Much Like A Cheese

This past Saturday was St. Patrick's Day, but by spreading out my pub visits I managed to invent St. Patrick's Day weekend. You're welcome. Here's the story of how some cooking fit in there.

But first, let's back up even farther to a week ago today - Pi Day! That's 3.14 for you non-math-nerds, or Pi Approximation Day for teh ubernerds in the audience (keep your lousy 22/7). For Pi Day I decided to make pies. That's what you do. So the night before I made a crack pie that cooled down overnight just in time for breakfast, and then a chicken pot pie spruced up with rosemary. Deliciousness may have been involved. Why am I telling you this? Originally I had wanted to pick recipes from Shakespeare's Kitchen, and settled on Chicken Plum Pie and Inside-Out Pie. But then I realized that the Chicken Pie required Renaissance Stock, and gave up on the whole idea.

The plan haunted me, however, and come Saturday I decided I would nip down to McGinty's for a pint (or three) and then grab me some ingredients for Inside-Out Pie. I also decided to complement it with Cheesecake “in the Italian Fashion” which sounds insulting because of the quotation marks but is made in a pie dish and therefore close enough for me. I decided to start with the Cheesecake because it was a simpler recipe, and then go from there.

Also, I did math! For reasons that certainly had nothing to do with the fact that I was drinking, I flipped through the entirety of Shakespeare's Kitchen, noted which recipes used Renaissance Stock, and tallied that shit up. As it turns out, if I quintupled the Renaissance Stock recipe, I would have enough to last me the entire cookbook. So now all I need is a stockpot capable of holding roughly 22.5 lbs of chicken parts as well as the other ingredients, a stove large enough to deal with said stockpot, and then a second freezer to put all the frozen stock in. I'm thinking I can take care of all of this with a livingroom hot-tub and some liquid nitrogen. Easy peasy.

But back to my cheesecake.

Sadly, Caliban is not big enough that I can ignore the existence of "packaging," even when the full container is the perfect amount of an ingredient. You can see Ariel's mixing bowl in the back, looking all sad and lonely. Don't worry. Ariel gets used all the time for non-Renaissance recipes. He is not neglected.

When you take the ricotta, cottage cheese and egg out of their packages, it all fits perfectly fine. I don't have a good post-blending picture because it just looks lumpy and white and kind of gross.

Cinnamon, sugar, and mace are hanging out and ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Once the sugar and spice is pulsed in, it's suddenly worth taking a picture.

There's only one remaining ingredient for the filling - 1/4 cup of coarsely chopped pistachios. Sadly, you can't buy pre-shelled pistachios at Safeway, so I had my work cut out for me. Also, you apparently can't buy unsalted pistachios there either, but I don't think it ruined the recipe or anything. I took a guess that a heaping half cup would get me somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/4 cup unshelled.

Close enough! And since I know facts about volume, I knew that chopping up the pistachios would also condense them a bit. Well, except for one minor detail.

Chopping is for losers.

My new cooking maxim is "when in doubt, hit it with a hammer." You should see the souffles. Or the soup.

Pistachio bits get folded into the filling, and then it's time to grate biscotti for the crust. Except grating is for losers. When in doubt, hit it with a hammer.

I kid, I kid! Aside from getting as many crumbs on the counter and floor as I did in the pie dish, this went fairly well.

I thought it was sort of weird that the recipe doesn't use any kind of moistener for the crust. There's no butter mixed in or anything. But them's the breaks. In the end, the filling moistened just enough of the crumbs to stick to the bottom of the cheesecake, but there was a thick layer underneath that just hung out and stayed in the dish. I guess that was the point.

These tracks are side by side. Sand people always walk single file, to hide their numbers.

Not going to lie: when I was sorting through the thumbnails for this entry, I could not for the life of me figure out how I had managed to get a picture of ranch dip. As it turns out, this is the filling in the pie dish on the oven rack outside the oven and I guess I ran out of prepositions there.

It was at this point that I realized I had made a minor mistake. While I had followed all the directions correctly, I had failed to note the cooking time: one and a half hours. I had to leave for my St. Patrick's Day plans in roughly one hour, twenty five minutes. Showing up five or ten minutes late wasn't going to be a killer, but... I'm not really sure how I thought I would be making two desserts that afternoon. I blame the Guinness.

