Valentine's Day: Bacon Wrapped Scallops; Broiled Filet Mignon; Roasted Pepper Risotto; Molten Lava Cake

     Jeff scheduled himself to work on Valentine's Day.  I was disappointed, but as a co-worker pointed out to me - it is a made-up holiday invented to boost sales for Hallmark.  I am not sure if that is really historically true, but I am going to go with it to make myself feel better.  I guess it really shouldn't matter.  I just like to have a day that is designated for celebrating each other, because we so infrequently do it on our own.  With that being said, Jeff is usually the one who actually makes the Valentine's Day special for me, and I am not so good at doing that for him.  This year, we said we weren't going to do anything for each other except have a great meal.  We are already over-extending our resources with a trip to California. 

     I knew that even though we said we weren't going to do anything for each other, Jeff had gotten something for me.  I figured I was going to be making the dinner, because he was working at least until 8.  Monday night, I was pulling all of my current and old February issues of magazines to try and come up with a budget-friendly menu.  I knew that we had a couple of lobster tails in the freezer, so I picked out a recipe for that and printed that up.

     Jeff came home and startled me from my food magazine immersion.  He had beef tenderloin and scallops.  The beef tenderloin was on sale at Rainbow and the scallops called to him from Sam's Club.  The request had been made: bacon-wrapped scallops and fillet mignon.  Nothing says love like bacon, seafood, and a big hunk of beef - not just any kind of beef: mouth-watering, tender-as-butter, juicy, tenderloin.  We hadn't had any of those items for a while, so that sounded great to me.

    

     I hadn't thought about the big meal all day, and when I got home after work on Tuesday (the big day), I realized I hadn't planned anything for dessert.  Jeff has a big sweet tooth, and we both love chocolate, so I was trying to find something along those lines.  I talked to Jennifer on the phone, and she said she had a chocolate souffle recipe that was really good.  I asked her to email it to me.  I wanted to print it, so I fired up the desktop.  Unfortunately, there was some issue with Google - every time I opened a Google window or tried to touch any Google-related icon on my screen, the window would shut down. 

     There are ways around that, so I forwarded the e-mail to my Comcast account.  However, when I opened up the e-mail in Comcast, the attachment hadn't been forwarded with it.  Apparently, I am not as well versed in Driodology as I would have liked.  I called Jennifer back and asked her to re-send it, which she did.  Then, when I tried to open it, my desktop said that there was an issue with Adobe.  I knew there had been a problem with it for some time but never bothered to fix it, because I rarely use Adobe on that computer.  So, I tried to fix it.  I downloaded the newest, latest, and greatest versions, which took much longer than I thought it should have, and after about an hour of dinking around, it still didn't work.

     I gave up and found a molten chocolate lava recipe from Paula Deen on the internet.  I didn't have the exact ingredients she called for, and I only needed to make two, not six, but I figured I could work with it.  I wanted to make sure that these were hot when they were served, but I didn't know when that would be or how I would time that with the meal.  I decided to have all of the ingredients as ready as possible, so when we were done eating the main part of the meal, I could "pop" these into the oven.

MOLTEN LAVA CAKES

4 ounces Semisweet Chocolate

5 tablespoons Unsalted Butter

1/4 cup All-Purpose Flour

3/4 cup Superfine Sugar

1/2 tablespoon Instant Espresso Powder

1/2 teaspoon Roasted Saigon Cinnamon

Pinch Hot Pepper Powder

2 Jumbo Eggs

1 Egg Yolk

1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 tablespoon Maraschino Liqueur

     Preheat oven to 425º F.

     Grease 4 (5-ounce) ramekins.

     Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave - start with a 30 second interval and stir.  Repeat until all of the chocolate is melted.  Do not overcook.

     Add the flour, sugar, espresso powder, cinnamon and hot pepper to the chocolate mixture.  Stir in the eggs and yolk until smooth.  Stir in the vanilla and the cherry liqueur.  Divide the batter evenly among the ramekins.  Bake for 12-14 minutes. 

