Lobster, Corn, and Potato Calzones; Hae Kung; Arctic Summer

     Jeff and I went grocery shopping on Sunday.  Once we had gotten through the produce section of the store, he asked me what was next on my list.  "Lobster," I muttered under my breath.
     "Lobster?" he asked.
     I nodded.
     "How much lobster?  Like one tail or what?  Is this for pizza?"
     I nodded again.  "I need three cups, so like two tails."
     I thought I was going to get a lecture on how the recipe people and the grocery store people are conspiring to make us spend more money.  This is a frequent lecture that I have to endure to continue my current quest to cook every pizza recipe in my possession.  My husband is mostly supportive, but there are occasions when he gets fed up with the whole process of "pizza night".  The lecture was not forthcoming. 
     He pushed ahead with the cart to the meat section, calling out that he was going to look for "shockers."
     I peeked through the freezer glass at the lobster tails.  They were over $20/lb.  I knew that they were about $17/lb at Sam's Club.  I gave myself part of Jeff's lecture - did I really want to spend that much on pizza?  Was there something else I could substitute that would make just as good of a pizza or good enough that we wouldn't really miss it?  I put the tails back and grabbed a package of fake crab meat.
     When I caught up with Jeff, he asked what I was doing with the fake crab.  I explained that that was going to be my lobster.  He snorted and said that if I wasn't going to make the recipe as it was written, I may as well pick a different recipe altogether.  "Just go to Sam's and get some tails," he ordered.  I put back the fake crab.

     I have been going back and forth in my mind about work.  I started taking my hour lunches, as I am entitled to, but then I got behind and ended up staying late to get everything finished.  Then, I started skipping my lunch, and hating myself for letting "the man" get more free labor out of me.  I have decided that I am going to try and make sure I get an hour break every day, and let the work pile up.  Maybe, if I get behind, they will realize they made a mistake in letting half my department go, or maybe they will think I am incompetent and fire me, and I can collect unemployment and really concentrate on changing my career path.
     So, Wednesday, I decided to go home for lunch.  I was really tired and thought I could squeeze in a quick 20 minute nap before I would have to go back.  When I came inside, though, I saw the potatoes on the counter that I was going to use for the pizza on Thursday, and had a thought.  I could quickly boil those up now and be that much ahead of the game when I came home from work.
     I decided to try out the chopper I had gotten from my cousin Michelle.  I have been somewhat fearful of it, because it is rather large, and it came with a warning from Michelle that I should use extreme caution when handling the blades, because they are "evil".

     I sliced the potatoes lengthwise and laid them on the  blade.  I pressed down on the lid, and it didn't press the potato all the way through the blades.  I pushed and pushed.  I couldn't figure out if it was a leverage thing, or if there was something in the way of it going through or what.  I tried putting it on the dining room table for a different leverage point.  Eventually, I placed the contraption on the floor and leaned into it.  It finally went through.  I took it apart and put it back together and tried again.  Same scenario. I  wasn't ready to give up yet.  I went through the same issue with each attempt.  I did finally get all of the potatoes cubed (and they were perfect cubes).  It was a good thing that the cutting surface was so large.  I was able to put several slices of potato on the grid in one shot, and I only needed to load it up three or four times to get all of the potatoes I needed

     Before I started cutting the potatoes, I had placed a pot of water on the stove to start boiling.  It hadn't reached a boil yet, but it was close. I threw the cubes in and looked at the clock.  I needed to leave in 5 minutes to get back to work on time.

     They finally came to boil (I know, I know, I shouldn't have been watching it), and I let it go for a few minutes before draining it in a strainer in the sink.  I knew that they weren't quite cooked all the way, but I figured it I let them hang out in the strainer while still hot, they would continue to cook some, and they would be recooked inside the calzone, so it shouldn't be a problem. 
     When I got home from work, I started with the lobster I had gotten from Sam's.

