Thai Peanut Chicken Turnovers; Pyriszhky; Pushkin's Punch

     As is usual lately, it had been an interesting week.  Monday, three more sales reps jumped ship.  Tuesday morning, another supervisor.  Our entire restaurant division now consists of 6 sales people and one supervisor instead of the 12 reps and three supervisors.
     In my mail when I got home from work on Tuesday, there was the official letter from the president of our company that said that if the sale of the company happens on the 31st of this month as planned, I will be out of a job, unless the new company decides to hire me.  There is still nothing on their website available besides sales positions, and we still haven't been told if the building or location is going to be used by the new company.  So, our options are - apply for a sales-related position for a location to be named later; or look elsewhere; or just sit at home and collect unemployment insurance.

     I have been completely overwhelmed.  I keep thinking that collecting unemployment and finding what I really want to do is an opportunity that shouldn't be missed.  However, as the bills have already been stacking up because of the meager salary I was already getting, I worry that isn't going to be an option.  I have been coming home everyday, thinking I really need to get on looking for a job, paying my bills, cleaning my house, but then I just sit there stunned and do nothing.

     Wednesday, just before my lunch break, the power went out of part of our building at work.  The warehouse was still live, and some cubicles had power to their computers, but they didn't have access to the server, so they couldn't do any actual work.  There were no lights in the main office, and there was power t the phones, but there is no reason to talk to customers or sales staff if you can't put their orders in, answer their accounting questions, or check their relative status for them.  I decided that was as good a time as any to take my lunch.  When I came back, it still wasn't on.  A few of the office staffers and I loitered outside in the sunshine.  It was a record-breaking warm day for March - it got up to 72º!  We were basking in it.

     At 4pm, I finally asked the VP what he wanted us to do.  He said that Judy was going to come back when the power comes back on and enter the entire day's worth of orders.  "What do you want the rest of us to do?"  He said he supposed we should just get a jump start on the drive home.
     I saw it as a gift, but I am also conflicted about it.  Was it a gift to get home early to get my pizza preps done early, so I can maybe tidy up, so my guests aren't frightened that I am becoming a hoarder.  Or was it a gift, so I could lay in the hammock and read my book and nap off and on?  I wanted to be motivated.  I wanted to get some things cleaned up, so I could feel better about my surroundings, and so I don't look around and feel buried or feel guilty that I hadn't done the "responsible" thing, but I was so tired.  I have not been able to sleep for weeks.  I start to fall asleep, and something brings me out of it, and then I cannot stop thinking about everything.  What am I going to do for a job?  Will we be able to stretch ourselves even further for me to find the right job?  Are they going to pay us our vacation?  How horrible is it going to be at work tomorrow? 
     So, I cleaned a bathroom and found the table, and put away half of the extra stuff that thought it was going to find a new home in my dining room.  It was a bargain with myself.  Just do these few things, do a few pizza preps, and hurry up about it, and maybe - just maybe - I will be able to enjoy some fading sunlight and 70ish weather.

     I thought that I would start with the cooked brown rice, since that could take a while.  However, my brown rice that I knew was in my pantry wasn't.  I wasn't sure where it went, but it really wasn't there.  Maybe there was a short in my mental inventory program.  I would have to check into that later.  So, white rice was the new brown rice.  And, I wasn't going to mess with success.  I was going to make the full batch (3½ cups) of rice even though I only needed half a cup, like I did last time, so that I can follow the instructions to the letter and get good rice.  The added benefit is I can eat the extra for dinner when I am done.  When I poured the rice into the boiling water, though, I realized I had forgotten the Christopher Kimbel trick of rinsing the rice first to get the excess starch off of it.  I guess this will be a taste test, then (texture test?). 
     Again, I have decided that the crusts for both the turnovers and the pyriszhky were so similar that I was just going to make one batch of the Classic Crust from the Everything Pizza Book and split it between the two recipes.  That saved a step, and brought me closer to outside time.
     After I had made that decision and started on the dough, I could smell the rice a steamy warm aroma that made my stomach growl. I turned around to see how much time was left on the....  Oh no!  I didn't set a timer, and in my sleep-deprived daze, I had no idea how long it had been cooking.  I took a guess that it had been the exact 15 minutes I had intended and turned it off.  So much for following the recipe to the letter.
     While the rice was cooling and the dough was mixing, I boiled my eggs.  I have a cool toy that tells me when my eggs are done the way I would like them to be.  It is a half-egg-shaped red and clear thing that you put in the water with the eggs.  Then, you turn on the heat, and as it heats, the red disappears or is overtaken by black that gets closer and closer to the center of the half-egg.  There are lines on it that indicate the done-ness of the egg: when the black mark reaches the line between "medium" and "hard" they are done and ready for their icy plunge.  I noticed that one of the eggs split open during boiling.  I Googled it and found that it was the sudden temperature change.  I did take them from the refrigerator, covered them with water, and then started the boiling process, but maybe my cold egg heated up too fast, since it was in almost direct contact with the burner even though it was surrounded by water.  Another source informed me that pressure builds up in the air pocket of the egg when it heats up and could cause cracking.  That seemed more likely the case for my eggs than a sudden temperature change.  That sight suggested making a pin hole in the end of the egg with the air pocket.  What did we ever do without Google?

