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.