     Slide a knife around the edges to loosen and invert onto dessert plates.

     I chopped the chocolate up as finely as I could.  I had just watched Alton Brown melting chocolate on Food Network, and he said that the smaller the pieces of chocolate, the faster and easier it was to melt.

    I combined the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and set it aside.  Then, I mixed together the flour and sugar.  Paula's recipe called for confectioner's sugar, but I didn't have that, so I ground regular sugar in my coffee grinder until it was superfine.  I had this really wonderful smelling cinnamon that I had purchased a few weeks ago that I thought would be fabulous in this dessert, so I added some of that.  Also, I love a little kick in my chocolate, so I also added some hot pepper that I had made from dried peppers from my garden.  I just gave it a small pinch, though, because it was pretty hot stuff, and I still wanted the main flavor to be sweet.  I also combined the eggs and yolk and added the vanilla and cherry liqueur to the eggs for easy combining.  My last preparation was to spray all of the ramekins with cooking spray. 

      I wanted to start with the scallops and have those as an appetizer - okay, not an appetizer exactly: more like a first course.  I looked in the refrigerator for them.  They weren't there.  They were in the freezer!  I was thinking that was going to be a huge problem, since I needed to work with them right now.  Then, I had an "aha!" moment - why wouldn't I just put them in a strainer and run water over them, like I would for frozen shrimp.  I could prepare the bacon in the meantime.  I picked out 6 of them that were relatively close in size.

     The bacon we had was this really thick, and I was worried that it would only get flabby before the delicate scallops were cooked.  Maybe I should have left them frozen?  That might not work either - they were pretty thick scallops, and I was worried that the outsides would be fine but the inside wouldn't be cooked all the way.  I decided to partially cook the bacon first.  I placed it in a single layer and threw it in the microwave on the bacon setting, but only set it for 4 slices instead of the seven I had in the tray.  Then, of course, they were too hot to handle, so I had to go on to something else.

     What were we going to have with our protein?  The day before, Jeff had suggested corn.  We had plenty of corn in the freezer, but I thought we should have something with color in it - not necessarily a vegetable per se, but something colorful.  I looked in the freezer, thinking I might find some broccoli, but what I found was a bag of roasted peppers from the fall.  There were red, green, and yellow all frozen together in one big block.  I wasn't sure if they were sweet or hot or both.  I suspected both, or I would have labeled them as hot.  Well, you would think that I would have labeled them either way, but I hadn't.  I  was just going to take the risk.  I decided we were going to have roasted pepper risotto.  Risotto is usually made with Parmesan and Romano, neither of which I had on hand, but I did have Manchego.  I looked it over.  It is a hard, salty cheese.  It would work.

INTERNATIONAL ROASTED PEPPER RISOTTO

1 Thick-Cut Slice of Bacon

½ cup Finely Chopped Yellow Onion

2 tablespoons Minced Garlic

½ cup Dry Rose Wine

2 cups Turkey Broth

1½ cups Japanese Sushi Rice

¼ teaspoon Smoked Salt

½ teaspoon Chipolte Chili Powder

1 cup Roughly-Chopped Roasted Peppers (preferably of various colors and heat profiles)

3oz. Chevre

1 cup Finely-Shredded Manchego Cheese

2 thin slices Capicola, crisply fried, and crumbled

     Chop the bacon and toss it into a preheated pan over medium-high heat.  Once some of the fat has rendered from it, add the onions and garlic.  Cook for a couple of minutes, while stirring, until the onions turn translucent.  Add the rice and stir-cook that until translucent (another 3-4 minutes).  Add the wine and continue stirring until the liquid has been absorbed.  Add the turkey broth, a half a cup (or a ladle-ful) at a time, adding each subsequent ladle after the liquid has been incorporated into the rice.  When you have incorporated most of the broth into the rice, check it for doneness.  It should be slightly firm to the bite, but it shouldn't be crunchy or chalky.  If it isn't quite done yet, add the rest of the turkey broth, and add hot water  if necessary.

