3/9 NIGHT OF WHOOPIE

Hello, friends and neighbors!  We have struggled through blizzards, trips to Puerto Rico, D.C. and Chelmsford, and have made it out the other side to unite to create another unforgettable night.

But wait, you might say, is that hyperbole?  No no, my friends, for when have you ever before encountered an entire meal that is WHOOPIE PIE-INSPIRED?  Never, that is when.  Do not deny it. 

Even as I, Brian, fumble to turn the laptop on and begin chronicling Alex has created a bleu cheese cream and is blending whipped heavy cream into it.  Homemade pear jerky has already been made, and Deb is turning it into a sort of jelly.

This is what liquified bleu cheese looks like as whipped cream is added to it.  Is it also a fancy representation of the kanji for 'whoopie pie'?  (Answer: no.)

We have homemade butter, which is exciting; in a callback to last month, we are also constructing our own english muffins!  To construct the dessert whoopie pies we're already, 1/5th of the way in, having to improvise since the recipe calls for something called lime extract which has been impossible to track down.

I get my first glimpse of the recipe title, and it is 'lime coconut whoopie pies'!   We also have 'caprese pies two ways', 'pear butter and bleu cheese custard english muffin sandwiches', and 'veggie patties stuffed with roasted garlic, caramelized onions and brie'.  Alex is not sure how he'll keep them from being so greasy we can't even pick them up--fake meat patty as a bun is, traditionally, not very dry--but that's the sort of challenge we, as a team, love.  (No that's not true, the sort of challenge we love is 'how many cheddar biscuits can we eat in one meal').

Let's make a quick note here about the winding road to whoopie pie glory...Alex and Jim first found the lime coconut whoopie pie recipe in a cookbook devoted to whoopie pies (as one does) http://www.amazon.com/Whoopie-Pies-Dozens-Match-Recipes/dp/0811874540, but had a few qualms about it.  So they started searching the internet and discovered *another* food blog who had *also* had those same qualms, and who had detailed how they'd adapted the recipe: 

http://chipsthatpassinthenight.blogspot.com/2011/07/coconut-lime-whoopie-pies.html

So since we're adapting it even further, this dessert is us doing a cover of a cover.  We're the Dread Zeppelin of cooking blogs.

We also have sundried tomatoes which Alex would like to use somehow in the stuffed veggie patties, but he hasn't decided whether they will be in the filling or the patty.  Chewy or savory?  Ahh, the eternal question.

This, it should be noted, is the maiden voyage of the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer, a shiny new addition to our metaphorical toolkit.  We are going to mix the FUCK out of things now!...and hey, our first NSFW post.  Who knew it would be that easy!

Like a wee baby Cylon

We're going to blend up the onions (currently cooking), garlic and brie and turn them into patties.   Deb gets out the mozzarella balls and tomatoes.

Alex gives a little demo of his 'caprese pies', also known as the wee-tiny-tomato-and-cheese-whoopie-pie-concept, and it BLOWS MY MIND.  Basil and olive oil are going to get swirled up with the minced tomatoes or mozzarella, and those will be the wee fillings of the tomato or mozzarella sandwiches.  INSANE!

We (or, at least, the 3 of us who don't think Dairy is Evil) are very proud of the fact that the homemade butter is being used in nearly every part of the meal!  It has not, alas, been sculpted to look like anything (except, possibly, a head of cauliflower) but these are early days.

Today

SOON

Alex is opening and inbowling (if that's a real word) the fake sausage, and adding in garlic and melted butter and minced sundried tomatoes; next comes some shaky cheese, the miracle ingredient in a LOT of our dishes.  (Never eat my ice cream.)  Deb is beginning to prepare the dough for the muffins, and  I'm pulling up a video for CIA homemade english muffins to refresh our baking memories!  (That's the culinary school, not the spies).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwCJQ_RAP8    

Jim is portioning out the dessert pie outer parts and popping them in the oven while Deb divides up the english muffin dough and Alex blends up the roasted garlic, brie and onions; a taste test reveals it doesn't quite have the punch we like, and a little parmesan gets added.

Deb has triumphed with making big fluffy english muffin balls!  They go in the oven too.

We seem to be stuck on a lack of filling for the lime coconut whoopie pies, as we don't have any coconut extract or heavy cream.  We ponder turning them into 'lime LIME whoopie pies with a faint hint of coconut', but that name's not nearly as catchy.

Alex makes a wish to the universe for another cast iron skillet.  (Just making a note for upcoming birthdays).

"Oh wow--that english muffin looks like an english muffin!"--Alex, showing our high standards at work

Ji---SOMEone was making the coconut filling for the whoopie pie, but instead of powdered sugar, regular sugar got used.  It's super-grainy.  We take a step back and start the filling over.  Deb, meanwhile, has chopped up the basil and is getting the olive oil, making the fillings for the tomato and/or cheese sammiches.

Deb has the toothpicks out and is making our little wee tomato/cheese sandwiches-on-a-stick.  And they're SO CUUUTE!

...except she is focussing on the tomatoes "because they're easier", and there is a CHEESE GAP!  Woe and calamity!