So 90 minutes later, this comes out of the oven and goes immediately into the fridge and then I leave. This is one of the saddest stories ever.

When I stumble back into my apartment, several pubs and over 24 hours later, I finally get to cut myself a slice.

And then, through the miracles of TIME TRAVEL I take this whole cheesecake into work the next day.

Either that, or my last two pictures are out of order and that is what it looked like when it came out of the fridge. People at work seemed impressed by it - a few went back for seconds. I apologize if they are readers here, but I think it was just low standards. I will caveat by saying that when you are sitting in an office all day, any dessert suddenly becomes magical and life-affirming. I say this because it was true, and not to retroactively justify that time I kept going back to see if maybe this jelly-filled Munchkin would actually have any jelly inside.

Verdict: Meh. It was ok, and really simple to put together, but a heck of a time commitment when you factor in cooking plus chilling. And it just wasn't amazing, as far as desserts go. I'm not going to lie, I prefer New York style cheesecake, but I've definitely had better Italians. In the amount of time this takes to prep and cook, I could have made the foole two or three times over. I don't plan on repeating this one.

Pet Peeve: Rih-CAHT-uh. Man-ih-CAHT-ee. Ugh. Please. No. There are a few other pronunciations based on where in Italy your friendly neighborhood Italians are actually from and where in the US their families have previously spent time, and any of them are better than these. I grew up with Rih-GOT and Man-ih-GOT. And pro-ZHUT, for that matter. All of my actor friends are currently wincing because I'm not using IPA for these pronunciations, and they are right to do so, but it is early in the morning and I want to finish this up. The point is, I died a little inside every time I told someone that the cheesecake contained rih-CAHT-uh because I didn't want to bother explaining what I meant. My mom (hi mom!) only recently found out that some people pronounce it this way and was legitimately horrified. As is right and proper.


I had a friend who used hard g and long i sounds in gyro. We're not friends anymore.

Since Pompey's Feast

Did you miss me? Apologies for the enormous delay between posts. I mostly blame this on a spring break trip up to NYC. While I got to see friends and family, and eat some amazing food, I did very little in the way of blogging or cooking. We should be returning to the standard schedule at this point.

I've been hyping up this author dinner mash-up thing (Shakespeare vs. Katherine Anne Porter) for a while now, and now that it's here I'm a bit nervous. I'll come straight out and say that the company and the experience made for a lot of fun that I won't be able to entirely demonstrate here. So much like my cooking, I've decided to mix all the metaphors in a bowl and see what happens.

O, for a blog of fire, that would ascend
The brightest kitchen of invention.
A restaurant for a stage, waiters to act,
And patrons to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the cooklike Justin, like himself,
Assume the role of host; and at his stove,
Leash'd in like hounds, should skillet, pan and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy blogpost to bring forth
So great a shindig: can this webpage hold
The vasty pot of stew? or may we cram
Within this mangled speech the very couch
That did contain the guests at Silver Spring?
O, pardon! since a blurry picture may
Attest in little place a muffin;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of this blog
Are now confined some mighty recipes,
Whose cooked-correctly and delicious foods
The serving forks and spoons will part asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one cake,
And make imaginary small-talk;
Think, when we talk of courses, that you see them
Printing their proud stains i' the receiving floor;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our plates,
Carry them here and there; tripping o'er legs,
Turning the accomplishment of many hours
Into an accident: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who (nervous) asks your humble patience please,
Gently to view, kindly to judge, my peas.

Mr. Shakespeare, I am so, so sorry.

My main plan for the party was to remake an old recipe (Flounder with Dried Plums) as a main dish since it had already been proven in combat, and then try something new for a side dish. That turned out to be Sweet Pea Purée with Capers. I thought that peas were a good combination with beef (to complement the other main course), and the minty/capery side of things would work well with the fish.

It's a theory, anyway.

I was doubling the recipe since there would be so many dinner guests, so step one was to make sure that my ingredients would actually fit in the appropriate saucepans. Don't worry, I took the peas out of the bag before cooking them.