     Once the rice has reached the desired texture, stir in the chevre until it has melted into the rice.  Add the Manchego.  Serve, sprinkling the crumbled capicola over each portion.

     Once I had the risotto started, my bacon was cool enough for me to handle.  Jennifer had told me that she had bacon wrapped scallops on her last business trip, and the restaurant chef cooked them table side.  I asked how they attached the bacon, and she wasn't sure.  She said that there didn't appear to be anything holding it on there.  I was unable to keep the bacon around the scallop without any aides - I had to shove a toothpick through it to make it stay.

     I drizzled the assembled scallops with olive oil and sprinkled them with black pepper.  I wasn't sure when Jeff was going to be home, so I waited until he walked in to put them in the broiler.  I broiled them for about three or four minutes on each side.  I had hoped that there would be a little browning of the scallops, but I was so paranoid that they were going to overcook and become rubbery that I pulled them out before anything happened in the browning department.  I had mentioned that to Pam (later), and she suggested using a torch on them.  That wasn't a bad idea!  I want to make them again now to try it.

     Pele had decided that the pretty red bag Jeff had placed on the table was for him.  He is a sweetheart of a cat, after all... (At least to me).  He didn't wait for me to help him open it - he dove right in.

     He didn't care much for the camera that was inside, but he thought that the tissue paper was pretty cool.
     Jeff volunteered to take over the steak portion of the meal once we had finished our scallops.  It is, after all, a boy job to cook the red meat.  Actually, he had started it the night before.  He had thawed the fillets and seasoned them with Harley's.  It was late by this time, and he didn't feel like going downstairs to outside and upstairs to get to the grill and maneuver the grill in the dark, so we decided on broiler steaks.  They were fabulous!  They were perfectly seared on the outside, and the inside was still a beautiful Valentine color and warm.  It was juicy and salty and was the perfect friend for the creamy, rich risotto.

     I was surprised at how easy the lava cake was to put together and make.  Since I already had the ingredients all prepared, it only took a couple of minutes to melt the chocolate and butter and combine everything.  Then, I was sure that it was some kind of trick - that there wouldn't be any way that the inside would be the right consistency.  I have decided that this is going to be my new party trick.  For as easy as this is, and the wow factor it provides, I am definitely going to impress my friends and relatives with this.  The hardest part of the whole thing was inverting it onto a dessert plate.  It was a little difficult to hold on to the tiny ramekin with an oven mitt on (because it was really hot) without dunking the oven mitt into the cake or dropping the ramekin in the flip.  Amazingly enough, though, I managed.

    

Feta, Olive, and Tomato Calzones; Mantarh Borek; and Bennett

   I thought I was really smart last week by packaging up the other half of my dough in one container instead of two, because the next recipe called for half a recipe again.  However, on Wednesday, I found myself wondering if I should make a new batch of dough, so I could only use one fourth and make half of the calzone recipe.  It looked like it would just be me and Jeff for dinner, and three calzones and six little mushroom cheese pies were probably going to be too much for just the two of us.  I decided to forge ahead anyway.  Maybe I can wrap up and freeze the other two calzones and give one to each sister the next time I see them.
     I wished I had read enough of this recipe last week to know I was going to need more garlic olive oil sauce - I could have made 1/2 a recipe of that instead of the fourth I made just for last week's calzone.  Maybe next time I will learn.  So, I quartered the sauce recipe again this week:

GARLIC AND OIL SAUCE

(makes 1/2 cup)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

5 tablespoons chopped garlic

1/8 teaspoon dried pepper flake

Combine all ingredients and heat on low for 4-5 minutes or until garlic has softened.  Remove from heat and let it cool before using in recipes.

     I thought about doubling the hot pepper in the sauce.  Instead, I used my own hot pepper grind.  It is quite a bit hotter than your regular plain Jane red pepper flake, so I stuck with the eighth of a teaspoon. 