Rommy, meanwhile, is drooling all over Deb's leg.  We leap to the astonishing conclusion that he likes cheese.  (TAKE NOTE, SCIENCE)

(Note to new readers: Rommy is Jim's dog, and not an unmentioned-before-now guest and/or failed Presidential candidate.  Just nipping any confusion in the bud.)

While the appetizer and dessert whoopie pies get constructed and Alex warms the english muffins up for the whoopie pie main course (apparently they weren't fully cooked on the inside because the skillet was too hot) Deb gets ready to pat the veggie sausage patties totally dry and put the brie/caramelized onion blend inside for the KFC homage course.  It's, honestly, a gooey mess.  And Deb's enjoyment of overstuffing them is making them even more, well, challenging. 

My reaction to watching this is a lot like Scotty's whenever Kirk says they need to go faster.  "Yuh canna DU it!"

We're good to go apart from the english muffins, and take this opportunity to clean up a little.  And by "we" I mean the non-bloggers, for lo, I have the important task of chronicling this night and making it a tale to echo down the ages.  While we wait another five minutes for the english muffins to firm up we sacrifice one, shred it, and dip the bits in the brie filling, which YUM. (Though Deb thinks it tastes a little mayonaissey and might need some jam). 

The english muffins are quickly becoming the white whale to Alex's Ahab (english lit minor, woop woop), as we check them again for sufficient doughiness and put them back in the oven.  We pass the time with a couple of musical mashups

 and major/minor scale fun, featuring "The Happy Godfather",

and then play the "What are the most offensive knock-knock jokes we can possibly come up with" game, which we will not include here because we still crave your respect.

"Remember when I said we weren't that far from eating?  That was funny!"--Alex.

Last stage of assembly now, as we put in the amount of pear butter and/or bleu cheese that we wish.

And...Grading!

APPETIZER THINGIES WITH THE TOMATOES AND MOZZARELLA:
Jim: B.  The reason's that the mozzarella wasn't really that flavorful.  Great concept, tasty tomato, but the cheese let us down.
Alex: Same as Jim.  I'd give it a B+ as opposed to a B.  If the cheese was more delicious it really would have helped, but I'm just happy it held together.  It did not fall apart!  Deb did a good job putting them together.
Deb: The concept was sound!  Maybe more on the B-...it felt like it needed to be suffused in something tasty.  Maybe if we'd marinated it for three days?  In the summer with fresh tomatoes it would've been more amazing.
Brian: B...I'm not a tomato fan, but this was very entertaining.

ENGLISH MUFFINS, SOME WITH BLEU CHEESE SPREAD, SOME WITH PEAR JELLY
Deb: B+!  It's a surprising flavor combination.  The english muffins were still hard.
Alex: We sacrificed the texture on the outside for the fluffy on the inside.  If we'd gone with a biscuit maybe it would've been better.  B.    The video said to put the griddle on 300...this is FUCKING USELESS when you're trying to do it on the stovetop.  I don't know how I was supposed to know when it was done on the inside.   The mousse and butter I remember liking more last time--the pear butter could've been sweeter.  It was still and interesting flavor combination, and it's good to have that kind of novelty.
Jim:  B-...we failed with the english muffins again, though we were a lot closer.  I think it needed something crunchy, other than the english muffin.
 Brian: B...I liked the pear spread a lot, the bleu cheese was as good a bleu cheese as I've had, and the english muffins were crunchy in an entertaining way? Of sorts?

STUFFED VEGETABLE PATTIES, aka the KFC DOUBLE DOWN, VEGGIE BURGER STYLE
Jim: I give those a solid A!  I thought they held together really well, the brie-onion mixture didn't squeeze out like I thought it would, I thought the smoked dried tomatoes gave them a fun taste.
Deb: I was not a fan. C-.  I really didn't like the overpowering Gimme Lean taste.
Brian: A!  While I normally DO find the taste of veggie patties overpowering, with the brie-onion mix it made for a really good flavor combination.
Alex: I give it a B+...I thought there were a few notes that were missing that would have made the flavor more well-rounded.   In a good bread bun with lettuce and tomato I probably would have liked it more.  The brie mixture didn't knock my socks off.  I did like the patties and the sundried tomatoes, and soaking the grease out of them afterwards worked out excellently.

TRUE BLOOD SEASON 3, EPISODE 8 'NIGHT ON THE SUN'
Deb: So violent!  I liked the wolves.
Brian: They're very fluffy!  (...unlike the english muffins...)
Alex: I'd like to mention the highlight, which was watching Jessica and Bill speed-sparring.  The best scene in every...EVERything, is always the training montage. 
Deb: I totally disagree.  With martial arts, yes.  But if it's like, an alien? Who needs to learn english?  Ugh.

COCONUT LIME WHOOPIE PIES
Alex: I like the way these feel!  Everything has a really nice texture. A.
Deb: I give them an A.  That coconut flavor is really strong.
Jim:  A!  The only thing is that if we'd had some lime extract it could have punched up the flavor even better.
Brian:    A.  Wow.  It's like two snickerdoodles with a margarita in between.  Have I said A?  A.

TRUE BLOOD SEASON 3, EPISODE 9 'EVERYTHING IS BROKEN'
All of us: That ending omgwtfbbq!!!   A! 
 

Every villain should give monologues to dead henchmen in jars.  'Nixon' would have been ten times as entertaining.