     I started compiling the ingredients for the sauce for the Thai chicken, then realized that the recipe called for cooked chicken, and I didn't have any thawed.  I didn't even have any inside the house!  Well, by this point, I had missed the sun, but at least I could go outside to get some chicken breasts, and I was still wearing my shorts! 

     While that was thawing in the microwave, I cleaned the mushrooms.  I had an 8 ounce package from Cub and the same weight from Wal-Mart.  They were both labeled "Baby bellas", but they were dramatically different in size.  I cut the Wal-Mart mushrooms in quarters so they would be close in size to the Cub ones.  The recipe didn't say whether the mushrooms were cut or not.  At first, I was going to slice them, but then, I thought, it didn't indicate that they were sliced.  Maybe they were supposed to be whole.  I decided to try it with them whole (at least with the Cub mushrooms) and see what happened.

     I bought my green onions at Wal-Mart, too, and I have to say that I was surprised at how nice they were.  The ones I have seen at Cub lately have been scrawny with wilted greenery.  These Wal-Mart onions had girth, and the greens were green all the way to the end with no sagging.  It only took three of them to make 3/4 cup chopped.

     I cooked the mushrooms and scallions for the recommended five minutes.  I was skeptical about that being enough time cooking.  They were still pretty large and firm.  I didn't want them to come out mushy or anything, but I do like them a little browned.  I tasted one, though, and it was fantastic.  There was a little bite to it.  It was slightly salty, with just a suggestion of butter and a hint of the hot pepper that lurks in the bottom of my salt container.  I took them off of the heat as instructed, added the rice and the chopped egg, and set it aside to cool.  The rice had turned out wonderfully.  The texture, flavor, everything was just as it was the last time.  I did not notice any marked difference between this batch and the pre-rinsed batch.

     Meanwhile, my two very large chicken breasts were broiling.  I put them on a "pan" I fashioned out of tin foil.  It is my stand-by method for when I don't feel like dirtying an actual pan. 

I had originally put Harley's seasoning salt on the one side, but after I slid them under the broiler, I kicked myself a little.  I probably should have put a more Asian-esque seasoning on them, since it was going into a Thai peanut sauce.  When I flipped them over, I went ahead and threw some garam marsala on the other side.  As I opened the oven to let the birds out, I got a big waft of toasty nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice - those toasty warm smelling spices that remind me of campfires and camaraderie.

     I had intended to buy frozen, chopped spinach when I was at the grocery store.  However, I had gone to the store on my lunch break, and it had been in the 60's. I didn't dare to leave it in the car.  I was afraid I would forget it in the freezer at work, so I decided to cook up the spinach that was already in my fridge.  Jeff was gone, and I wouldn't be able to eat it fast enough otherwise, so it was a good plan on two counts.

     I estimated that the two breasts were going to be more than I needed for my recipe, so I could probably take some for my dinner.  I cut a little corner off and added it to my extra rice.  I poured a little of the mushroom liquid into my extra rice, too.  There seemed to be more than enough rice and chicken for my dinner, so I packaged up half of it for my lunch at work the next day.  It was delicious.


     Thursday, when I got to work, the power was still off.  Someone had strung extension cords to the server, so customer service was now able to put in orders.  Some construction utility lights, so they could see what they were doing.  My area, which is far from any windows or doors, was still completely dark.  I spent the first hour and a half of the day in the lobby, where there was sunlight, so I could open and organize the checks that had come in the mail.  The power finally came back at 9:30am, so I started out my day behind schedule.
     While I had been in the lobby, I was talking to another co-worker, who told me that, even though the new company didn't have any postings for office staff, that we were just supposed to apply for anything to get our resume to them.  I felt that my application process should be done on company time, since it was the company's fault that I was going to be in need of a job.  I got busy and didn't end up starting the process until 4:45.  Unfortunately, I didn't finish it until 5:30.  I had no idea it would be so involved. 

