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.