      

 

    



      

  

Jim's Night: Breakfast and Artifically Injaminated Doughnuts

Tonight's menu is all about breakfast. We walked in to Jim's house at 6pm to find a fruit salad with Kefir sauce already made for us as an appetizer. Very first-thing-in-the-morning, right? It was surprising.  Next, we're told that we're going to be making our own homemade English Muffins and Eggs Benedict with Vegetarian Bacon. And THEN, Jim tells us the best news: we're going to make doughnuts for dessert. Yes!

Alex here is making biscuits in addition to the English Muffins. Apparently, Jim is afraid the muffins will be crap, so he's got a backup plan, leading SOME people to have a paranoid suspicion that we are actually doing his cooking for the week. But as it turned out... he kind of called that one.

TIL, you don't bake English Muffins, you fry them.

We're deep frying portabella mushrooms for some reason, too. This nighttime breakfast is getting weirder and weirder. Ah, to make the bacon, Jim says. Huh. Well, don't judge. It's not like real bacon is healthy either, right? So yeah, to make some vegetarian bacon, you can just deep fry some portabellas. Weird. Pretty tasty, though. They get all leathery like bacon, and the taste is kinda similar.

My best bud

Jim comes back from walking Rommie, astonished by how cold it is outside right now. It was -18 F in Boston the other day (with wind chill). Bri tops that by mentioning that on top of Mt Washington (New Hampshire) it was -85 recently. We wondered if the park rangers have to patrol the mountain when it gets that cold. My guess is hell no, not unless there is some life or death reason.

While Jim is separating eggs, Alex tells us about a new method he learned of doing just that; he learned about it on Lifehacker. It involves using a plastic bottle to "slurp" the yolk away from the white part of the egg. Fascinating. I mean, it sounds completely disgusting, don't get me wrong, but it's fascinating, too. I quietly resolve to save the next plastic bottle I  come across to test this out.

Musical Interlude
Alex mercifully changes tonight's playlist from non-stop Elliott Smith to non-stop The National. Score for me! Then he proceeds to make me ragingly jealous by telling me that his mom once had a conversation with The National on a plane. [All I got was "She said they were very nice."]

Hello folks, it's Brian leaping on while Deb is taking pictures of the english muffin fork-splitting event, which is apparently a Thing.  Note, folks, that all are grades are going to be a letter grade higher just because the food we're going to eat will be hot. No lie. It's damn cold out there.  You could microwave a brick of meat and even Deb would probably give it a C+ tonight.

I'm back. To Bri, I say: Ha, you're so wrong. While I've been taking pictures and generally getting in the way, Bri's been telling the room about his criminal justice class which is being taught by a Boston mob lawyer who thinks "curves are for losers" and that, to his mind, everyone is an A student until proven otherwise. Nice, huh?

Segue to the future. So far, we have biscuits and English Muffins ready, the Hollandaise sauce has been painstakenly stirred for what seemed like an hour, the "bacon" is being kept warm in the oven, the Gimme Lean sausages have...

"What is THAT? What is that black stuff [all over our food]?" - overheard from the kitchen. Scary, but it turns out the black stuff is just fried mushroom parts. We think. Moving on...

...been fried and are in the oven keeping warm. All in all, we're just waiting on the eggs to poach and Alex is dry sauteing some spinach.

Dinner is served!

A vegetarian breakfast: poached eggs , topped with spinach, fake bacon and real Hollendaise, plus some fake sausage on the side.

After watching another crazy episode of True Blood (Sookie disguised as a bad ass werewolf with a big butterfly tattoo on her back? Huh.), we begin making the best part of the meal, the part we've all been waiting for impatiently: the doughnuts! Our first attempts were total failures because the doughnuts didn't cook thoroughly inside. They turned out like this=>

So we resort to conducting a scientific experiment: should we make the dough thinner, or put a hole in the middle? It turned out that making the dough thinner worked out perfectly, so we abandoned the other branch of that science experiment . We have some delicious raspberry jam in the house, so Jim is now artificially injaminating the doughnuts.

They might look like bloodthirsty aliens here, but these babies were one of the best things we've ever made.

Our scores:

	Deb	Jim	Alex	Brian
fruit salad	B. Very tasty. It was a good idea -to use Kefir as the sauce-and I will probably use it again.	A. Simple, really liked the Kefir	B+ Kefir was good, the fruit wasn’t quite at the right ripeness level. It wasn’t in season, nothing we could have done differently	A- I would eat it again. I would rather have a smoothie or juice.
biscuits	B. Very nice biscuits	B. We’ve done better, but they were good.	A- pretty fine biscuits	B+ We’ve done better, still tasty though
english muffins	C- It’s the recipe’s fault, but those just weren’t good.	C. We should try them again. Either we screwed up the flour or something else when wrong.	C- Still edible, but something went wrong.	C+They looked good. By themselves they would been ok, but they were too tough for the Eggs Benedict
eggs benedict in general	C The Hollendaise was great. Everything else was just edible.	B+ Delicicous. If the English Muffins had been good it would be an A	B The eggs were overcooked, the spinach and the mushroom together was SO good. The Hollendaise was ok, but I think we struggled with timing. Everything was done at different times	B. Hollendaise sauce was really good, egg was good. Portabella bacon sort of tough. English Muffin really tough.
doughnuts	A. My absolute favorite kind of doughnut: not too sweet, filled with delicious jam	Aaaaaaaaaaa. [on a sugar high] God bless the Market Basket for having prices so low that we could afford the fancy raspberry jam.	A- The jam was really good. The doughnuts were just ok, I’ve had better ones. [Note: he’s eaten, like, 7 of them.]	A. These made me happy

Deb's Night: Mysterious Meal of Mystery, or "It'll be great! Shut up!"

Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another cooking club post!  Happy Groundhog Day!  This is Brian, claiming journaling duties tonight because I'm SICK with the DEATH FLU and I should not touch food for fear of spreading my HORRIBLE CONTAGION (which, granted, has only manifested so far with a sore throat and grogginess, and it might even be argued that I'm acting like a baby and milking this for all it is worth, but I know the symptoms of horrible plague when I feel it).

Anyhow.

Tonight's menu:

Appetizer: ???
Main Course: ????
Side Dish: ?????
Dessert: ??????

It's Deb's night to plan our menu, and after contemplating and rejecting the idea of a meal of nothing but finger food we are instead going for....well, it's a surprise. As in, she hasn't informed any of us, and has even hand-written out the recipes and fragmented them up so that folks will only know what the dishes are when everything comes together at the end.  Based on what she brought back from the store I see sweet potatoes, coconut, a big bag of what looks like kale, an unopened bottle of wine...

Oh!  Buns!  I know that buns are involved, which implies some sort of sandwich, because already I've caused a kitchen breakdown by missing the alarm and letting the dough rise too long.  (Blame the death flu!)  They're rising again, having been divided into eight little lumps of whole wheat goodness.

Jim and Alex arrive! Deb points out that it's bad for my liver to mix wine and Nyquil, and that there's nothing that *necessarily* says I have to wait until bed to drink Nyquil. Which...is beautiful, golden outside-the-box thinking.  This post is going to go askew quite quickly, I think.

Deb passes out 'recipes', and shows people their 'stations', at least 7 or 8, with ingredients and cooking times. Alex suspects this is all a clever plot to prevent him from changing anything or even critiquing tonight's plans.  Deb laughs!  For it is to laugh!  And calls him paranoid! Ho HO!  How about that sports team! And quickly changes the subject.

One might even suspect Deb's choice of note paper contains a hidden message...

Jim, at Station 1&2, is chopping cabbage; Alex is at Station 4A.  (These are apparently not numbered in order of priority. Of course.)

Deb is sifting flour; Alex is still trying to guess.  Sloppy joes?  No. Whatever it is will have vital wheat gluten, for she is pulling out all the vegan stops.  Veggie burgers, he finally figures out by reading ahead...but wait, another revelation: Deb has CHANGED the RECIPE.  DOWN IS UP ALL GUIDEPOSTS ARE LOST.

The conversation rolls around to Valentine's Day, and what is and isn't expected for that day.   Deb falls along the line of "you get a cell phone call if you're lucky, but a text is more likely". As for me, I too have very moderate needs:

(Each of these people are delivering chocolate.)

We gather around the recipe for the barbecue sauce (we think), which Deb has modified because she refuses to use agave nectar, because environment.  Being the cooking geniuses we are, we roll with this new challenge of agave substitution.

Alex deviates from his recipe; his called for him to measure out an amount of pepper, but we just have a peppercorn grinder and the thought of  measuring using that?  FEH.

Jim has completed Station 1!  He questions the terms--why 'station' instead of 'step'?  Is it a Catholic thing?  Because each station contains multiple steps, is the answer.  We contemplate using 'module' instead.  While we do that, Jim begins chopping the sweet potatoes into french fry wedges.

It only looks like Jim is healing this bowl with magic, but actually he...um...okay, maybe it IS magic

"It'll be great!  Shut up!"  There's a strong advocacy that this be the title of the episode.  Or for the full title: "I won't tell you what we're cooking, and it'll be great! So shut up!"

We have fresh pineapple juice; Alex, spotting this, proposes that it go in the slaw.  Which is how I discover we're having slaw tonight.

Alex is preparing the veggie patties and is actually done, and beginning to heat up the oven to bake them.    The bread also bakes for 30 minutes, but Alex points out that bread traditionally bakes at a much higher temperature...we scurry to find the recipe.

We ponder how many fries are *enough* fries...Deb maintains that she's never found that platonic ideal.  So while it might look like 4 sweet potatoes are an excessive amount (and it does, dear readers, it does, from here it looks like that scene from Close Encounters where he sculpted the scale model of Devil Mountain, only out of sweet potato fries), if it means that she for once in her life gets her fair share then it'll be worth it.

Either my leg is falling asleep or the Nyquil's really just now kicked in.  Maybe both.   Station 4 is done; we ponder coordination of the meal, and Deb double-checks the recipe to reveal that the buns actually DO bake at 350.  So put them in at the same time as the patties at 350 or put them earlier so they have a little time to cool in the air afterwards?  Deb's a same time-advocate, Alex feels they should go in earlier, and carries the day with his logic. 

Deb reveals that she hates cookie butter, because "it's like eating liquid sugar".  "Like honey?"  That leads to a discussion of whether honey's antiseptic properties are because of something unique to honey or whether any sugar would work...in other words, if we're missing something by not putting jam or nutella on our wounds.