     The recipe called for cooked, chopped lobster.  I thought about all the different ways to cook lobster and decided that the best thing would be to remove it from the shell and chop it before cooking it.  One of the problems I have found with cooking lobster, is the center ends up underdone, and the meat closer to the end of the tail ends up getting chewy and rubbery.  Since it was going to end up chopped up anyway, it just made sense to make them all the same sized pieces and cook them that way, so that they would cook evenly.  First, though, I had to get them out of their shell.
     I cut them down the center of the "back" with my kitchen shears and pulled them up and out of the shell.  I thought it was interesting that the shading of the lobster meat matched the shell.  Where there were stripes and circles on the shell, the meat underneath had the same pattern.  I commented to Jeff, too, that one tail was darker than the other, and I wondered why that would be.  He claimed that one was female, and one was male.  An extensive search on Google could neither prove nor disprove this theory.  Most of the reading I did on the subject simply said that the color variations were due to different proportions of astaxanthin (some substance within the lobster's shell) and protein.  Apparently, when the lobster hits hot water, the link between this chemical and the protein is broken, causing the lobster to turn red.  I don't really understand it myself, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the sex of the creature.

     Pele was very interested in the lobster dismantling and offered to help.

     I suspect that if I had left the area for any period of time, I would be short a tail.
     Once I had the tails cut, I sauteed them in butter and garlic until they were almost cooked through.  I was afraid to cook them all of the way through, because they were going to be cooked again in the turnover.  It smelled really good, and I was tempted to sneak a little, but since I hadn't cooked them through, I didn't dare.  I threw them in a container with the partially cooked potatoes.  I chopped part of an onion and tossed it into the container with the lobster and potatoes. 
     Reading through the ingredient list, I realized I had forgotten to purchase fresh tarragon.  It was probably subliminally intentional.  I grow tarragon every year in the greenhouse and very rarely have a recipe that uses it, so it bolts and spindles and dies.  I briefly considered hiking out to the greenhouse to see if any survived, but then I remembered the dried up sticks that were in there the last time I looked and thought better of it.  I found some dried tarragon and added a teaspoon of it to the mix.  I intentionally did not purchase the parsley.  In my opinion, it just doesn't add enough (any) flavor for it to be worthwhile to bother with it.  I poured the quarter-cup of cream over my mixture and put it in the fridge.  I was holding off on the corn, because I would have to go out to the freezer for it, and Jeff volunteered to do it, but not until Thursday morning (he had already taken his boots off and didn't want to head back outside - can't say I blamed him).
     I already knew, at this point, that Pam was planning on coming Thursday, but I hadn't heard from Jennifer.  I knew that she and the kids had gone to California to visit Mom & Dad, but I couldn't remember when they were coming back.  If it was just going to be Jeff and Pam and I, we could stop with the lobster calzones.  I could move on to making dinner and go to bed.  I called Jen's cell phone.  It went straight to voicemail.  I called my mom.  She said that Jennifer was on her way home, they would land around 11:30pm, and, of course, they were coming for pizza tomorrow.  Okay, I needed to work on the shrimp pies.
     At the very least, I needed to make the crust.  It sounded like a pie crust, but with cream cheese instead of lard.  Because of this, I rejected the instruction that the butter should be softened before you add it to the flour and cream cheese.  I used a pastry blender and just pounded into the bowl with all of the ingredients until it submitted to my supreme-ness.  I added a little icy-cold water to make it stick together when I was trying to turn it into a ball.  I placed it into a zipper bag and put it in the fridge.  That was all I could bring myself to do at that point.  The stomach called.  I needed to make dinner - risotto, according to Jeff.

     After a crazy day at work, I decided I needed to start the evening preparations by setting out the ingredients for our drink of the week, so when one of the sisters walked through the door, they could immediately start working on building the libations.

     Then, I rolled out the dough I had taken out of the fridge that morning. I had taken it out of the freezer the night before - it was the extra two portions of dough that I had made the week prior.  Together, they equalled half of a recipe of Classic Crust.

     Jennifer, Roger, and the kids arrived first.  Roger brought his own beer and sent Jonah downstairs with it to fill up the beer fridge in the basement, after he had wrangled out his first one.

     He sat off to the side, out of Pele's claw range and sipped on his beer while we started working.
     Jonah helped Jennifer get the drinks going. Pam hadn't arrived yet, but we new she would be along shortly, and set her up with a glass, too.
 

ARCTIC SUMMER

1½ measures gin

3/4 measure apricot brandy

1/4 measure grenadine

4 measures of sparkling bitter lemon

     Fill a highball glass with cracked ice and add the ingredients one by one in the order above.  Do not stir.  Garnish with a slice of lemon and a cocktail cherry.