     One whole cup of green olives seemed like a lot.  I had some in my refrigerator from something else, but I had forgotten that and bought another jar.  Jeff doesn't eat the sliced ones regularly - he prefers the whole ones - and I am not a huge fan of them in general - so, when the remainder of the open jar wasn't quite a whole cup, I did not open another jar.  I thought 3/4 cup should be more than plenty.  I think that olives are an acquired taste and one should ease into them slowly.  I, myself, am still toddling around the idea of loving them.  The container of kalamata olives I had purchased was a little shy of a cup, too.

     I mixed all of the calzone filling ingredients together, including the mozzarella.  The last calzones we made, we had determined that the cheese needed more even distribution than we could get by just placing it on top of the filling before closing it up.  The sisters had spoken, and so shall it be. 

     I fudged a little on the tomato selection.  I love grape tomatoes - they are little and sweet, and they pop in your mouth when you eat them.  Unfortunately, though, they are out of season and unavailable at Cub.  Not that the other types of tomatoes aren't out of season, but it seems that you can get good looking cherry tomatoes all year round, and they actually taste good, too.  I don't know why those should be available and grape tomatoes aren't, but it just seems to be the thing.  This week Cub had cherry tomatoes on sale - they were two for one - and we cannot pass up a deal.  they aren't as sweet, and to get the same basic size/shape, I would have to cut them into fourths, but I was willing to make the sacrifice.

     Normally at this point on a Wednesday (about 7:30pm), I would be ready to call it quits, eager to sit with dinner, a drink, and whatever crime show happened to be available at the time. However, Jeff was busy making dinner (don't want to put a wrench in that), and I figured if I had the ingredients prepped for the cheese and mushroom recipe, I would have to make it on Thursday, and there would be no reasonable argument about it.

     It disturbs me when the recipe instructions don't follow the order of the recipe ingredients or vice versa.  I suppose it is a little anal retentive of me, but I like order.  I like to be able to look at a list and know what is coming next.  This Borek recipe did not follow the rules.

     Initially, I had put the entire stick and a half of butter in my sauce pan.  I don't know what my problem is.  All day at work, I am focusing on details and cursing the fledglings that can't seem to distinguish between the minutest of intricacies.  Then I come home and only pay attention to half of the first sentence of the instructions??  I am sure it is because the ingredient list wasn't arranged in the order it should be added.  I took all but the two tablespoons out and added my 2 tablespoons of flour.  I used Wondra.  I think it is just superfine flour, but it just seems to work wonderfully in a roux.  I never get lumps in my sauces any more - I am not sure if it is the Wondra or maybe my skills are improving.  I could go back to regular flour to determine which it is, but I don't want to risk it. 

     I purposely ignored the bit about adding the half-and-half and then the milk.  When I was measuring those items, I put them into the same container and added them to the sauce at the same time.  I don't see what advantage I would have had adding them separately and creating an additional dish to wash (or ignore) at the end of the night.

     I was also concerned about the amount of cheese going into the sauce: a quarter cup?  Really?  It seemed so small.  I sneak that much out of the bag and don't even count it as a snack!  This can hardly be described as "cheese and mushrooms baked in dough", can it?  More like: mushrooms with a "seasoning" of cheese baked in phyllo.  Yes, I think that would be a more appropriate description.  Anyway, when I added the cheese, it was barely even noticeable in the color.  It (the roux) started out almost start white, and when I added the cheese, it became ecru - or maybe "eggshell white". 

