Jim's Night: Revenge of the Meme

Our official menu tonight:
Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto with Mushrooms
Chickpea Cutlets (from the Veganomicon)
Blueberry Pie (crust from Alton Brown)

Hi Enee!  As a follower of our blog, you have earned yourself top billing, so the other two readers of our blog will be insanely jealous of your fame and stardom.  Tonight is Jim's night, and Alex (me) is blogging, which means that instead of playing my normal game where I hover over the range and get cranky because someone is chopping where I want to put hot pans, I can now relax and chuckle at the misfortune of my compadres.  Until I have to eat burnt risotto, at which point I will probably abandon the blog, and try to save the day.

¡Vive le cabecou! - Homemade goat cheese marinated in olive oil.

Jim, being an organized dude, has planned a menu, printed out the recipes, and let his tomato sauce simmer for several hours already, not to mention starting the crust and cooking some dried chickpeas.  Of course, after Brian's Terrorizing Tofu Tower, he feels compelled to share his homemade goat cheese.  It's the recipe for cabecou out of this artisan cheese making book which he's been working on now for a few weeks.  Right now it's in the stage where it sits happily in peppercorns, herbs de provence and extra virgin olive oil, but we're going to rescue it from its impending boredom to visit the party in our tummies.

Anyway, Brian and Deb have arrived and are incredibly delighted by Jim's conditioned air, which I'm also pretty freaking pleased by!  The cabecou has been revealed, and Deb (née Hungry) proceeded to make noises about the...uh...petiteness of the cheese.  Nevertheless, we are all extremely impressed.  Deb sings the nummy song, and then informs Jim that he really made Goat Cheese!  Not some 'oh, I'm being polite because you made it and at I'm at your house thing', but real Goad Cheese!  He wins!  Party in my tummy!  So say we all.

Must...make...smoothie...

So, we begin on the pie.  Jim and I went blueberry picking approximately 11 months ago, and for 10 of these months, Jim has been talking about how I can't smoothify his blueberries because he needs to make a pie.  The moment for pie is nigh!

Deb: "It's such a bummer I'm not Jewish!" 10 minutes later... "If they heard me, they would probably crucify me..."

Apparently, Deb discovered some Jewish heritage recently (on her Father's side) and as a result has been pining after vegan gefilte fish and...Bat Mitzvahs?  It's kind of unclear.

Chickpea cutlet dough.

Meanwhile, Brian is adding the vital wheat gluten to the chickpea cutlets.  So, if you're not vegan or a baker, you're probably thinking "what is vital wheat gluten?"  It's the protein in wheat that you suspect you might be allergic to but most likely aren't.  It is super freaking dense, and makes bread stick to itself and have that wonderful crumb.  You can make 'wheat meat' with it, or these amazing chickpea cutlets.  You basically blend chickpeas, breadcrumbs and soy sauce with vital wheat gluten, and end up with a cutlet that looks like what you get in a sub.  Jim's idea is to then take these cutlets, cover them in his sauce and cheese, and bake them.

Brian is silent for a moment, as Deb foretells his future of either living in a Trader Joe's parking lot or becoming a 'basement dweller'. Deb is super enthusiastic.  Brian is REALLY INTO THAT GARLIC.  Actually, he was just trying to microplane zest it with his mind, because Jim doesn't have one.  (Brian's super powers are not yet fully developed, it seems.)

Deb has taken the mantle of cranky Alex, and is upset that Brian puts stuff on her side of the table.  Little does she know that she wants to...uh...live in a tiny house.  Mmmhmm....

The blogger's view of cooking club: Deb rolls a
pie crust, Brian zests and Jim chops mushrooms.
Mise en place is so key! 

Deb: "Apparently the Kindle has been a big boon for erotic fiction."  She's so quotable!  In an effort to convince us that she doesn't think about sex all the time, she describes her work bowling event, which results in a lot of childish giggling about small balls, and fingers that don't fit in holes.  Uh.  Ding dong!