     My friends, Karen and Patrick, were planning on joining us for pizza, so on my run to the car, I sent a text message to Patrick, asking them not to show up until after 6:30, because I was just leaving work, and I needed some calming time before people showed up at my house.  His reply was, "Rough day?"  I answered, "rough year."  Then, when he and Karen showed up, they came with flowers.  That was so sweet!

 

      Usually, when I leave the refrigerated dough on the counter when I leave for work, the dough puffs up some, and it sometimes even bursts the Ziploc, but since it was so warm the dough just went crazy.  It didn't blow out the bag, as I would have expected, but I had packed it into an extra-thick zipper bag.  It had completely filled the bag to capacity, but the bag was too strong for it.  The bag fought back and knocked the dough back down, but the gasses from the dough were still trapped.

     The Liggetts had shown up first.  The kids went straight outside to play, since it was nearly 70 degrees.  I started Jen on the doughs that I had cut into their appropriate portions.  I had cut the massive mound in half, and the one half I cut into thirds for the turnover recipe, and the other half I cut into 16 little pieces.

     Roger volunteered to be bartender and put together the Pushkin's Punch.  I thought that since we were having Russian mushroom pockets as an entree, we ought to have a drink that was Russian, too. 

PUSHKIN'S PUNCH

1 measure vodka

1 measure Harlequin (or orange curacao)

Dash of orange bitters

Dash of lime juice

Sparkling wine

     She all of the ingredients, except the wine, in a cocktail shaker filled with ice.  Pour into a wine goblet and top with sparkling wine.

     If I had really been thinking when I picked this drink out, I would have tried to get a Russian sparkling wine, but I had a Cava on hand, so that is what we used.  The resulting drink was light, refreshing, and bubbly.  We really enjoyed it.  We enjoyed it even more when we made the second batch with Monin Harbenero Lime juice.  The slight heat was barely perceptible, but added a little extra zing to the drink.

     Jennifer had done a fabulous job rolling the dough out, and she started in on filling the Pyriszhky, while I worked on the turnovers.

                                    

The sauce whirred up nicely in the Vitamix, and it took just a couple more minutes each to chop the chicken, chop the nuts, and mix them all together with the spinach before closing them up in the dough.

     I doubled the egg and vegetable oil concoction to use as a wash for the three turnovers and the 16 little mushroom breads.  After their brief stint in the oven, they came out beautifully.

     I was amazed that the blurb at the beginning of the recipe for the Pyriszhky said that the filling was bland.  If it weren't for my o.c.d., I would have skipped the recipe and opted for something that didn't claim to be bland.  I am glad I wasn't deterred.  The filling was wonderful.  The mushrooms were perfect - I was glad I left them whole.  They were meaty and firm, and the onions and garlic were mild and homey.  The bread was soft and fluffy on the inside with a slight crispiness to the outside without being crunchy.

     Obviously the crust for the turnovers had pretty much the same texture and flavor as their little friends, since they were made out of the dough.  These were wonderful, too.  The filling was fantastic.  The chicken was aft and moist.  I had been worried about it drying out with two sessions in the oven, but it was moist.  I was certain that the peanut butter helped.  I could feel a little of the heat of the red pepper in the sauce, and the peanuts, while they weren't the crunchy nuggets they were before the baking, they still retained some of their texture to add intrigue to the whole dish.  I would definitely make this again.

     I turned out to be a wonderful evening.  We were regaled by stories about Patrick and Karen's trip to Europe.  The food was great, and the company was even better.  All the worries of the day (week) had all but disappeared.

Crawfish Turnovers; Pissaladiere; Space

     I had another horrible day at work on Wednesday.  Let's just suffice it to say that if the new company operates their day to day stuff the way that they are operating this audit, I do not want to work there.  As it is, I flinch every time I see an e-mail from them.

     My first order of business on Wednesday night was to clean the kitchen.  This is always a frustrating thing for me.  I clean the kitchen, so I have room to cook, just so I can mess it up again.  It seems like an exercise in futility.  After an hour of dishes and 20 minutes trying (and failing) to change the starter in my under-the-cupboard light, I could finally see my counters and was ready to get to work.

     On Monday night, I had called over to Festival to see if they had crawfish.  I figured they probably wouldn't have them - we are in Minnesota, after all. Much to my surprise, however, the voice on the other end of the phone said he had two pounds!  Shocked, I blurted, "I'll be right there!"  Of course, I wasn't going to be.  I was already home for the evening, and I absolutely hate going back out once I have come home from work.  Ah, but Jeff wasn't home yet.  I called him and asked him to stop on his way.

