so it all works out.  Kamtriya!  What could go wrong??

It's the weekend of Pax East, a ginormous video game convention occurring down the street from us, so the sidewalks outside are clogged with Jedi and Doctor Whos and people wearing TARDIS hats (for the inevitable "it's bigger on the inside" joke) and other outfits even we are not nerdy enough to get.  Some of Deb's family have attended in previous years, but this year they decided to stay down south and buy their first house instead.  Some people's priorities...

And this is just the line for the bathroom

Deb leaps into action making the pizza sauce...and is immediately flummoxed by the fact that the recipe calls for 110-degree WATER.  As an Italian, she says, she is insulted by this!  (As a Norwegian she feels water that hot is sinful, but that's a whole other thing).  We're also weirded out by the fact that there's honey in the recipe.

We talk our Default Pizza toppings.  With Deb it's onions & mushrooms, with Jim it's onions & black olives, for me it's Meat, and with Alex it's complicated by the fact that some shops don't do a good red sauce but others do and sometimes he's more in the mood for fancy stuff than others and if certain vegetables are in season and and and...Leone's in Somerville is a good place for very tasty pizza, is the fact I come away with.

As for favorite peepza toppings, the jury is still out.

Jim points out that since he's been in town we haven't had a supper club go so badly we've had to junk everything and order out for pizza.  Causal relationship?  Or just sheer luck on our parts?  Is part of it also that we used to do cooking club on weekdays (which is CRAZY)?

Return visit from FUTURE BRIAN here, who felt he needs to point out that the last paragraph was completely unedited and written with absolutely no knowledge of what was about to unfold.  Oh wow, the sweet, sweet hubris.  It tingles!

Alex is working on putting the cupcake wrappers in the tin and keeping them weighed down with a frozen cherry in each one.  Visually pretty, cookingly frustrating!

Collard greens were bought instead of kale, and now we're figuring out what to do with them.  Sauteeing is called for.  But what else?  Raisins?  Nuts?

As if our joke about Jim being a good luck charm called down the wrath of hubris gods, less than 90 seconds after Deb leaves for a dog walk, DISASTER STRIKES.  The pizza doughs were rising in the oven in plastic bowls, and when the oven got turned on to heat up for the cupcakes, Bad Things Happened.

VERY

BAD

THINGS

On the bright side, we have two decent looking loaves of bread!

(Though whether they're actually baked on the inside is anyone's guess.)  And the cupcake batter is totally fine, and nothing caught on fire...really, this is all for the best.  This was a triumph.  I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.  It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.   (To the one person who recognizes this quote: thank you.  We hope you enjoyed PAX.)

"It smells good, how bad can it be!" --Deb's first statement on getting back from her dogwalk, before seeing the melted plastic.

Insult to injury: there wasn't enough sour cream for both the cupcakes and the frosting.  And now all the sour cream in the house is in the batter.  So we improvise!  Ricotta might take the place of the sour cream.

We debate ordering out or trying to somehow Save the Day.  What if we take the loaves of what were once pizza dough, slice them up into flat surfaces, and make pizzas with them?  It will turn out like french bread pizza from childhood is the _best_ case scenario,

Oh yes.  It's on.

"I like it when things go to hell!  I hate plans!  I hate YOUR plans!"--Deb, getting feisty.  (If anyone wants to use this quote in their wedding vows, we ask that you credit her somewhere in the program).

Deb is now slicing up the loaves into rounds.  We're pre-heating the oven for the "over-filled, over-sour creamed cupcakes".  Since we didn't have any plans for the collard greens at all Jim is soliciting ideas.  We check the Bittman vegetarian cookbook, which has exactly 1 collard green recipe, and it involves marinated tofu.  Bittmannnnnnnnn!!

So not helpful.

Jim is grating cheese in the cuisinart; Alex is making cupcake frosting and giving it some zing by adding maraschino cherry juice, Deb's original idea.

"He said share with Rommy, he didn't say share with Brian.  And besides, there's still a side Rommy hasn't licked."  --Deb, 'sharing' the frosting.

While Jim focuses on the pizza toppings, Deb and Alex return to Bittman's recipe and try to figure out an approach to the collard greens.  "It looks terrible", is Deb's opinion; in lieu of a documented recipe, Alex decides he's going to riff.

"What's the difference between batter and dough?"  "Dough's a solid and batter's a liquid."  "A plasma, anyhow."  "GEEK."

We realize that we have herbs de provence and decide they should, nay, MUST go on the pizza. 

"What temperature do you think the pizzas should go in on?" "425!"  "350!"  ".......okay, so 385."

We add a little red wine vinegar on the mushrooms; Jim laments forgetting to add a little garlic into the ricotta so it could soak up the garlicky flavor.  We let the cupcakes cool, and their yummy scent mixes with the onion and mushroom grilling odors.

Pizza possibilities:  Goat cheese, mozzarella, ricotta!  Olives, onions, mushrooms, pepperonis (!),  roasted peppers, and of course herbes du provence.  (Technically melted plastic is a possibility too, but we don't recommend it).

"Never give up.  Never surrender."--Alex motivating us to keep going with our mini-pizzas after the disaster.

While our mini-pizzas pizz (pronounced 'peetz'  ((no, REALLY))  ), we frost our cupcakes.

At this point we adjourn to the next room to munch, judge, and watch the bizarreness of the first episode of Season 4 of True Blood and the first episode of Season 1 of Lost Girl.

And also, to give our scores!

Brian	Deb	Alex	Jim
Pizza: B; my crust was a bit too thick and chewy, and it skewed the results.	Pizza: B+. Very satisfying. A little bit too chewy, but otherwise it was great.	Pizza: C.  My piece was too thick, it didn't totally cook in the middle, I thought the sauce was a little sweet.  I liked the bit I had afterwards with lots of cheese and no bread.	Pizza:  B+ for me.  My piece was cooked perfectly and was just the right thickness, and I was shocked at how good it was.  The sauce was a little sweet on its own, but good with my toppings (maybe the pepperoni helped).
Collard greens: B+...I only could fit a tiny amount of them on my plate, but the oil and honey worked well.	Collard greens: Delicious!  A!  I put them on my pizza, and they made the pizza a lot better.	Collard greens: B. The flavoring was nice (honey to cut the bitterness), but it was a little off.  I would have liked to add a little smoky flavor--bacon bits or smoked sea salt would have been very good.	Collard greens:  A-; I thought they were quite good.  Alex is right, that a bit of smokiness would have been very good.
Cupcakes: B+...the cake by itself is moist but a bit bland, but the cherry frosting kicks the whole dessert into gear!  I will note that I'm a bit incredulous that three of us have facial hair and yet I'm the only one to get the frosting all up in my bristles.  Unacceptable!	Cupcakes: Man I love that cherry flavor.  Nom nom the chocolate's good too...this one's an A.  Totally wonderful.	Cupcakes: B-...the cherry is the best part.  The maraschino flavor is too intense for me.  I love cherries, but maraschino cherries don't taste like cherries!  The ricotta is nice and makes a nice frosting.	Cupcakes: I'd give them a B.  I think if we'd used natural cherry juice this would be unstoppable.  I like the cake; I don't like the fact that it won't come off of the cupcake wrapper.