Seeing as how the pre-measuring worked so well the first time, I did the same thing with the mint. I was worried that I wouldn't get a cup of mint out of the package I bought, but it turned out I had just the right amount. The recipe might as well have said ALL THE MINT.

ALL THE PARSLEY SOME OF THE PARSLEY

ALL THE BUTTER HALF THE BUTTER

And into the food processor they go, to await the peas. And then we're back to...

ALL THE CAPERS

I love capers. I'll tell you a story about how much I love capers sometime. I was really sad to have to drain them, so I actually poured the brine back into the jar for use in martinis. Trust me, go make a dirty martini with capers, or even better, caperberries. You will not regret this, unless you have an addictive personality, in which case, "My bad."

Peas join the herbs and butter in the blender. There was a brief moment of panic when they hit Caliban's maximum food limit, but I invoked my knowledge of high-school-level science to determine that pureed peas would take up less volume than solid peas.

And I was correct! After just a little bit of processing, there is room for everypea.

After the first set of ingredients are fully pureed, the capers enter Caliban's maw for a few quick pulses.

BLEND ALL THE THINGS!

Have I mentioned that I love capers?

The final product! I made some vague attempts at being fancy here. That's a sprig of mint inside the caldera, and I may have gotten all zen rock garden with a fork. The whole thing was really easy and really tasty, and I highly recommend it.

Now that the new food was out of the way, I decided to move on to the fish. We've already done this once before, so I won't be reposting every single step. Instead, we can focus on the important changes - like the wine. Which, incidentally, wasn't very good even accounting for the fact that I forgot to chill it after cooking with it.

Another major change was that I actually had the correct ingredients this time around. INGREDIENTS, ASSEMBLE!

Not that it's a major change, but I poured the seasoning into the pan after the wine this time, which led to little floating Spice Islands®.

This is what the ingredients look like for double the standard amount of sauce, since I was making twice as much fish.

It worked out really well because the sauce was never in danger of thickening up early due to the longer cooking time. All the fish cooked, and then I had a chance to make sure the sauce hit the right consistency. There was, however, an issue with the fish itself. This was... not what I expected to see when I opened up the package.

Let me explain. I picked up most of my ingredients for the meal at Safeway, just because it tends to be cheaper. They were carrying flounder for about $8/lb, but I thought I would check out Whole Foods just in case. The fish counter at Safeway has a nasty habit of smelling like fish, which even I know is a bad sign. If the prices weren't too much worse, Whole Foods would be the way to go. And if not, I'd double back and pick up the flounder.

I failed to take into account the helpfulness of the fish counter guys and my personal laziness. While there weren't any filleted flounders (or any other flatfish, for that matter), there were definitely two whole flounders on ice. The whole-fish price seemed reasonable, and after some weighing and discussion of fish weight vs filet weight, I decided to just go for it. Honestly, I would have felt really bad about walking away after the guy put the fish on the scale for me. He took them away to clean them up, and I stood around awkwardly while every single other person at the fish counter tried to help me. I attempted to return the favor by informing patrons that I had taken the last two flounder so that no one had to walk around the counter to the barrels of ice to search for them. Also, I refrained from laughing maniacally at the other customers, which I thought was very big of me. I wound up with almost three pounds of fish for $36, which was half again what I would have paid at Safeway. But I also saw the fish it came from, and I guess that's a thing that influences me in a positive fashion? 

Back to that picture. When the fish was being wrapped up, I saw that there was some skin left on at least one piece, but that was no big deal. People cook fish with skin on, I'd received it in restaurants before, I could deal with that. However: 

That red circle? That's a mysterious organ of some kind. Luckily, it just came right out when I tugged on it. The lines? Those are outlining the fins, which were still entirely attached, and composed entirely out of bones sticking into the food-to-be I wanted to feed my guests. I may have panicked a bit. People had already begun to arrive by the time I unwrapped this (since the fish cooks quickly, I thought I'd wait until the last minute), and I bombarded them with questions. Does anyone know how to cook a fish? Clean a fish? Fish? Is a fish? Is Aquaman? Anything? Three things calmed me down. First, a couple of people suggested I just ignore it and cook and see what happens. Second, Angela volunteered to try and eat all the bones. Well, "volunteered" is a strong word, but close enough. Third, Edward and Kristen brought mead with them. You can see it here as it descends from heaven into my outstretched hand, to make my life better. If I had thought to switch my camera to video mode, you would have also heard a choir of angels.