     When he came home, he was carrying a large white package.  "Wow!" I said, "I only needed a pound - how much did you get?"

     "Two and a half pounds," he said.  He told me that he walked back to the seafood department, and saw a bowl under the glass with a sign in front of it for crawfish, but the bowl was empty.  There was a package behind it in the case.  When the guy asked him if he needed any help, Jeff said, "I think that package is for my wife."

     Apparently, after I said I was coming to get the crawfish, the seafood guy took me at my word and packaged up all of them.  He had weighed them, and there was actually two and a half pounds, but since he had told me that there were two pounds, he only charged Jeff for two, but gave him all of them. 

     It turns out that was a smart idea.  I didn't realize until I opened the package on Wednesday night that they were completely whole.  I have never dealt with crawfish before, so I was a little taken aback.  They look like tiny lobsters.  I didn't expect to be looking into my food's eyes!  I had no idea how to tackle this.  I had to watch a U Tube video for help.  There was a heavily-accented gentlemen, sitting in front of a "whole mess o' crawdads", who told me that you simply twist the tail off, suck all the juices out of the head, and simply pull the meat out of the tail while pinching the very end of the tail.

     I used (part of) this method, and for getting the meat out of the tail end, it worked like a charm.  Very easy, very quick.  HOWEVER, I was not about to suck any of anything out of the head.  I was already a little upset about the fact that I had to disassemble its body, not to mention the horror I experienced trying to clean the green goo off of the body-end of the tail.  If I have a recipe that calls for these again, I will seek out the precleaned tails or substitute shrimp.

     Jeff had taken about 3/4 of a pound of the little critters and vacuum sealed them and put them into the freezer for a later date.  Out of the remainder of the crawfish, which was roughly 1-3/4 pounds, I only got .2 pounds of meat out of it.  It seemed like a waste, but I looked inside one of the discarded bodies, and it was full of more green goo, which I didn't even want to think about.  i thought about saving the shells of the tails and the claws and making a broth, but I am really not interested in making any type of seafood soup, and I had a chicken carcass in my refrigerator already that was waiting to become my next block of frozen stock.  Nope, I was done with these pour creatures.  What remained of them was going into a Ziploc bag and out to the outside garbage can.

     At this point, I had decided that, since it was just going to be me and Jeff for dinner Thursday, instead of making all three calzones, as I had done the previous two pizza nights, I would divide the recipe by three and just make one for Jeff and me to split.  Although the frozen dough was enough for all three calzones, the recipe for the crust for the provincial pizza was very similar.  I could just take 1/2 of the dough for the one calzone and the other two thirds would be for the onion pizza.

     The recipe for the "turnover" called for cooked rice, which I was having a little anxiety about.  My last few batches of rice hadn't turned out very well.  I am an impatient person when it comes to rice, so I have a microwave rice cooker.  I never bothered to memorize the instructions, which were different for every type of rice, because I had the original instructions tucked into a cranny in my spice cupboard.  I had also copied them into my laptop, just in case.  However, somewhere along the way, the directions were never replaced in the cranny, and the laptop I had put the instructions into had long ago irreparably crashed, so I no longer had the directions.  I tried guessing at the amount of water (which, if I recall correctly, was a different proportion than the bags state) and the length of time in the microwave and the length of time just sitting, steaming.  I had batches that came out crunchy, because I didn't put in enough water; I had some that came out burnt, because I either put in too little water or cooked it too long; and I had batches I had to drain, because I put in too much water.

     I was determined, though, to get good rice this time, though, so I decided to forsake my rice cooker and follow the instructions printed on the bag.  It said to boil 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of butter, and a teaspoon of salt, and then put the cup of rice in.   I did rinse the rice thoroughly, though, as I was instructed to do by Christopher Kimball on America's Test Kitchen, when I watched it the other day.  I have always skipped that previously, because it seemed like a waste of time, but he explained that it gets rid of some of the excess starch that is sitting on the rice and helps it to cook up as separate grains instead of all stuck together. After I added the rinsed rice to the boiling water mixture,  I turned the heat to low and let it cook for 15 minutes, covered.  Once the time was up, I took the pan off of the burner, and let it sit, as instructed by the bag.  It was perfect!  It is amazing what one can achieve when one follows the directions!  It was fluffy, the grains were separate, and it was delicious!