Jim, having been worked like a dog (one who works, that is, like a sled dog; I on the other hand am working like an overweight puggle who's just flopped over on his favorite warm cushion) takes a little break while Alex turns out the patties--instead of the 8 the recipe calls for we have 4 plus a little more....for a loaf!

Deb reveals her dessert plan: CARROT WALNUT COCONUT CAKE.  Alex jumps to get some greens going; collard greens and spinach will be sauteed for a quick vitamin hit.

Deb is about to put the coconut-walnut vegan cake in the cake pans.  Frosting gets mentioned, which, hmmm.  On the spot she whips up an appropriate frosting which she describes as "your usual vegan frosting"--coconut milk, vanilla and confectioners sugar, pretty much.  She's adding flakes, for a very chunky look and feel.

The line between cake and peanut brittle can be deceptive

"The idea was to have a light dinner so I could have a giant dessert"--Deb, being very honest.

"Do you still have cashews?  I was thinking about making a little fake cheese to put on top of this thing"--not a normal sentence heard when talking about a 'meat'loaf.

We find cheese!  Which would ruin the 'vegan' nature of the meal...but, Alex points out, the loaf wasn't a planned part of the meal anyhow so ALL RULES ARE GONE.  Aaaaaaaanaarchy!

The scent of baking sweet potato fries begins to fill the room; they're examined and folks try to decide whether they need more time or are ready.

Remember the mystery menu?  The pieces have fallen together!

Appetizer: Chips (very very spicy chips!) and hummus
Main Course: Veggie burgers in homemade buns, with optional coleslaw topping
Side Dish: Greens; also, sweet potato fries
Dessert: Coconut-walnut vegan cake


At this point the Nyquil really kicks in, and I somehow find myself in the living room with a plate of food in one hand and True Blood on.  I think the main character's having a dream about elves?  Who are doing that thing elves in tv and film backgrounds always seem to be doing, which is swanning about doing vague modern dance moves?  YOU'RE IMMORTAL, PEOPLE, GET A HOBBY. Where's the Elf who's, like, "I decided to spend 30 years learning how to be the world's best balloon sculptor, cuz why not? IMMORTAL"  Oh wait we've actually been talking about the food while I typed this.

RATINGS

Veggie Burger and Bun:
Deb: I loved the veggie burger! B+!  Well....maybe A-.  But the bun, I never want to see again.  So.  Maybe that brings it back down to a B+.
Alex: C.  As far as veggie burgers go, this is not good.  The issue is the TVP, which is terrible.  TVP tastes like TVP, this bizarro processed thing, and then this got mixed with wheat gluten, which also has its own distinct taste and flavor.  In order to overcome that, you have to push pretty hard.  The delicious parts of this burger were the garlic and oil, and a LOT of ketchup.  The texture was good, though.
Jim:  C+--it definitely needed more flavor.  Whether that's herbs and spices, more stuff, maybe blended things mixed in, but it wasn't that bad to me.  It had the best texture of a fake hamburger.
Me: B-...for a veggie burger, it was normal.


Greens:
Deb: Soft, very well-cooked, not bitter at all.  B+.
Alex: I'm with Deb on this one--they turned out surprisingly well.  Given that I mixed two things with radically different cooking times, especially.  The liquid smoke was a nice touch. B+.
Jim: B--I didn't taste a lot of the liquid smoke, so they were nice greens.  Nothing that exciting about them.
Me: B+ --they sort of melted in my mouth. 


Coleslaw:
Deb: C-, too barbecuey.
Alex: Not very good at all.  I would say it was bad.  C.
Jim: I give it a B+.  I don't like coleslaw.  I don't usually even like cabbage.  But I liked this, and got seconds even.


Fries:

Lost due to Nyquil fugue.  Very thin fries, which were baked and managed to slowly, barely become a little crispy.  Deb prefers her fries thicker, which can take us to a slippery slope question of "when does a fry stop becoming a fry and simply become a potato wedge?  When does a potato wedge stop becoming a wedge and just become 1/4 of a potato and, more importantly, can you still dunk it in ketchup?"

Cake:
Even more lost due to Nyquil fugure, ohmigosh.  I *can* say that it came out less of a cake and more of a crumble.  Which some people really enjoyed.  Especially the one who figured out she could dump spoonfuls of crumble in the frosting mixing bowl and stir it all up together.

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.

Ho Ho Ho, its TofuFauxPho

Hello gentle readers! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and Happy Whichever Additional Holidays you've celebrated (Yule, Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Rendlesham Forest Incident Day); we hope all of them were happy, and that your forest stayed UFO-free and peaceful. It's Brian again, bopping along to disco on a Friday night as the four of us wash off the grime of a long work week (mental grime--it's not like we're covered in diesel fuel) by cooking Asian food!

But more about the Asian food:  Alex has leapt into gear by making a yummy dipping sauce before we even got here, blending up chickpeas and adding ketchup, brown sugar, soy sauce, sriracha and ninety-nine other ingredients, turning them into something that looks like hummus and tastes like what cats think catnip tastes like.  YUM.  I'm on it like a history geek with the new Churchill biography by William Manchester, which is volume III and covers his life between 1940 and 1965, which--ten year gap between Volume II and Volume III, people, Volume II ended just as WWII was about to start and *talk about a cliffhanger*, so...what's that?  I'm getting too nerdy even for this blog?....it's a very, very good dipping sauce, is what I'm saying.