On to the party food! I'm going to hit all the non-Katherine Anne Porter stuff first, since Susanna sent me some notes about that side of things. I'd like to keep it slightly coherent. And there is nothing more coherent than starting with dessert. Ashley brought us Emily Dickinson's gingerbread cake, a very clever way to sneak another author into the mix.

Oh, speaking of dessert, I had been completely and totally overthinking the whole dinner while I was out shopping, so I also picked up a bunch of kiwis to make foole in case anyone wanted it. People wanted it, so  I made foole (which I accidentally over-maced). People ate it anyway.

Angela made carrots lyonnaise. Either that or "something with potatoes," according to the planning document. But they tasted a lot like carrots and she kept mentioning carrots lyonnaise, so I'm going to assume they are carrots.

Are you sitting down? Go sit down. Kristen and Ed also brought eggplants stuffed with more eggplants. If only there were an internet meme that I could use to comment on putting a thing inside another thing to enjoy twice, but alas, there is not.

EDIT: One of my loyal readers has fallen for my clever scheme to get someone else to make a meme for me.

I didn't get any pictures of Bethany's pumpkin dip or cheese-beer dip, because they were, uh, invisible. Yeah, that's the ticket. Delicious and invisible. So let's move on to the bridge recipe. Susanna gave Heather KAP's corn muffin recipe, since Heather is a baker of renowned renown. If you are too lazy to click on the picture, the post-it on the left explains that it is the vegetarian side and no pigs were harmed, while the note on the right thanks a pig for its contribution to foodness. The real reason I explained this was so you wouldn't click on the picture and discover that the bowl on the right contains one of the "invisible" dips I was talking about. Merde.

Here we go! This is Katherine Anne Porter's Beef with Imagination Sauce, the dish so whimsically named that it set us on the path to dinner-partydom. Turns out, it is a stew! I'm stealing Susanna's commentary from our email conversation, which I didn't tell her I was going to do until afterwards.

Using KAP's recipes was a bit like...hm. What's something that's harder to prepare for than to actually do? I'm awash in metaphor emptiness. But the prep work for these recipes was the booger. First, I had to translate her handwriting. Loopy loopy. I wouldn't have been surprised to find a heart-dotted i. This code-breaking revealed something I hadn't seen before...the recipe called for something called 1812 Sauce. A bit of internet-ing discovered that this is not available anymore in stores, but can be faked with various combos of alcohol, lemon, Worcestershire, hot sauce and several other ingredients. So that was a fun side-adventure. Then, I had to interpret sentences on the Beef With Imagination Sauce recipe like this one: "Throw in anything and everything you have." So like...MnMs? Frozen Pot Pies? Socks? Fireplace utensils? I have all those things. I decided that "anything and everything you have" should be limited to three places: veggie drawer, spice cabinet, and alcohol stash. Since I couldn't "start it no later than 10 in the morning" and stir every hour like KAP recommends (um...blue blood?), I used the slow cooker.  

Next up was Guinness Punch, which I had been eagerly awaiting for over a semester.

The Guinness Punch was a breeze, and quite delish. Major ingredients include 1/2 and 1/2, Guinness, Bourbon, Sugar, vanilla, and coffee. It also called for raw eggs, but I like having friends, so I left that out. If I made it again, I'd serve it over ice. Maybe with real whipped cream on top. 

Oh, that's Susanna in the yellow shirt. Hi Susanna! The punch may sound gross if you hate things that are delicious, but I assure you it was not. Gross, that is. It was quite delicious. The following picture is to prove that we started with a lot of it, and then quickly had very little.

And since I don't have a better wrap-up, some final KAP commentary:

...having poked around a bit more in KAP's writing and archives--her recipes are very HER, both in style and her philosophy about other people's talents. She believes that people who don't naturally know how to write well can never learn. Seems she has the same understanding about cooking: if you don't know how to interpret "throw in anything and everything you have," well...I'm not gonna tell you. And maybe you don't deserve to be eating good food anyway. .... Anyway, a neat study in recipes as narrative.  