     At this point, I was ready to work on the rest of the ingredients for the turnover.  I put a couple of tablespoons of butter into my 12" frying pan and started chopping the vegetables.  I hadn't had green onions on my shopping list on Sunday, because we had some leftover from another dish we had made earlier in the week.  However, I remembered on Wednesday, that Jeff had put some in something he had made for dinner one night.  I can't for the life of me remember what it was now, but the end result was I had no green onions for my crawfish turnover.  Well, one third of two green onions is hardly anything anyway.  I just chopped up a little extra of the regular onion to make up for it.  Once I had that, the pepper, and the parsley all chopped up, I started melting the butter in my pan.  I threw the veggies and parsley into it and added two heaping teaspoons of pre-chopped garlic into the pan.

     The recipe calls for adding half a cup of water and simmering the crawfish for 10 minutes.  I was pretty sure that the crawfish were already cooked, and I didn't want them turned into rubber, so I skipped the water and just cooked the vegetables a little longer.  I added the rice, stirred, and added the crawfish once I was certain that everything had cooled off enough, so that the crawfish wouldn't cook at all.  I am sure that some flavor that would have been imparted on the crustaceans had I gotten them raw and cooked them with the onions and garlic was missed, but I would rather have that than little chunks of rubber in my calzone.

     The color combination of the tails,  peppers, onions, and rice was beautiful.  It almost seemed a shame to wrap them up in dough, where they may or may not be seen again, depending on how you eat the finished product.

     Now that I had most of the calzone prepared, I wanted to get the onions cooked for the Pissaladiere.  The recipe called for Bermuda Onions.  I was thinking that those were the same as red onions, but I Googled it, and I received no confirmation of this.  From what I can gather from the several sights I visited in my quest, they aren't the red onions.  They are a generic term for sweet onions, including walla walla, vidalia, and 1015.  Or not.  I was thoroughly confused by all of the conflicting information out there.  Anyway, it didn't matter, because I Googled it long after I had already purchased the red onions, and that was all I had.  So, red onions it was.  Two "large" ones. 
     As I was slicing them, I was having flashbacks to a previous onion pizza about 10 years ago.  That pizza, too, called for two large onions.  The resulting dish was a flatbread mounded with so many onions that it looked like a pile of sauer kraut.  We could not eat it.  How large is large?  Were these too large?  Were they just the right size?  Were they too small?  How does one find the answers to these questions?  What ever happened to the simple "1 cup sliced" directive?  I decided to move forward with these two onions.  Perhaps in my "greenness" those oh-so-many years ago had prevented me from cooking the onions long enough to be tasty in that quantity.  I moved forward with cooking them both in total and determining at the end of the cooking process whether there were too many to put on one pizza or not.
     It took a while for the onions to become transparent.  It was at least 20 minutes.  Once they were cooked down some and I had added the garlic, I thought it didn't look like too much for one pizza.  I had leftover rice, though, since I had made three cups, and I only needed 2/3 of a cup.  Some sauteed onions in the rice with some chicken on top might be a wonderful dinner.  It was getting around that time, and I figured I needed to get something made quickly before I devoured the calzone filling and had nothing left.  I took about a half a cup of onions out of the pan for our dinner, and kept the rest of the onions for the pizza.

     Once I had everything packaged up for the next day, the dough out of the freezer, and dinner made, I was done for the night.  They day had caught up with me, and I had no energy left but to eat and go to bed.

     Usually, when I take dough out of the freezer, I put it directly into the refrigerator to thaw.  I have an alarm set for Thursday mornings that tells me to take the dough out of the fridge to warm up and rise before I get home from work.  I have discovered, by trial and error, that it is really difficult to roll out dough that has just come directly from the cold.  It just snaps back to its original position, and it takes quite a bit of arm muscles to beat it into submission and make it stay in the shape I intended it to be.  This particular Wednesday, I, for some reason, left the dough out on the counter all night.  I wasn't sure what kind of effect this was going to have on the dough, but when my "dough alarm" went off, I was at a loss for what to do.  It was already pretty puffy.  I could punch it down and put it in the fridge, but then it would be cold when I got home.  I left it out on the counter to see what would happen.  I don't know if dough stops rising at a certain point or rises and falls and doesn't come back again or what, but I was going to get some answers this way.

     When I got home, it hadn't even burst the bag.  Many times, even when I do get the dough from the fridge in the morning, it pops the Ziploc and oozes out onto the counter.  Perhaps my bag was large enough to accommodate the extra rising this time.

     Before I started in on the dough, though, I thought I should start up the drink of the week,.  It was called "Space", and it was so weird I had to try it.