It did look a little sunset-ish, as the recipe had suggested, but I couldn't bring myself to drink it without stirring.  I did not want to get a mouth full of grenadine!  It was tasty, though, after stirring.  Slightly sweet and a little tart with a little fizz at the end to send the flavors home.
     Once she had that completed, I asked her to roll out the pie dough.  I pulled it out of the fridge and handed it over.  She asked what she should do to make it not stick to the rolling pin.  I suggested more flour.  She tried that, and it was still sticking.  I handed her the pie dough condom.  It is a two lobed circular piece of plastic with a zipper to seal it up.  You place the dough in the middle of one of the circles, zip it closed, then roll your dough out through the plastic.

     Unfortunately, this dough just goobed up the pie condom.  She was about ready to give up, when Pam walked in. She is the "Pie Lady" in some circles, because of the wonderful pies she makes.  Jennifer handed the duty over to her.  We told her she had to make sixteen three inch circles out of the dough, and she set to work.  I blinked, and they were done.  All sixteen of them.

     Meanwhile, I was stirring in the corn, and getting ready to load my calzones.

  Again, as with all of the recipes in this book, this seemed like way too much filling for my three little circles of dough.  I tried as best as I could to fit it all in, but it wasn't going to happen.  Jen suggested we dig through and just make sure all of the lobster went into the calzones and save the rest for hash or something over the weekend.  We dug through and were fairly confident that we had all of the lobster in the turnovers.  With that accomplished, I closed them up.
     Wait!  I didn't put the cheese in!  Oh no!  It was a repeat of last week.  Only, I didn't think we could dip this calzone into the cheddar and make it work.  I had to reopen them and tuck the cheese in there.

     Once I had the cheese taken care of, I closed them up and headed them into the oven, and it was time to work on the shrimp pies.

     Jennifer was in charge of chopping the shrimp and green onions.  When she had finished chopping, I mixed those items together with flour in a bowl.

     She tried to assemble the little half moons in the pocket maker I had gotten from our grandmother, but it didn't seem to be working very well.  I looked at all of those circles on the counter and the small amount of goo that we had and realized that we weren't going to be able to put much in each of these if this was going to stretch into 16 pies.  (Maybe I should have filled some with the potato filling for the calzone).  It ended up being about a teaspoon and a half for each pie.  I divided it all out at once over the circles and then went back and closed them all up.  I reread the recipe.  Where was the melted butter supposed to go?  I decided that I would just brush it over the tops of all of the crescents.



     I didn't take long for the little pies to brown up.  They were done about the same time as the lobster calzones.  Again, I lamented the fact that the crust never did look done, but it was crunchy, and the ingredients were cooked through.

     The little pies were fantastic.  It did seem we had forgotten to add the salt, so they did need some table side.  They were buttery - very buttery and a little tangy from the cream cheese.  It was almost as if the shrimp were an afterthought.  I believe that the whole dish was about that crust, and you could have put anything inside and it would have tasted good.  There was a little tension after everyone had eaten their allotted three and there was one left.  If they were packing, I was sure there would be guns drawn.

      Even with my precautions, the lobster was still a little over cooked.  Some of it was, anyway.  It was sort of a disappointment.  Also, the potatoes and the onions were undercooked.  The whole flavor of the calzone definitely had potential, but the textures were wrong.  We may have to have a redo, but with uncooked lobster, less potatoes, caramelized onion instead of raw, and the cheese needed to be mixed in with the rest of the ingredients to offer consistency throughout the slice.  I really enjoyed the tarragon.  It lent a buttery-anise flavor without being overwhelming - it was just a soft kiss of flavor.  I am going to have to remember that flavor and see what else I could incorporate that into.  It was lovely.

Felafel, Zucchini and Tomato Turnovers, and Algonquin

     I went back and forth a few times on whether or not I was actually going to make my own pitas for the felafel recipe.  I have never made them before, and it seemed like it might be too much for me to attempt on a weekday.  However, by Wednesday, I still hadn't purchased any commercially made pitas to substitute, so I decided I had better at least give it a try. 