Indeed it is, Susanna. Indeed it is.


Nobody ate my peas.

No more cakes and ale

I remember when rock was young; me and Suzie had so much fun, and I never missed updates or messed with classic songs so they didn't scan correctly anymore and what's up with that? In way of apology, I actually have two posts/three dishes to deal with, so I shouldn't be playing catchup for long. Ha ha, catchup. Wait, I forget to mention tomatoes, so I guess that's not funny. So, uh....

...

Hey, look over there, it's some squashes that kind of look like a penis!

I'm not going to draw a face on those. You may remember from my last post that I had planned on making Autumn Squashes with Apples and Fried Parsley along with my Crostini. Since that failed, I didn't want to do any more cooking that night, because I'm just that petty. The next night was a different story.

I've never cut a squash before, and it was a little harder than I thought it would be. My knife, she is not so sharp. 

Eventually I got the damn thing open, and scooped out the insides. The inside of an acorn squash, ladies and gentlemen. The webbing around the seeds is for serious gross.

The recipe called for the squash to be cut into rounds, but I didn't do that for two reasons. First, I wasn't exactly sure how to cut the entire squash into slices without stabbing myself in the hand. This seemed easier. Second, the recipe itself calls for small squashes, and mine were not exactly small. If you immediately thought back to the first picture, for shame.

And yet, I felt strangely emasculated when I moved on to the butternut.

This one was supposed to be cut in lengths, but I was not about to try slicing my way lengthwise through a foot-long hard object. And you're doing it again, quit that. I can read your mind, and it is filthy.

I also cut up an apple, since that is the last major ingredient.

Trust me, the photo I took of the sliced apple was equally inconclusive.

Oh, and this is how cool I am. I took all the squash seeds, hit them with olive oil and salt, and roasted those suckers in the oven. They were delicious. Better than popcorn, but sadly inefficient.

Back to the actual recipe. Melting butter in olive oil, which is all sorts of crazy levels of decadence. If Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote were going to cook something, they would start with butter in olive oil. Well, they would start with gin, and then maybe some laudanum, and then get someone else to make the food, but my point still stands.

Oh, I cut up an onion, but that was boring so I didn't show it. The onion sautes for a few minutes before the rest of the ingredients go in.

And as it turns out, my pan wasn't big enough for all of the squash. You can see a lot of it hanging out in the background. The pan gets covered, and then everything cooks for an indeterminate amount of time which is a lot longer than the time mentioned in the cookbook.

While the squash and apple cooked with the onion, I started on frying the parsley. The parsley doesn't stay in the oil long enough to get a good picture, so I thought I would be better off trying a video. Behold! [Edi: Or don't behold, the video seems to have stopped functioning.]

Huh. Despite the dramatic toss gesture, that was a lot more anticlimactic than I thought it would be. Either way, this is what it looked like afterwards. Pretty, but also slightly gross and oily. It had a nice crunch, but it mostly tasted like parsley and friedness.

When the squash finally cooks, you stir in apple cider vinegar, toss the parsley on top, and ta da!

I had a lot of squash left over. I need to find something else to do with it.

The verdict: Meh. Ok, so it was partly my fault for not finding smaller squashes. But all of the acorn squash at the store were the exact same size, and the only alternative for the butternut was a specimen that looked like two bowling balls attempting to create a baby bowling ball. Either way, there was still too much for the pan and the end result was a lot of unevenly cooked pieces of squash. In the end, everything tasted exactly like you'd imagine it. Picture a sauteed onion. An apple. Some squash pieces. Think of parsley, and pretend it is crunchy. Now think of those things with some vinegar on them. Done. That's the dish. Not a lot of return for a ton of effort. I'd consider trying it again with smaller, softer squash, except for the minor detail that I don't care enough to do so.

Here's a replacement recipe for you. Take a whole squash of whatever size. Shove it in the oven, which should be super hot. When you start to get worried about your squash, wait at least another half hour, because it's not done yet. Then wait even longer, and finally pull it out of the oven. Cut it in half, toss a bunch of butter on it, and eat the hell out of it. Done.