SPACE

1½ ounces of gin

1 ounce of Frangelico

½ ounce of lemon juice

     Shake the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

     It was definitely weird.  It reminded me of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but with lemon  curd instead of grape jelly.  the first impression was nutty and then it was washed away with a citrusy smile.  I was strangely attracted to it.  I couldn't say that I loved it, but I couldn't stop drinking it either.  With the first sip down, I was ready to attend to my dough.
     I have found that with the recipes for calzones or turnovers or whatever-you-want-to-call-them, rolling the dough out into an 8 inch circle isn't really productive if you would like all of the filling that was intended to got in there to fit.  I roll it out as large as I can.  Jeff says that I should just reduce the amount of filling that I put in there and making something else with the extra later, but I disagree.  If the recipe called for that much filling, then that much filling shall we have!  I will roll out the dough, I will stretch the dough, I will beat down the filling, but - damn it - it will all fit, as the recipe intended.  I will NOT be jipped of my filling!

     It was a bit of a struggle to get the dough stretched out over all of the rice and seafood and vegetables, but I managed to get it done.  I haven't forgotten the lessons learned on previous calzones or, excuse me, turnovers, and I prepared a milk and egg wash to ensure the crust would get golden and still stay moist.
     After all of that stretching and crimping and brushing, I was famished.  I found my head inside a bag of Flaming Cheetos that happened to be on my counter.

   With the angry growls of the belly sated for the moment, I was able to work on the pissaladiere.  I rolled out the remaining portion of dough as large as I could make it and then tried to form a rim around the outside edge, which I tend to see as an oven-protector.  It is the lip that holds in (or hopes to hold in) the ooey goodness that oozes from the ingredients of a pizza and keeps it (or tries to) from dripping out into the bottom of my oven.  I have always been less than successful in forming such a barrier.  It is much like rolling out cold dough.  I curled the dough up on itself and pushed it down a little to keep it in position, but then it popped back off and lay back down flat onto the pizza peel.  I continued to pinch and push the edge of the dough until it formed some semblance of a ridge.

     The onions covered the dough nicely. It didn't look like sauer kraut at all.  Of course, using the purple onions helped.
     Now, I have a love/hate relationship with anchovies.  I hate the idea of them, just like I hate the idea of the crawdads having eyes and such.  I don't like the idea of a harry, canned fish.  I do recognize their natural ability to enhance some great flavors in food, if they are used properly, but I also recognize their ability to ruin food if they are too abundant or too salty. 

     I rinsed three of them and spread pieces of them all over the pizza.  I didn't want to put them in the cutesy criss-cross pattern like the recipe suggested, because then someone gets a piece without and someone gets a pieces with the whole thing.  Jeff loves anchovies, so I gave him the remainder of the can to accompany his pieces.

     Next on the list was the olives.  I always have a can of olives in the pantry, so I didn't put them on the list when I went shopping on Sunday.  It never even occurred to me that I might not have any.  However, Thursday, I tore my pantry apart, I looked downstairs on the shelves where I keep my overstock, I checked the pantry again.  I looked in the snack cupboard, in case they had accidentally been put in the wrong spot.  There just weren't any.  I couldn't believe it.  I was tempted to run to the store really quickly, since it was only Jeff waiting for the pizzas to be done, but I had already had the Space martini.

     I looked around for something to substitute.  I eyed up the green olives, but I just didn't think that they would be the right fit with the onions and anchovies.  I searched the refrigerator.  Bacon didn't seem right nor did ham or eggs or peperoncinis.  I finally decided on goat cheese.  It has a tang, and black olives have a tang.  It's slightly salty and very creamy, and I consider black olives slightly salty and somewhat creamy.  Besides, the pizza was a little drab-looking from the purple onions that turned a grayish color from the sauteing, and the harry gray fish I put on top of it didn't help matters.  The creamy white goat cheese brightened it up a little bit, made it look a little more appealing.



     After a quick refill on my drink and  a couple of clean up tasks, the pizzas were done.  The cheese on the Pissaladiere browned on the peaks, the onions seem to have purpled up a little, and the crust was a golden brown.  

     I was trying to explain to Jeff that we should try the onion pizza first, because the pizza you try when you are the hungriest, seems to be elevated to a greater tasting status than if you had tried it second.  I didn't have extremely high hopes for the onion pizza, so I was trying to give it a little leg up.  Maybe my trick worked, or maybe this really was a fantastic pizza, but I thought it was wonderful!  It was salty, and it was sweet, and it was tangy.  The crust wasn't too thick or too crunchy - it had a nice snap on the initial bite with a soft interior.

     The same could be said for the crust on the turnovers - probably because it was the same crust.  My only complaint about the turnover was that the crawfish did get a little overcooked.  They were a little tougher than I felt they should have been.  I am not sure how that could have been prevented, since they came already cooked, and I am not sure that you can buy them raw in Minnesota.