True fact: 2/3 of all babies look like Winston Churchill to me.

Anyhow.

We're heavily in Asian comfort food mode tonight, with faux-pork ('faurk'?) dumplings from http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/steamed-pork-buns-char-siu-bao-10000001734314/, real-scallion scallion pancakes from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/04/extra-flaky-scallion-pancakes-recipe.html, pho (faux-pho, we call it, because it's hella fun to say out loud) from http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/noodles-spicy-lemon-grass-broth-10000000653548/, and for dessert, well, we started out with the intention of making fried bananas with vanilla ice cream and a saffron-infused caramel, but by the time we got past the dumplings and pancakes and pho we realized we'd have no room for dessert.  It's a holiday miracle!

Deb's been assigned the dumpling role, though she's helped along by having the faurk already simmering away on the stove. 

It hits us--we bought extremely gourmet tea last week, and extremely gourmet tea would go really well with this meal!

Opinion poll time:  for a spicy broth we have three peppers, a banana pepper, a serrano, and "a red one"...which to put in?  All of them??  It's decided to prep them, have a little taste test, see how hot they are, put burn cream on our tongues and then go from there.  Red is three times spicier than the others, we determine.  With just a tiny bit of work we could turn this into a Sesame Street skit.  About BURNING.


"If the recipe has 'spicy' in the name, then it should definitely be a challenge for Bri."


Jim is making the pho, which has involved prepping lemongrass, and now chopping up cilantro.  Alex is getting started with the pancakes;  Deb is making anti-French recipe remarks and hastening to explain that it's not the FRENCH part she dislikes, it's the recipes themselves.   She's not xenophobic, folks, she's recipophobic.   While she does that she's chopping a metric ton of ginger, which makes Alex want to share the fact that he recently heard about 'figging', which....look it up, folks, just look it up.  It's something they do to bulls when they want them to move more quickly.  That's MY story and I'm sticking to it.

Since we're already past a PG rating for this entry, parents reading this, let's talk the whole Elf on a Shelf phenomenon.   You realize that this is the stuffed animal version of your own personal Catholic saint telling St. Peter about your childrens' sins, right?  If you're cool with that I am.  But what are you doing now that Christmas is over?  Will the Elf be reporting to the Groundhog, so that every time your kids misbehave winter lasts a little longer?

We're still talking about ginger, which leads to wondering if medieval folks used it for figging, which leads to Jim calling on his SCAdian past, which leads to Deb hearing the word as Acadian, which leads to massive confusion and meanwhile, we're still eyeing the ginger dubiously.  (It "tingles".  Suuuure.  THAT's the sensation, I'm so sure.) 

"Salt salt salt, oh my god salt?"--someone who is not Deb being asked to taste test something.

We discover, to our sadness, that the Mog "Disco (Chansons Inspirees Du Film)" channel is not, actually, French disco.  Still, they're doing an upbeat dance mix of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", so we can't get too sad.

"Roll the pastry up like a jelly roll, then coil it into a spiral, then flatten back into an 8" disc--then sprinkle scallions, roll it up AGAIN, and coil it into a spiral AGAIN, and then flatten into a SEVEN inch disc!!"--Alex is boggling at this hitherto-unexpected scallion pancake instruction.  I confess, I don't associate scallion pancakes with spirals either.  But us?  Mock a recipe?  It is to laugh!

There's hushed consultation about the lemongrass broth, which just is tasting bland.  We ponder adding salt and maybe more lemongrass

"I like chunky dumplings!"--Deb, either talking about the food or planning her Hobbit Name.  (Myself, I favor 'Peach Pureleaf').

I jump onto Google to try to help the broth by seeing what OTHER people have done to improve it.  cursedvegan.wordpress.com added basil....okay, they added a LOT of funky things, but basil's the only ingredient we actually have here.  So in it goes.  We think about the blandness of the tempeh and add lime juice, then a tiny bit of brown sugar for sweetness.  We ponder some more, then remember it's going to taste amazing when it's surrounded by dough.  Then Alex thinks of honey, which kaZAM is the ingredient that works!

All of these ingredients AND MORE can improve a broth.  Hypothetically.

None of the fresh noodles have the word 'pho' attached to them, because it was a Chinese grocery, so we have two types of packaged noodles to choose from: 'lomei', which is quite thin, or 'Twin Marquis Plain Noodle (thick)', which is about 2-3 times as wide.  Deb and I vote for the thicker one.

Our talk gets personal as we discuss two people who've recently broken up, who were apparently together for ten years despite, or maybe because of, both being named Dave.  (People told them apart by calling them "The Dave We Like" and "The Dave Who Talks Through a Puppet, And We All Had To Address the Puppet Like Another Guest In the Room, Wow That Was Weird").   Dave, if you're reading this, it wasn't you, it was ANOTHER Dave with a puppet.

I typed 'disturbed man + puppet' in Google, and this came up.