   

     Okay, so I have been blaming my errors - skipping steps, forgetting to add cheese, or whatever - on the distractions.  Today, I came home to an empty house.  No one was scheduled to come over.  Jeff wasn't home yet, and I still mucked it up.  My head was so wrapped up in my events of the day, that I just came home and started loading the cheese and olive mixture into the calzones and closed them up.  I was thinking about the egg wash and wondered if this was another recipe that didn't call for one.  I checked the recipe and saw the pine nuts on the ingredient list.  Oh no!  I forgot them.  I reached in the fridge and grabbed them and bellied up to the stove to toast them, when I saw the garlic olive oil sauce.  What??  Wasn't that supposed to go in the calzone? Phooey!  For the third week in a row, I missed something and had to re-open my sealed calzones to get the extra ingredients inside.

     The phyllo packets were somewhat of a disaster.  It turns out I didn't have 12 sheets leftover from last week.  It was more like 8.  I thought I could get away with folding some over and calling that the first two sheets.  I had more phyllo in the freezer, but I have played this game before - there is no way it would thaw in time to be workable tonight.  If you try, and it is not completely thawed, it crumbles - almost shatters.  So, I was going to make do.

     As long as I am mentioning pet peeves about recipes, another one I have is when recipes call for 1 onion.  That is the most imprecise amount.  Onions are all different sizes.  I think if I added the entire onion that I had, I would have to call it onion pie.

     Although, maybe that is how much onion the recipe was going for, because one pound of mushrooms is a lot of mushrooms, too.  They barely fit in my 10" pan.

 

     After I sauteed the onions and mushrooms, I added them to the cream sauce I had made the previous day.  It was thick for sauce, but I thought it thin for a filling.  Also, I had chopped up all of the dill it called for and read the recipe three times.  There is no instruction for adding the dill!  I threw it in the pan with the mushrooms and onions and "cheese" sauce.

     I put one sheet of phyllo down, buttered it, folded it in half (to pretend it was two sheets), and placed a spoonful of mushroom goo in the center.  I folded and buttered as instructed,  It looked great.  Then, I tried to place it on my jelly roll pan, and when I attempted to lift it off of the board I had assembled it on, the bottom gave way, and mushroom goo came out.  I got a spatula and lifted it off the board and onto the pan, but I thought the damage had been done.  I tried the same thing with the second packet, but I assembled it on the pan.  This one was even messier.  I think that the sauce, or filling, was too wet and disintegrated the phyllo.  I did the remaining 3 (yes, I know, I ended up with five packets instead of six) with two sheets of phyllo, but the problem persisted.  I had one phyllo sheet left over at this point, so I tried to do some patch work.  I wasn't hopeful that it would turn out, but I had already come this far, so I crossed my fingers and slid them into the oven.

     Now, the previous calzone recipes all said to fill them up, seal them, and then let them sit for an hour.  I usually don't have that kind of time.  People would start rifling through my cupboards for snacks if I made them wait that long for dinner.  However, since it was just Jeff and I, I could take my time.  Besides, I had to assemble the Boreks, and I was sure that was going to take somewhere close to an hour, which it did.  It was more than an hour later when I got back to the calzones, and when I took the towel off of them, they looked exactly the same as they had an hour ago.  I decided then, that I wasn't missing anything previously when I didn't let them sit for an hour.

     I beat an egg for a little wash over the calzones.  Last week, I had mixed a little half-n-half in with an egg for a little wash on the calzone.  This time I mixed in a little water to see how that would compare.

BENNETT

1½ measures gin

½ measure lime juice

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

     With both of my recipes in the oven, it was time for a drink.  I carefully measured the gin into the shaker.  I squeezed the lime into a cup and poured it into the 1/2 measure side of my drink tool.  Apparently half a measure of lime juice is 1/2 of a lime.  What a nice ratio - easy to remember.  I dashed my bitters in and shook.  Wow!  That lime juice is really potent!  That is all I could taste on the first sip.  Once I swallowed, I got a hint of the bitters in the back of my throat, but it was gone in a flash.  The gin was completely lost.  Of course, the more I sipped off of it, the more I liked it, but when I made a new one with double the gin and half the lime, it was almost perfect.  The lime would attempt to make me pucker, but the bitters and the gin fought it back into a beautifully balanced drink.