PITA BREAD

2 cups unbleached all-purpose white flour

1 pkg. dry yeast

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

3/4 cup luke warm water

     Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water and set aside for 5 minutes.  Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.  Make a depression in the flour and pour in the yeast mixture.  Mix well and turn out onto a floured board.  Knead the dough for 8-10 minutes.

     Dust the top of the dough with flour and place it in a clean bowl, cover with a clean dish towel and set it in a warm, draft-free place to rise for 1½ hours.  Punch the dough down and let it rise for another 45 minutes.

     After the second rising period, knead the dough for 2 minutes and form it into 8 balls of equal size.  Cover the balls and let them  rise for another half hour.  Preheat the oven for 15 minutes to 500º (or the highest setting your oven has).  After they have risen, flatten the dough balls with the palm of your hand.  They should be about 1/4" thick.  Lightly flour a baking sheet and back 1 or two of the pieces of dough at a time for 3-4 minutes on each side.

     Pita will be light brown in color when it is done.  The loaves will puff as they bake.

I threw all of the ingredients into my KitchenAide, and let it do most of the work.  Once the dough had combined into a cohesive ball, I turned it out into an oiled bowl and set it aside, while I worked on the sauce for the turnovers.

     Since I was going all out with the pita bread, I figured I could skimp a little for the sauce and go with the "Speed-Scratch" Sauce instead of the "Slow-Simmered".

SPEED-SCRATCH TOMATO SAUCE

2 tbsp olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 cups jarred pasta sauce

1 15-ounce can tomatoes with oregano and garlic

1/2 tsp red pepper flake

      In a large saucepan, combine olive oil and garlic.  Cook over medium heat, stirring for 2 minutes.  Add pasta sauce.

     Place canned tomatoes with liquid in a blender and pulse until pureed.  Add tomatoes to saucepan along with red pepper flakes.  Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Sauce should be reduced and thickened.  Cool slightly before using in recipes.

     I had some Ragu sauce that I had bought on sale for a dollar, and instead of canned tomatoes, I used a quart of tomatoes from the freezer (our own garden tomatoes).  I get what Jeff and I call "freezer points" for this.  Any time we use up stuff from the freezer instead of buying new, we get "freezer points".  I am considering giving him negative freezer points for buying more stuff to put INTO the freezer, though.

     I started out with the olive oil in my sauce pan and dumped in some garlic, and I thought I would start the dough for the turnovers while that was heating up.  At least I could get a few steps in before I had to add the Ragu.  Apparently, measuring the yeast and water took longer than I had imagined...  My garlic burned and stuck to the bottom of my pan (especially where the Teflon was worn off.

      I dumped this out and cleaned the pan and started over.  I decided to concentrate this time until its 20 minute simmer.  Once I had the sauce, tomatoes, and hot pepper flake added to the garlic, I added a little dried oregano and basil, since I wasn't using the canned tomatoes with the seasoning already in it.  After 20 minutes of simmering, though, my sauce wasn't reduced and thickened, as the recipe had promised me it would be.  I imagined it was because my frozen garden tomatoes had more liquid in them than the canned variety would  have.  I put a splatter-shield over the pot and let it bubble away while I continued with the turnover dough project.

     While I was putting the ingredients for the dough into the KitchenAide, I had a bright idea.  My KitchenAide has an attachment to grate cheese (and/or zucchini).  The same gear that drives the beater around the bowl also drives a shaft that spins a barrel attached to the head of the mixer.  The barrel is the shredder.  I was thinking that I could save time by grating the cheese and zucchini while the dough was mixing.

     My first lesson was to STOP the mixer before trying to attach the grater contraption.  It was a little jarring to try and get the square shaft of the attachment into the spinning hole.  Once I had the mixer stopped and the grater attached, I tried again.  This did not work as seamlessly as I had anticipated.  The moment the dough hook hit an especially thick portion of dough, it slowed the grater and it tipped the bowl in its stand.  The bowl frequently tips during dough-making, but I have free hands to steady the bowl.  This time I had one hand feeding the grater and another preparing the next item to into the grater.  The grater must not have been assembled to the mixer properly, because it fell out as I was trying to straighten out the bowl.  I think I had better stick to one task at a time.