"It's lost the tempeh flavor, and that's good.  Now it tastes like something else."--Deb, evaluating the tempeh---"She doesn't like it!  But she doesn't know why!"--Alex, evaluating Deb.  We're now adding five spice powder to the tempeh, which works...we think...again, we're pinning some of our hopes to the deliciousness of the bun.

Deb moves on to the fry batter for the banana....and then reveals that she tossed out some of Alex's ginger because how much MORE could he possibly NEED, bwahahaha!....and sheepishly offers to replace it, since he actually needed it to make the dipping sauce. 

Talk turns to freaky religious backgrounds.  I have my 'evils of rock and roll' Sunday School story where the minister lectured us on backmasking and subliminal messages (readers too young to remember LP records, google it), but Jim tops me with his tale of how he got invited out for "roller skating" by an evangelical youth group, and spent 3/4 of the time sitting down in the middle of the rink with all the other kids, learning how evil hellbound girls wore "The Devil's Paint!" on their skin.  Hot Topic, feel free to use 'The Devil's Paint' as a new product name.  You're welcome.

Alex is working on the scallion pancake by spiralling, then pressing, then scallioning, then rolling again. The broth has lost the lemongrass flavor entirely, Jim reports with dismay.  Deb thinks there's still a hint of it. 

Rommy reports, with desperate urgency, that there is a CAT. In the HALLWAY.  And we need to take DRASTIC ACTION.  We take this under advisement.  He despairs for our souls.

Rommy wards off danger with his mental powers

"It's gonna look great once it's fried up!"--Deb, doing her best to be positive as she watches Alex's pancake.

The tofu for the pho is in the oven on 350.  Which means, yes, we are now working on TOFU FOR FAUX PHO.  Alex has created his scallion pancake and has walked away in disgu...um, has decided to give each of us a turn to create our own personal pancake.  Yes.  That is the story.  RIGHT, SHELF ELF?

The disco channel has gotten into a Donna Summer medley, btw.  It makes an odd backdrop to Jim lamenting the fiendish and deceptive timer of the online test he took for Organizational Behavior this week as part of his course. He went 33 minutes over, with 1 point off the test for each minute, and meanwhile "Celebration" is playing as he tells us this.  Bad DJ, bad.

...and now we've got a Village People medley.  "You Can't Stop the Music" indeed, people. 

My turn comes to make my own scallion pancake.  By flouring the heck out of it and mayyybe putting a little less oil and scallions than Jim and Alex, I wind up with something that...well, it's a LITTLE different.  I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad one.  I've never seen a scallion pancake that looks like a giant comma before, is all I'm saying.

Not how you picture a scallion pancake at any point

Bun, undone

We're ready to make the buns and steam them!  Deb's having a little bit ("squelch!") of trouble with her pancake, which is sticking to table, rolling pin, her hands and somehow even itself as she tries to prep it.

Jim sends me the recipes, though we note that Alex has changed ALL THE THINGS!  Which starts up a conversation about how good Hyperbole and a Half is (hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com), and how we hope that its creator, who has dropped off the face of the earth, is doing well.  (And might someday see this while she's Googling.  Hi there.)

Not quite the quote, but still very relevant

We get ready to steam, using Jim's bamboo steamers.  While he's digging them out he finds wasabi peas, a relic from the last time we made steamed buns!   There is great celebration.  It, like Proust's madeleine, inspires a flashback in Alex as he remembers the buns we made...it was one of our very first meetings of the club, and the first week he had his Smartphone and he went nuts taking pictures and videos, and life was good.

  "I love it while you're doing kitchen things, and as you're doing them you think 'Oh No!  This is a stupid thing! Stupid thing!' but it's too late and you can't stop"--Alex.  It's a little bit too long to be the new name of this blog, but it's so tempting...

Alex is taking the tofu out, and we're preparing to boil the noodles--interestingly, they get boiled first and THEN added to the broth.  (He leaves the tofu right next to me to cool.  FOOLISHNESS. I just have to wait until their backs are all turned....oh for another tiny kitchen fire...) 

The combined group talks me into trying the wasabi peas.  Which...are not bad.  WHICH IS BAD, because now they're *encouraged* to get me to try even stranger foods in the future, aggh.  Should! not! give! them! positive! reinforcement! "Hey Brian, put this thing that looks like yak fur in your mouth.  No, don't ask what it is, just do it."  Argh.  This is now my inevitable future.

We realize the missing ingredient in the broth--it has no fat!  The hunt begins for a vegan fat that is suitable (leaving the tofu unwatched A CUBE IS MINE), and a dollop of coconut oil gets mixed in.  Jim suggests bacon grease, but the vegetarians just smile and shake their heads sadly.  (razzinfrazzin vegetarians razzin...)  Alex finds butter, which also hops into the broth.  He ponders dried mushrooms, which also find their way inside...now it's less adding fat and more just 'futzing with the recipe'.  It's 8:33, peoplez, LESS FUTZING MORE PUTTING FOOD IN MY PIEHOLE. 

We remember the snow pea pods!  Hello side dish we're just thinking of now!  Deb begins to get some garlic ready for a quick sautee. 

