I will admit it. I cheated. Wednesday I came home from work and didn't feel like doing anything. This isn't an unusual situation for me, and normally on Wednesdays I would try to fight it. This Wednesday, however, it seemed like I didn't really need to. I looked over the recipes, and it didn't really seem like there were a whole lot of preparations needed.
I found a tomato-based pasta sauce in the freezer. It was originally from a jar (purchased on clearance, of course). Sure, it wasn't the slow-simmered sauce that this week's recipe, but it was all ready. I pulled it out and set it in the fridge to thaw.
I did not find the prescribed crust in the freezer, as I was hoping, but I did find a basic crust. That should do the job...
When I got home from work on Thursday, I started thinking about who all was coming. My mom was coming (all the way from Nisswa). She needed to be in town early Friday morning for Grandparents' Day at Gracie's school, so she decided to come on Thursday and spend the night at Jennifer's house. Jennifer and the kids were going to come for a little while, and Pam was coming, too. I thought I should make a little extra something, just in case we didn't have enough food with the two scheduled recipes.
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| My Mom |
I used a new toy my sisters had given me for my birthday. It is a chopper, slicer, dicer thingee. I still had a lot of tomatoes and peppers sitting around my counters that I had pulled from the garden, so I thought I would make a quick salsa. I diced four tomatoes, seeded and diced a large jalapeno, and threw in half of a red onion. I squeezed a quarter of a lime into the mixture. I searched all of my pots outside for some viable cilantro, but only came up with a few leaves, so I cut some basil to add to it. It was still missing something...
My mom was the first person to show up on Thursday. After she tasted the salsa, she said she thought it needed some vinegar. I poured in a little cider vinegar and waited for the new critique. She deemed it delicious, so I was satisfied.
I put her to work immediately afterward, slicing the french bread. She sliced it in half the long way and three pieces the short way. We tried to fit them in a 9x13 pan, but I wasn't liking the arrangement. Again, I pulled out the 12x15, but the bread was too thick. I was afraid food might ooze over the side. I sliced each piece in half horizontally again, so they were thinner. Then, I dipped each in milk and placed them in the bar pan side by side. I'm not sure what the milk was supposed to do. It sounded strange, but I did it anyway.
I started placing pieces of ham on top of the bread when Jennifer arrived. I hadn't chosen a drink of the week yet. I handed her the Old Mr. Boston book I had gotten from one of Pam's friends, Mary Burdick. She paged through and read off ingredients until she found one that I had everything for. She chose something called "Baron Cocktail".
BARON COCKTAIL
1/2oz. French Vermouth
1 1/2oz. Old Mr. Boston Dry Gin
1 1/2tsp Old Mr. Boston Curacao
1/2tsp Italian Vermouth
Stir well with cracked ice and strain
into 3 oz. cocktail glass. Add twist of
lemon peel and drop in glass.
I knew that my dry vermouth was French. I hadn't heard of Italian vermouth before now. Niether had Jen. She googled it on her fancy new Droid, and it turns out that it is another name for sweet vermouth. I had that, so this drink was a "go". I delegated the bartending duties to Jennifer, while I started on slicing the Gruyere. A very dark cocktail appeared shortly thereafter next to my cutting board. It was navy blue, almost purple, depending on which direction you looked at it. It was thick and a little sweet.
I sliced the whole block of Gruyere that I had purchased earlier in the week. I had made sure to buy the smallest piece Cub had, because it is pretty expensive cheese, and I didn't want to spend more than I needed to. The resulting slices barely covered the ham slices. Then, I realized that the tomato slices were supposed to go onto the sandwiches first. Jennifer and I took all of the cheese off, and I got out my slicer/shopper contraption again. Unfortunatley, we discovered that slicing tomatoes is NOT its forte. The tomatoes all but disintegrated. It was a little diappointing after it had made perfect cubes out of the tomatoes earlier for the salsa. We used them anyway and spread them out as best we could over the ham and then replaced the cheese.
Then I started working on the grilled mushroom pizza. I looked at the ingredient list. Oh no! That called for Gruyere, too, and I had used it all on the Kasebrotchen! Mom volunteered to go to the grocery store and get some more. I tried to visualize the Kasebrotchen with half the amount of cheese I had already placed there and whether the mushroom pizza would be sufficiently cheesed with the small amount that we had removed from the other entree. I thought about what I could add to either pizza to make up the difference. Meanwhile, Mom was impatient with my silence and indecision and offered her services again. This time I accepted.
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| Mom and Gracie |
Pam showed up at about this time, and I put her to work "grilling" the mushrooms. It was overcast and windy outside, so, again, I had rejected the grilling portion of our pizza night. While she did that, I put the crust in the oven to get a head start.
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| Pam with Her Fabulous New Hairdo! |
Since that didn't take very long, I re-examined the drink. It was awfully dark. I asked Jennifer to show me the recipe. I voiced my opinion that it was amazing that a mere 1/2 teaspoon of red vermouth and 1 1/2 teaspoons of the blue caracao would have produced such a dark drink. Her response was "half a teaspoon?" She had thought all of the measurements were in ounces, so the last two ingredients were tripled. Well, once we finished the incorrect drink, we had to remake them, right? Once we put in the correct amount of curacao and red vermouth, it was fabulous! It had lost its sticky-sweetnes, and just gave a small hint of citrus. The gin now shone through, and the mineraliness of the French vermouth was a little flash of aftertaste. However, it did look a bit like airplaine toilet-water. Pam did a wonderful job of "grilling" the portabellas on the stove. We spread the sauce over the crust, put the slices of Grueyere over the sauce, sprinkled shredded mozzerella over it, and placed the mushrooms over the mozzerella. The final step before the oven was the sprinkling of blue cheese on top.
Both "pizzas" were masterpieces.
The Kasebrotchen was incredible, too. It never ceases to amaze me how a few ordinary, simple ingredients can be combined to produce a completely extraordinary dish. The milk seemed to give the center of the bread a creamy, rich texture, while the outside remained crisp. The tomato, Gruyere, and ham seemed like they belonged together from the start. It was salty, crunchy, and juicy all at once. It was so good, Jeff didn't even offer any to Pele to try and win him over.
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| Pele |
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