     Now that my cheese and my zucchini were shredded, I wanted to work on getting as much of the felafel made as I could.  Or is it falafel?  I am not sure why this recipe spells it differently than every other recipe I have seen for it.  I Googled it, and Google changed the spelling to falafel - maybe felafel is the Israeli version and falafel is the English version?  Who knows.  Maybe this author just had a bad editor.

     First on the list of things to do was to soak the cracked wheat.  Oh yeah.  Cub didn't have that, and I was going to find it somewhere else, but in between job-hunting, resume-writing, interview-clothes-shopping, and laying around feeling sorry for myself, I never did go and find cracked wheat.  I searched through my cupboards and my refrigerator.  No cracked wheat there either, but I did find a package of barley.  Now, I know it isn't the same thing.  It probably isn't even close, but it is a grain.  So, I put it in a bowl, and covered it with water to soak as if it were cracked wheat.

     After draining and rinsing the garbanzos, I put them in my Vitamix.  I probably should have saved some of the bean liquid, because the beans were a little to dry to just whir them up on their own.  I had to really help it along with the tamper to get it to smooth out.

     I looked at several other falafel recipes on line, and I didn't see any other recipes that called for a slice of bread to be soaked and added into the mixture.  When I saw the bread listed on the ingredient list, I had assumed it was going to be crumbled and made into some kind of coating or something.  As weird as I thought it was, I went ahead and soaked the slice of bread (I used potato bread - the squishy white bread I use to make Jeff's sandwiches) and squeezed it out.  It turned into a little tiny ball of yellow goo, which I threw into the Vitamix.

      Coriander is a a spice I rarely use, so I had to go to my auxiliary spice storage unit.

      I keep all of the spices I have that don't have a proper jar or a space on the spice cupboard shelves in a large tin that used to contain two bottles of Bailey's.  My mother bought me the Bailey's on our way home from Scotland in 1989.  We got it in the duty free shop at the airport, and while she was buying the liquor for my under-aged self, she was also giving me a lecture about alcoholism and my particular susceptibility to it, because I come from a long line of alcoholics.  I promised not to become one, and she handed over the booze.
     I added the coriander, the cumin, salt, and pepper.  I re-read the recipe.  I read it yet again.  When was I supposed to put in the lemon juice I had worked so hard to squeeze?

     Since it was never specifically mentioned in the body of the recipe instructions, I decided that it must be part of the "spices and parsley", and I poured it into the Vitamix along with everything else.  I had drained my "cracked wheat" and put that in there too, but I was concerned, because it didn't seem to have softened much in the hour or so it had been soaking.  I put it in anyway, hoping that the overnight stint in the refrigerator would soften them up.

      At this point, my empty stomach was getting the better of me, and I decided that I should make us some dinner, before we both wasted away to nothing.  Okay, that won't happen any time soon, but I wanted to prevent any ensuing crabbiness that seems to rear its ugly head when food hasn't been administered in the last 6 hours.  I figured once I was done with dinner, I could bake the pitas, package up the felafel batter, package up the tomato sauce, clean up and go to bed.  Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way.  I finished dinner, sat back for a little mindless t.v. before getting back into it, and promptly fell asleep.  When I woke up and decided to drag myself to bed, I realized that my speed-scratch sauce, that was supposed to simmer for twenty minutes had been simmering this whole time - about 4 hours!  Well, it had definitely thickened.  It actually looked pretty good.  I turned it off, put the pita dough in the fridge, and went to bed.

    

      After I got up in the morning, I put the sauce in the refrigerator, and took the turnover dough and the pita dough out of the refrigerator to do a slow rise while I was at work.
      When I got home, I started on the pitas.  I cut the dough into 8 equal pieces.

I rolled them into balls.



     By the time Pam, Jennifer, Roger, and the kids arrived, I had them all flattened out into little disks.  They were pretty small, but I was afraid if I had rolled them out any bigger, they would be too thin to "puff up".  I think they may have already been that thin.

     After the pitas were in the oven for about three minutes, I flipped them over.  Pam had brought over a bottle of something she had earlier in the week with some friends, and she was the only one that liked it, so she took it home with her.  It was Palinka - an Hungarian brandy-type liqueur made with apricots.  It tasted similar to an unsweetened, flavored vodka, but it was really smooth and warmed the tummy instantly.  Needless to say, I had missed the three minute deadline for the pitas.  They were a little crisp and didn't look at all like they would have "pockets".  I told Pam I was going to send Jeff to the store to get regular pitas or we could build them like tostadas, but she assured me that she would be able to get them to work like the pockets they were supposed to be.  She would handle the cutting and filling.