     At this point, Jeff and I (and Pele) thought we were wasting away to nothing.  Pele was so weak with hunger that he couldn't even roll over.

      The moment we had been waiting for arrived.  Both the phyllo packets and the calzones were done at the same time.  I had to knock on the calzones to see, because my water/egg wash did not turn the crust the golden color I was working for.  I will have to go back to the egg and dairy mixture next time.

     The Boreks didn't get as ugly as I thought they were going to.  They actually retained some semblance of their original shape.  I was so sure that they would all melt together into one gooey mess.

     They were fantastic, too.  They definitely weren't cheesy - I would take that out of the title of the recipe.  It was creamy and rich, and the phyllo (on the top of the pile of mushrooms) was flaky and light.  The filling that had leaked out onto the pan had combined with the disintegrated phyllo and created an extra deep mushroom flavor and added another level to the fantastic textures going on there - flaky, crunchy, silky, meaty.  It was almost like stroganoff without the noodles, baked under a whisper of a croissant.

      The calzones exceeded my expectations, too.  It had me thinking that the feta, olive, tomato combination is the holy trinity of Greek flavors.  The olives and feta were a little salty, and then you bite into a tomato and the sweetness cuts through it all and brings the briny and creaminess together in one perfect bite.  The mozzarella was barely noticeable, but it served to keep everything together.  I think if I didn't already have it in my mind that the other two calzones were going to go to Pam and Jennifer, we would have cut into another one and ate that up too.

Muffaletta Turnovers; Gibanica; RAC

  I cut the brie (for the Soft Cheese Pie into what I thought would be 8 ounces, but it was a little over, so I had to eat about an ounce of it.  I did cut the rind off, before I even read the blurb at the beginning.  I just assumed that since we are "blending" it with cream cheese and egg yolks, that only the creamy inside would work...  I just love brie!  It's so creamy and buttery - it's like a food hug.

     One of the eggs I opened had what appeared to be blood in the whites.  I probably shouldn't mention this publicly, because I used it anyway.  I did some "research" on line.  I didn't find any convincing authority either way, but there were several people who said they ate them anyway, and they were still around to report that on line, so I decided to give it a shot.  Still, it weirded me out, and I kept thinking I was seeing red everywhere.  When I blended the yolks in with the cheeses, there would be an air pocket, and I would stop the Vitamix and check it out to make sure it wasn't discolored yolks.  It didn't help that some of the items I read on the Internet said it was because the egg was fertilized, and it was starting to become a chick.  Now, I certainly don't believe that, but it got me paranoid, just the same.
     Then, I made another batch of classic crust dough. They just don't seem to last as long when I am using 1/2 a recipe at a time instead of the usual 1/4.  I actually had the foresight this time to check the next time a recipe called for this dough and realized that it was going to be another half-recipe, so I packaged the other half all together.  The last few times I have made this dough, I packaged the other half in two portions before putting it in the freezer.  Then, the next week, I would end up taking two packages out of the freezer.