A flower of genus
 panem saccharo

It turns out that we're way behind on the risotto.  Jim has chopped a shallot, very, very well, but we haven't done anything more than that.  Brian is destroying an onion, and we're talking about seeing Brave tomorrow. Actually, I just bought tickets!  Being the blogger is great!  Anyway, although the recipe on top suggests that we are going to make butternut squash risotto, we are in fact making mushroom and spinach risotto instead.

Jim's started cooking the shallot and onion for the risotto, and poor Deb is trying to carve a flower to make her pie more beautiful.  Poor, gentile Deb.

In the meantime, there are noises made that I somehow am not doing enough as the blogger (I just bought movie tickets?!??!) and therefore need to research memes.  20 minutes later...

Deb: "We've hardly messed up anything!"  The very practical key to cooking club successes: low standards.

Quick!  Find a Sicilian Jew to make us some garlic bread and grate some Parmesan!  Amazingly, Jim has decided that we need to have cheese for a starter, cheese in our risotto, and cheese on our cutlets.  Imagine that!

Garlic bread a la Deb.

Deb: "Oh....there was supposed to be butter in the pie?"  See above statement.

Jim adds broth to the risotto.  And adds broth to the risotto.  And adds broth to the risotto.  Meanwhile, Deb invokes her Italian heritage (whatever) to make some truly spectacular looking garlic bread.  It involves cheese and oil on every slice.  Yum.  We're now waiting on the timing of the bread before cooking it, but we're all ready for some carbolicious lipidacious wonderfulness.

Oh, man, that was a close call.  As we have risotto going, and broth boiling, we now have to fry our cutlets!  I almost swept in to the rescue!  Must restrain myself!  My commitment is to the blog, to the written word!  To looking for memes and planning tomorrow afternoon!  Yes.  Especially when Jim has the heat on burning...and...argh!  I did it again!  Noooo!

Here's a pig falling down some stairs into a bowl of oatmeal:

Chickpea cutlets being fried.

If that doesn't take your mind off of potentially on the verge of burning risotto, I don't know what will!  Anyway, the risotto is fine, the cutlets are cooking, and Jim's tomato sauce is being ladled on top of the cooked cutlets.  Next, a layer of sauce and cheese, and a final baking along with the garlic bread.  Everything is smelling wonderful, and all of us I think are in the Hungry Zone.  Out comes the provolone!  Hoo boy!

Chickpea cutlets being
covered in sauce and cheese.

Everything is smelling wonderful, and all of us I think are in the Hungry Zone.  Out comes the provolone!  Hoo boy!

Finally, it's time to arrange things on the plate and take the last glorious photograph (this always takes a million years), and then to watch the stand and rate our accomplishments.  And how was it, you ask...?

Mushroom spinach risotto, chickpea cutlets parmesan and garlic bread.

Blueberry pie, with flour flower.

	Deb	Jim	Bri	Alex
Risotto	Pretty good, salty.  I give it a B-.  Really salty.  Reeeeeealy salty!	B.  It was really salty!	B+.  It was delightfully salty!  I thought the spinach added a good touch, and the white wine was tasty.	B.  Rice was well cooked, mushrooms were tasty, flavors were unbalanced, I thought!
Garlic Bread	Horrible and it’s my fault!  I wonder what went wrong...	I didn’t taste any garlic!	C-.  If we’d baked it longer, it might have been cheesy toast...	It was basically just toast.  Hey!  I like toast!
Cutlets	I’m not giving them an A...they were...uh...ok?  I don’t know why I didn’t like them.	B-.  The cutlets we’ve made before were so much better.  The consistency was off, but the taste was ok!	B-.  The cheese obscured the taste of the cutlets.	C.  Texture was off.  I thought the flavor was a little off, too - it could be panko...
Pie	That’s an A.  I’d make it again.	A+.  I thought that was an excellent pie.	A-.  It just didn’t look as good as it tasted.	B+.  It was good, but lacked a little something...

Until next time, three readers!  Until next time.