     I set Jennifer up to start on the drink.  I chose this one, because Jeff had some Canadian whiskey he had brought home and then turned his nose up at it.  He decided he just really doesn't like it now that he has had access to all of the lovely bourbons there are available.

ALGONQUIN

2 measures Canadian whisky (I used Crown Royal)

1 measure dry vermouth

1 measure pineapple juice

     Shake all the ingredients well with ice and strain into a rocks glass half-filled with cracked ice.  Garnish with lemon.

     It turned out to be an interesting drink.  "Interesting" is a Minnesota term that means "I don't really like it, but I don't hate it, and I am too polite to say anything bad about it".  Even though Jennifer had shaken it up, the flavors came through in layers.  First I tasted the Canadian, sweet and warm; then the sour of the vermouth; followed by the tang of the pineapple.  On the second round, I tried it with less vermouth, but the same amount of pineapple, but there was still the separation and still the slightly sour taste.  I decided that pineapple and whisky just aren't meant to go together.

     Once she had the drinks prepared and dolled out, I had her work on the felafel.  She rolled the chickpea mixture into balls to prepare for frying.  She was reading the directions, and exclaimed, "these are supposed to be set aside for 1½ hours to dry!"  I explained that the mixture had been sitting out for twenty-four hours, so I felt it was dry enough for our purposes.

     While she did that, I started working on the filling for the turnovers.  I chopped the tomatoes, shredded the basil and mixed the ricotta and zucchini together, after giving the zucchini a little squeeze to rid it of extra water.  I added the basil and the tomatoes.  By this time, Pam had the dough divided into three portions and rolled out for my three calzones.

     I quickly divided the cheese and zucchini mixture between the three dough circles, sprinkled them all with the Asiago, and closed them up.    

     They were pretty.  I was just getting ready to put them in the oven, when I noticed the pan of tomato sauce on the counter.  Oh no!  That was supposed to go inside the turnovers!  I looked at my perfectly sealed calzones,m and my shoulders slumped.  I reached out to start to open them back up, when Jennifer suggested that we serve the sauce on the side as a dip.  Genius!  I put them in the oven and checked on Jennifer's progress with the felafel balls.

     She was doing great.  they were perfectly round, beautifully golden, and looked to be crispy.  They actually looked like giant toasted chickpeas.  We, of course, had to sample one to make sure that tasted okay.
     Pam was also doing great with the pita breads.  She was able to cut them all in half and open them up for filling.  I think one pita may have bitten the dust or crumbled to dust or something along that line, but for the most part, they all seemed to work out alright.

     They were a little small, and we could fit no more than two felafels in each pocket.  We thought that they were funny-looking assembled like that, and we started calling them ball-sacks. Unfortunately, that turned Jeff and Roger off of them (not that they were all that excited to try them to begin with), and they refused to try them.  I could have taken or left the pitas themselves.  They were like water crackers.  It was a nice vessel to hold the felafels, but they really didn't add much to the game.  The felafels were awesome. The exteriors were crispy and brown, the interiors soft and delicious.  The flavor rolled around my tongue.  It was unusual - warm, earthy, with a slight liquorice flavor in the background.  There was something addictive about them.  The barley had apparently softened up, because the inside was completely smooth.
     The turnovers came out of the oven.  The crust was crisp, but it was still pale.  I think that they needed to have an egg wash applied before their stint in the oven, just for aesthetics.  I like the look of  a golden brown calzone, especially if it is a little shiny, too.

     These had good flavor.  they were hot and gooey and moist, even before dipping them in the "speed-scratch sauce".  Jennifer declared that she thought that dipping them was much better than having the sauce inside anyway.  I felt that the name of the rcipe was a little off the mark.  Sure, it had zucchini and tomato in it, but the zucchini and tomato was lost in all of that ricotta. This was probably a good thing for Jeff, since he claims to not like zucchini, but I would have liked a little of the green flavor to shine through.