     Next on the list of things to do was the garlic olive oil sauce.  I always skip the parsley for this sauce.  As I may have mentioned before, I just don't see the point.  I divided the recipe by four (sort of).  I used 1/2 cup of olive oil, 4 heaping spoonfuls of pre-chopped garlic (my interpretation of 4 cloves of garlic), and then I just kept sprinkling the hot pepper flake into the pan until I thought it looked good.  I added even extra, because I think our hot pepper flake has lost a little of its oomph.  If I had been really daring I would have used my home-made pepper flake (I made this from dehydrating all of the hot peppers left in my garden at the end of the season, so it's this lovely green, gold, red concoction, and it is HOT HOT HOT!).
     I still hadn't found Mortadella yet.  I had tried Cub and Festival.  Well, Jeff tried Festival.  I called him on his way home from work on Tuesday and asked him to look for it.  He said, "What?!  We don't need any more CHEESE!" 
     On a side note, he was a little cheese-shy at that point, because over the weekend, I had decided to make home-made macaroni-and-cheese.  I based my recipe on an au gratin potato recipe, that I think I had perfected.  When we sat down to eat it, I didn't feel it had quite the cheesiness that I was looking for.  I made a different batch on Sunday with different proportions of cheese, and I think I overdid it, because while it still didn't have that sharp flavor I was going for, it became gloppy, because there was just too much cheese.  We ate it anyway.  It tasted good, it just wasn't texturally pleasing.  And, of course, when I made reach of these batches, I made an entire pan-ful for the two of us, and we had been eating it for meals ever since....
     I explained that it was a meat, like bologna or salami, and he needed to check with the deli.  Of course, that was followed by spelling and repeating, but I think he got the idea.  They didn't have it, but they had cappicola (this is a pancetta-like pork product that is spicey - Jeff fell in love with it after hearing about it on the Sopranos)!  I asked Pam to check around for it in her adventures before then.  She asked if it was cheese, too.
     We had discussed how much, weight wise, would make 1 cup of diced Mortadella.  She guessed half a pound.  I told her I thought it was less, because if it is diced, there is going to be a lot of air holes in the cup.  I measured out my diced salami and my diced ham.  I forgot to weigh them individually, but together they weighed almost exactly 10 ounces.  I guessed that the salami was actually more than 5 ounces on its own, because it was really dense.
     On the note of the salami, I bought Cub's brand.  It was surprisingly delicious!  They weren't kidding, though, when they labeled it "hard" salami.  If I cut that every day for next couple of weeks, I would have the most sinewy forearms around!  It is garlicky and peppery, and slightly slick on my tongue.
     I had some Provolone on hand from a previous pizza (stromboli?) that I was going to use, so I didn't buy any more.  It really wasn't three cups - it was more like two and a quarter (9.8 ounces).  I thought it would be plenty enough, though.  Especially, if Pam doesn't find any mortadella.  Well, I guess even if she does - the mortadella is going to add to the fat quotient anyway.

     When I turned onto my street after work on Thursday, Jeff was parking on the street, and Pam was parked across the street in her big red truck.  It was like my own personal welcoming committee!
     I was hoping to hurry and whip up those egg whites before anybody saw them.
     Pam had said that she was unable to find Mortadella at the places she had gone to.  She said she even went to a meat place, and they didn't have it either.  They told her that they used to carry it, but it was such a slow seller that they just stopped.  When she went to Lund's, they told her she didn't want that anyway.  They didn't have it either, and time had run out.  They sold her some Hebrew bologna and some pistachios. 
     I set her up in the former dining room with some bowls to start shelling, so I could whip up the whites.

     I whipped up the whites, and they looked fine - normal...  I felt better about using them.
     I grabbed my cheese-egg yolk mixture out of the fridge and wondered how that was going to fold into the egg whites.  It seemed semi-solid.  I gave it a go anyway.

     It wasn't as solid as I thought, and it incorporated into the egg whites just fine.
     Once I had pushed the KitchenAide back into its resting place, I asked Jeff if he would make us a drink.  He acquiesced and asked what it was we would like.  When I told him I wanted him to make THE drink of the week, he grumbled but got out the shaker and started working on it.