***

As every good early modern nerd knows, Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday has a way cooler and certainly-not-ridiculous name: Pancake Day! If you have a few hours, I suggest you check out The Shoemaker's Holiday, a ridiculous Elizabethan city comedy by Thomas Dekker. It's sort of about Simon Eyre, supposedly the first Lord Mayor of London to introduce the practice of giving pancakes to apprentices. If you don't have a few hours, you can just read the following bit of Act V, Scene II:

FIRK.  And I’ll promise you meat enough, for simp’ring Susan keeps the larder. I’ll lead you to victuals, my brave soldiers; follow your captain. O brave! Hark, hark!  Bell rings.
ALL.  The pancake-bell rings, the pancake-bell! Trilill, my hearts!
FIRK.  Oh brave! Oh sweet bell! O delicate pancakes! Open the doors, my hearts, and shut up the windows! Keep in the house, let out the pancakes! Oh rare, my hearts! Let’s march together for the honour of Saint Hugh to the great new hall in Gracious Street-corner, which our master, the new lord mayor, hath built.
RALPH.  O the crew of good fellows that will dine at my lord mayor’s cost to-day!
HODGE.  By the Lord, may lord mayor is a most brave man. How shall prentices be bound to pray for him and the honour of the gentlemen shoemakers! Let’s feed and be fat with my lord’s bounty.
FIRK.  O musical bell, still! O Hodge, O my brethren! There’s cheer for the heavens: venison-pasties walk up and down piping hot, like sergeants; beef and brewess comes marching in dry-vats, fritters and pancakes comes trowling in in wheel-barrows; hens and oranges hopping in porters’—baskets, collops and eggs in scuttles, and tarts and custards comes quavering in in malt-shovels.
Enter more Prentices   ALL.  Whoop, look here, look here!
HODGE.  How now, mad lads, whither away so fast?
1ST PRENTICE.  Whither? Why, to the great new hall, know you not why? The lord mayor hath bidden all the prentices in London to breakfast this morning.
ALL.  Oh brave shoemakers, oh brave lord of incomprehensible good-fellowship! Whoo! Hark you! The pancake-bell rings.  Cast up caps.
FIRK.  Nay, more, may hearts! Every Shrove-Tuesday is our year of jubilee; and when the pancake-bell rings, we are as free as my lord mayor; we may shut up our shops, and make holiday. I’ll have it called Saint Hugh’s Holiday.
ALL.  Agreed, agreed! Saint Hugh’s Holiday.
HODGE.  And this shall continue for ever.
ALL.  Oh brave! Come, come, my hearts! Away, away!
FIRK.  O eternal credit to us of the gentle craft! March fair, my hearts! Oh rare! Exeunt.

So yeah. Pancakes. Now, this use to call for a trip to Kathy's or Mrs. Rowe's for pancakes, but these options were not available to me. Now, I could have just headed across the street to Tastee Diner and picked up some pancakes there. Or if I was feeling really adventurous, bust out my pancake cookbook from Bette's Oceanview Diner. But I was not merely adventurous. I was suicidally reckless.


From The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594):

To make Pancakes.
TAke new thicke Creame a pinte, foure or fiue yolks of Egs, a good handfull of flower, and two or three spoonfuls of ale, strain them altogether into a faire platter, and season it with a good handfull of Sugar, a spooneful of Synamon, and a litle Ginger: then take a frying pan, and put in a litle peece of Butter, as big as your thombe, and when it is molten browne, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the further side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hold your pan aslope, so that your stuffe may run abroad ouer all the pan, as thin as may be: then set it to the fyre, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is baked, then turne the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

If there's one thing I need to thank Francine Segan for, it's turning ridiculous nonsense like this into a recipe that a sane person could follow. What you're about to read is not for the faint of heart. First I poured a pint of cream into a bowl. This part was easy. The recipe said a pint, I bought a container labeled "a pint" (or close enough), and poured out exactly all of it. Then I added eggs. I'm going to claim that this picture shows the egg yolks already in the cream, or else it would demonstrate that I can't tell when cream goes bad. TRUE FACT: Despite the fact that I still have trouble boiling vegetables in water, I am a 3rd dan black belt in separating eggs.