     The flavor on the calzone was unique.  The crawfish imparted an almost tarragon-ish slightly grassy flavor or maybe it was the combination of all of the ingredients that brought that to the table.  The rice provided a soft canvass for the rest of the ingredients, and the Tabasco (or in this case, La Anita habenero sauce) just hinted at hotness.  I am not convinced that the Space martini was the right accompaniment to either entree - I think a nice crisp glass of sauvignon blanc would have been more appropriate.

I think the only thing that could have made this meal better would have been to have some sisters over to share it with us.

Shrimp and Tasso Calzones; Khachapuri

     I vaguely recalled hearing the word "tasso" before, but I had never had a recipe call for it nor had I ever tried to shop for it,.  If this is a regular Cub item, I could not find it.  I wasn't sure where to look.  I tried the specialty meat areas, where I would find buffalo, lamb, and specially made sausage type products.  I tried the frozen meat area to no avail.  I tried the ethnic food section, where I can sometimes find some smoked or dried meats - no luck.  I had meant to call around to the different stores in my area to see who carried it before I started driving all around for it.  I thought this was a good idea since there was a winter storm on the way, and I really haven't felt like galavanting all over the metro.  However, the calls didn't happen by the time I was ready to start in on Wednesday.  

     On my way to a much needed vacation to California on the 17th, I got a text from a co-worker, letting me know that the owner of our company sold it to a nationwide distributor, and there was no word yet if we were going to have jobs.  I went back to work after my vacation, and word came on Wednesday that the new company was going to make us re-apply for jobs.  We all received a group e-mail, giving us a link to apply for sales and marketing positions.  Nothing was mentioned about any office staff positions, and when I asked my ersatz leader about this omission, he informed me that the letter said "all employees".  I re-read the notice several times, and there was no mention of this.  The general consensus in my immediate vacinity was that we were going to get what I affectionately refer to as "the shaft".  This was even more disappointing than the "jelly-of-the-month-club" we received instead of bonuses at Christmas.

     Needless to say, my tasso mission was all but forgotten until I came home and reviewed the recipes on Wednesday.  A search of my freezer proved to be no help.  I found pork chops, chicken thighs, soup bones, lobster tails, Italian sausage, lunchmeat, ham, swordfish, soybeans, waffles, dates, raspberries, roasted peppers, strawberries, mystery tomato-type sauce, scallops (in two different  sizes), hamburger, and gyro meat.  I could have sworn that my friend Karen gave us one chirizo, and I had frozen it to save for a good use.  I found no such item.  Maybe it wasn't chirizo that she gave me.  I failed.  I wondered if I would get a lunch Thursday and would be able to find something suitable in my allotted hour. 

     It had been a couple of weeks since I made pizza, so my mental inventory of premade crusts had detreriorated.  I searched the freezer and could not find any premade classic crust dough.  I did find some "speed-scratch" sauce, so I had that going for me.  Time to make another batch, using the term "batch" lightly, since the current calzone section that we are in only makes two calzone recipes-worth of crust.

     Apparently, my mental inventory deficiency wasn't isolated to crusts.  I knew that we had cooked shrimp in the freezer downstairs, so when Jeff came in from snow-blowing the driveway and asked if I needed anything from outside before he took his boots off, I said no.  I went downstairs while the dough was forming in my KitchenAide and grabbed the shrimp.  When I got upstairs, I realized it was uncooked shrimp instead of cooked shrimp.  Normally, I would go with it, because the shrimp is going to be cooked again in the calzone, but we had just bought a couple of bags of pre-cooked shrimp because it was on sale (of course).  We had eaten the first package just after the Super Bowl (we had too much food during the actual event to lower ourselves to mere shrimp cocktail), and it was better than I remembered it.  I shy away from buying cooked shrimp for any application, really, because it always had seemed to me that they were overcooked and slightly rubbery, but this stuff was good.  And, why cook another package, when I know that I could save a step by sending Jeff back into the wintery coldness to forage in our garage freezer for that elusive second package.

     My hero returned with the shrimp and a package of bacon just as I was finishing up the dough, so I set it in a collander under the faucet to thaw it for the tail removal portion of the evening.  While the shrimp thawed, I chopped parsley, onions, and peppers.  I cheated for the garlic and used the prechopped variety.  I mixed everything together, as instructed, except the elusive tasso.  I didn't have Tabasco brand of hot sauce, but I thought my favorite light hot sauce would do just fine, so I squirted about four dashes of La Anita habenero into the mixture.