     When he got to adding in the orange bitters, he said it was "way too much."  He halved it.  He offered a tip while he was mixing, too.  He said it is very important to put the alcohol into the shaker before adding the ice, because you may not have room in the shaker for all of the liquor once you have filled it with ice.  He is very wise.  That particular tip may have formulated in his mind from watching me overfill the shaker on several occasions (usually Thursdays, when I am trying to make enough for three thirsty girls).
     He placed the two martini glasses on the counter and started pouring.  It was a very dark, almost, brandy-colored liquid.  It must have been from the red vermouth and the bitters.  One sip, and it was evident that even cutting the butters in half might not have been enough of an alteration.  I don't particularly care for sweet drinks, but this was over the top bitter.  I thought maybe the second sip would improve tghings a bit, but it didn't work.  I looked over at Pam.  She had that forced smile on her face that she gets when she really hates something but doesn't want the people she is with to realize it.  Or maybe she does want them to know it, and she puts that smile on so she doesn't have to verbalize it.
     I asked if we should keep drinking it and then make a new one or put what we had back into the shaker and add something sweet to it to see if we could make something that we might prefer.  "We could drink it," she said, "but life's too short."  I decided to pour mine back in first and dress it up, taste it to see if it had improved.  I added a little cherry whiskey to it.  I figured by adding that it would be somewhat like a Manhattan with a little orange twist.  I thought it vastly improved the beverage.  I gave Pam a sip.  She still wasn't crazy about it.  I took her drink and added that and some orange liqueur, hoping to sweeten it up to her liking.  I think I was successful. 
     Right about then, Jennifer walked in the oranges I had asked her to bring to garnish the drinks and asked what she was missing out on.  We explained the situation, and I made her yet another version.  I combined gin, orange liqueur, and a splash of the whiskey - basically the same thing that Pam and I had, but without the bitters and in a different proportion.  It is too bad I didn't measure anything and didn't pay any attention to how much of each I put in, because I think that was the best version.  She proceeded to garnish all of our drinks with slices of the orange that she had brought.

     Pam started rolling out the dough for the calzones, and Jennifer started on cubing the Mortadella.
     I was still trying to figure out how I was supposed to "dip" the phyllo sheets into the egg concoction.  Pam suggested that I just lay the sheet in the pan and spread some of the goo over each sheet.  That was what I did.  It was difficult keeping track of how many sheets I had in there, because of all of the activity going on.  Roger was in, making his drink, Jeff came in and refilled his, the kids were coming in to negotiate t.v. shows they would be allowed to watch, and Pam and Jennifer were asking questions about their assigned tasks.  I still have no idea how many layers I put in.  I guessed at when I had 6 layers in and poured the rest of the stuff over the top of what I had and started layering the additional six sheets and butter.  Once I had it all compiled, I put it into the oven.  After I closed the door, I had a revelation:  I forgot to add the half and half!  Again, we were going to have the diet version of the recipe.  I guess if I had remembered the half and half, I may have been able to "dip" the phyllo sheets in it.  Maybe I need to read the recipes closer next time.
     It turned out beautiful anyway.  It was golden brown with a crispy exterior.  I think that the bottom had gotten a little overcooked.  I wonder if the finished product would have crisped up as nicely if I had remembered the cream.  We will never know now.

     Jennifer progressed to building the turnovers.  I brought her the olive salad and some previously frozen roasted peppers from my garden that I had chopped for her.  She chopped the salad, brushed the garlic sauce over the doughs, and loaded them up.

     Once she had them all put together and pierced for venting, I decided to put an egg wash on them.  I beat a whole egg and added a little half and half to it (see, I didn't buy it for nothing) and brushed it over the top.  I wasn't going to have any pasty-looking turnovers this week!

     And it worked beautifully.  They were glossy and golden, just as I had hoped they would be.
     I had sort of mentally poo-pooed this Muffaletta recipe, because it seemed sort of ordinary.  However, it was anything but!  The olive salad had some hot peppers in the mix, along with pickled garlic, and some blue and feta cheeses.  The salami, ham, bologna, provolone mixture was creamy and spicy, and the garlic just jacked everything up a level.  It was fantastic!  Each bite brought a different flavor element than the next.  The pistachios were barely perceptible.  They added a textural element that was interesting, but the flavor of them was completely lost in all of the different spices.

     The cheese pie needed salt, but other than that it was delicious!  As I mentioned before, the bottom was a little darker than I had hoped, but it didn't have that burnt flavor.  It was a little chewy, but the star of the dish was the creamy, warm, tangy cheese that lay beneath the crispy top.  It was buttery and almost sweet and definitely rich - even without the half and half.