One quick departure for a dog walk, during which the other three folks here act like effin' Noel Coward and Dorothy Parker and....a third witty person.  Robert Mitchum?  Wait, was he the guy who dared you to knock a battery off his shoulder in the old commercials?  Anyhow, apparently I missed a big Stevie Wonder-inspired quest to figure out which crime show opens with the bass line for "Living for the City".  We YouTube Hill Street Blues, Homicide, NYPD Blue and CSI--apparently the answer is "frickin none of them", until we finally find "Law and Order"...which is credited to Mike Post.  We wonder if Stevie Wonder got paid anything.  (If Stevie Wonder googled himself and found his way here, hello.  They owe you $$$.)

While all this research is going on, the scallion pancakes and the buns are all getting actually cooked!   The hot broth is ready to have the noodles go into it, and the supply of tasty tasty tofu cubes is slowly dwindling nom nom nom nom.

The (lack of ) salt in the broth is pondered.  It's pointed out that there's soy sauce, which should do the trick.  We hope. 

Besides musical research, the non-dogwalkers apparently also hit upon WHY this cooking club exists: we're trying out recipes for Alex's hypothetical future food truck.  Deb's going for "would people buy this for lunch?"  I immediately leap to "could this be cooked in a limited space without going insane?" and start making plans to have little barricades up at MY next cooking night that we can't step outside of, just to recreate the full 'cooking in a food truck' experience.  (I can also use them for our THE KITCHEN FLOOR IS LAVA theme night.)

Food's coming out!  Our pancakes are in various stages of brown and crispy, the buns are PUFFY, and there's a heck of a lot of green leaves floating in the tofufauxpho  (if they were alive, there'd be tofufauxphophotosynthesis...okay, I'm done).  The buns are actually SO puffy it's hard to get them out of the steamer until we turn the whole thing upside-down and shake.  (I've worn pants like that, so I can't judge.)

"Oh, this is going to be one of our best meals!  I don't think we've ever made anything this good before!"--Hungry Deb, right before the meal.  Alex and Jim DEMAND this quote be documented so we can contrast it to Full Deb's grades in a half hour.

The grading!

BUNS
Jim: A+!  I was really pleased with how fluffy the dough was, and the tempeh was sweet and tangy just like a barbecue pork bun.
Alex: B+...the first bite of the first one that I had made me so pleased, because the bun came out just right. But the second bun--I'm not sure if it was because I was more full, or the bun was cooler, but it was just like, I got a little bit more of the bitterness of the tempeh in that one.  Tempeh's such a struggle!  So I would make it again but with something other than tempeh.
Deb: It's annoying going after Alex cuz I would have said that too.  I'd give it an A, but that tempeh is not perfect.
Brian: A.  We need to use that dough again and again.  And I have a high tolerance for tempeh!

SCALLION PANCAKES
Deb: Those were good, but I can't remember them. A little bit hard and could be fluffier; I liked that they weren't too salty.  Probably A-.
Jim: A-...they were flaky, a little chewy, and I didn't taste a lot of the sesame.  But they were pretty darn good.
Alex: A!  I thought they were delightful.  They were salty and crispy.
Brian: A-...mine could've been cooked a tiny bit longer to make it crispier; the chewiness kept it from an A+.

FAUXPHO
Alex: I'd give it an A-.  I thought the broth was quite delicious; the noodles were tasty, everything was good.  It's best if you don't call it pho; it tasted like a very nice vegetable soup.
Jim: We probably should have done the skinny noodles, and even they might not've been the right ones.  A-...I realized as I was eating it that one of the recipes I looked at suggested charring some of the vegetables before adding them to the broth, and that might have added a nice smoky flavor that this one was missing.
Deb: I'd give it a B, because I didn't like the tofu. I liked everything else, though.  I loved the broth, the noodles were too thick...I did eat this last, though, and was already pretty full.  If I was starving this would be an awesome soup.
Brian: B+/A-...eating a soup with big thick wet noodles using chopsticks?  Challenging!  Filling!  But very tasty.

PEAPOD STEMS
Deb: I ate a lot of them. I didn't like them!  C-.
Jim: They were too acidic.  Not enough garlic, not enough oil.  B-
Alex: C+...what they said.
Brian:  Abstain!  (I actually forgot they were here)

TRUE BLOOD Season 3, Episode 1, Bad Blood:

 
Brian: Werewolves!  Cast scattering off in all directions!  It feels like a lot of ingredients, but I'm not sure how they'll gel.  B+?
Jim: I think this had some of my favorite one-liners ever.  I'd give it A-.
Alex: I'll give it a B+.  There were good scenes, we had a big reveal, we got to see Jason's "conscience off, dick on!" motivational scene, 
Deb:  I guess it was a B+...it wasn't terrible, it wasn't exciting. 

It's worth noting that a) this was the most carb-heavy meal we might have ever made, b) this meal got EVERY dish in the kitchen dirty, and I'm escaping the clean-up by blogging this, and c) we've decided that the dough was so good that our imaginary hypothetical food truck should be nothing but different flavors of dumplings.  Since they're called Bao, the names Take a Bao and Bao Bao Wow are proposed..."or we could be all abstract and call it 'Curtain Call'" says Jim, which, as names go, is still better than the tequila bar off Copley Square named Lolita's.  (If someone from Lolita's is googling their name and sees this...dude. DUDE.  Ew.)

"Or it could be a goth lunch truck, and we could call it DisemBAOeled!"--Alex, getting the last word.