     My only registered guest at this point was Pammy, so I debated about making preparations for the cheese-filled bread or skipping it, because we would already have enough food for the three of us with just the calzone.  But what the heck?  If I could just get the dough conquered, I could have Pam shred the cheese and load the dough up.  So, I started the dough.  Really?  Only one cup of flour for 7 tablespoons of butter and 1 cup of water?  Oops!  I wasn't supposed to put ALL of the butter in there.  I still think that the dough wouldn't have been pliable if I had gotten the amount of butter correct.  I ended up adding about 3/4 of a cup of extra flour until it started to pull away from the sides of the bowl and form somewhat of a ball.

     About this time, Jeff came into the kitchen and asked if the chicken that I had taken out of the fridge for tonight's dinner was done.  oops!  I hadn't even put it into the oven yet!  I had prepped it yesterday (Peruvian chicken with lime and garlic), and he was just sitting there on his little pan enomizer waiting for some kind of action.

     Thursday was hell at work.  The new company has been there all week, grilling me about our procedures and receivables and such.  Thursdays are my busiest days at work - I can barely catch my breath as it is, without some kind of auditor asking me for explicit details of accounts that I wrote off in 2010.  I am not sure where my priorities are supposed to be.  Do I continue to make sure all of the money comes in and is depositted in a timely manner and please my "current"employers, or do I jump through hoops to please the new company to make sure or further the belief that I may have a job when all is done and said?  To add to the stress, my co-workers of nine years are starting to abondon ship.  They are getting jobs at other distributorships and leaving without notice or even a goodbye!

     Anyway, Pam had let me know that she had been called out, and we were going to have to scrape by without her.  I had also asked her to assist in the search for tasso.  I had called Festivcal Foods, Byerly's, and Von Hansen's to see if any of them carried tasso.  None of them had heard of it, much less carried it.  They all offered up chorizo, and Festival asnd Lunds also suggested Andouille.  I think of Andouille as french-ish and chorizo as kind of Mexican bent.  Since cajuns are sort of french-ish themselves, I decided that Andoiuille was a good subsitute.  When Jeff picked me up at work, we headed there for just that thing. 

     I had everything prepped and ready for easy and early mealtime.  However, I had just brought home a case of whiskey and some fine wines from work, and we couldn't resist digging in to the whiskey while I told him abougt my day (and took care of the massive pile of dishes that had accumilated from last night's peruvian chicken and cuban rice and beans).  I didn't even start rolling out the dough until 7 o'clock!

     Assembling the calzones and the cheesy breads are sort of a blur.  I cannot help thinking about the day.  I feel like I am coming to the end of a bad marriage.  I don't want to be married to this entity any more, but I dont want to lose the kids.  I put the calzones together, and put them in the oven with a little egg-milk wash.  I assembled the cheese filled bread, and instead of mixing another egg with softened butter for the "wash", I just used the rest of the milk-egg wash I had used for the calzones  I figured that the little bundles had enough butter in them, since I had over-buttered the dough.

     Once I put the breads in the oven, I realized I hadn't set the timer for the calzones.  I guessed that they had been in there for approximately 5 minutes before I put the breads in, but I could have been mistaken.  After 10 minutes, I started smelling a warm, almost burnt aroma.  I peeked in the oven.  The calzones didn't look done yet, so I wasn't sure if the bottoms were burning, if the juices had leasked out onto my oven burner, or the extra egg wash I had put on the buns were burning onto the baking sheet or what.  I did notice that the buns (which were on the top rack of the oven) were starting to brown on top, even though they had only been in there for a little bit.  I switched the two pans, so the cheesy-breads were on the bottom.  I didn't realize how much wrist dexterity that would require.  Apparently, the calzones were really heavy or my left wrist is particularly weak.  I am going to go with the "heavy" explanation to maintain a certain level of self-esteem.

     Both the cheese buns and the calzones came out beautifully.  They were both golden brown and glistening.  I couldn't wait to dig in. 

     I started with the cheese bun, because I thought it would be overshadowed by the calzone.  I was wrong!  It was almost croissant like: it was buttery and flaky.  The cheese was gooey and warm and earthy.  It was rich and delicious, but not so rich that I didn't want another one when I was done with the first.

     The calzone was fabulous, too!  It was very flavorful.  I think I did eat the dishes in the correct order, because the calzone had a kick to it.  The sausage was spicy, and the tomato sauce was spicy.  The habenero sauce added to the party.  The ricotta was a nice contrast to the heat and kept me coming back for more.  The shrimp, however, got lost in the shuffle.  It added an intriguing texture, but the flavor of it was just completely overwhelmed by everything else.