Ah, yes, this is my proof of egg use. Despite what the picture seems to show, I erred in the direction of five egg yolks because that was the number of eggs I had. I didn't want my last egg to be lonely. Although, now that I think about it, I could have filmed a stop-motion version of I Am Legend with one egg left in a world of eggshells. I could have drawn a little Vincent Price face on the egg. Maybe next time.

Here's the good handful of flour.

And here's the evil handful of flour from the Mirror, Mirror universe.

Now, the recipe calls for a few spoonfuls of ale, and I was not going to disappoint. My local beer and wine merchant, Fenwick Beer and Wine, has a pretty decent selection of beers from England. I wanted something that seemed slightly authentical, but realized that there was only so much research that I wanted to do while standing in the store in front of the beer. Ditto for trying to find the beer made closest to London. Instead, I settled for checking through BeerAdvocate reviews, and Black Sheep's Riggwelter Yorkshire Ale was the only beer to have both a) an 85 from the Alström Bros. and b) a sheep on the label.

Now this is the part where I'm supposed to strain them all together into a fair platter. I had no idea what that actually meant. Should I have run it through a strainer (not that I have a mesh strainer)? Then what would be the point of all the flour? It seemed silly, but I should have have given it a bit more thought before just stirring it up a bunch. Also, decent beer, would drink again.

In goes the good handful of sugar. The bad handful of sugar was not invited to the christening, which would cause problems for everyone down the line. Seriously, if they had just extended the invite and plied her with alcohol all night, we could have avoided the whole mess with the curse and the thorns and the dragon.

In go the cinnamon and ginger. Don't worry, I removed both spices from their containers before adding to the bowl.

A spoonful of cinnamon makes the medicine get sort of spicy, and you can't breathe in while you take it. I don't know what a spoonful of ginger does, but today is not the day we find out. I cut out the picture of my batter post-whisking because it goes back to looking like it did before the cinnamon and ginger went in.

Apparently my thumb is a little bigger than a tablespoon, which coincidentally is the amount of butter left in the stick I was using. Once it all started browning on the skillet, I poured it out and was a little sad to see it go. I don't know what molten brown is, but I assume it's somewhere in the vicinity of brown and hot.

The recipe tells me to ladle some of my "stuffe" into the pan, and since this blog is pretty family friendly I'm going to assume that they mean the pancake batter. It doesn't exactly coat the pan, but I let it run as far as it is willing to run.

Now, I was supposed to let this dry out as much as it would without burning, but I probably got impatient. Flipped it too early, it fell apart, and wasn't really brown enough. It was also a weird thickness. Too thin for a pancake, too thick for a crepe. Maybe something in the direction of blintzes. Actually, I've been having a terrible time thinking of a way to describe the result, and that's just perfect. If I had realized this at the time, it may have made a difference in the cooking. I ate this delicious mistake.

I started over with a bit more flour in the batter (it had seemed oddly bubbly the first time), and slightly higher heat. The heat was something I was thinking in relation to crepes, but the flour takes the batter in the opposite direction. I have no idea what I was thinking.

TRUE FACT: If you keep spring-powered magnet clips above your stove, one day they will all reach their temperature breaking-point at the same time and suddenly send shards of broken plastic spraying across the kitchen.

This second attempt came out a bit better. I let it brown longer before turning, and I think that was a good idea. I mean, it still fell apart and everything, but it more closely resembled a food item.

Here is said "food item" shoved onto a plate alongside an attempt at letting the batter set pancake-style. The problem was that, at heart, this stuff was no longer pancake batter. So it was just like the other stuff but thicker.

Verdict: No matter how messed up they are, things made of pancake batter are still delicious. I made a few really, really basic mistakes going into this recipe, and they go beyond choices during the cooking process. First, I didn't know what I was making. I should have compared the ingredients I was working with to modern recipes in order to determine what the end result should have been. I'm not saying that I should have stolen measurements for the flour and sugar or anything like that, but I could have seen that "Oh, this many egg yolks and that much cream sounds like this recipe, so that's probably the consistency I'm aiming for." That would have helped to correct for the second problem, which was that I just don't have a lot of experience making pancakes. Back in undergrad I would sometimes make stacks of them for everyone (and for freezing - small pancakes reheat really well in the microwave) but that usually involved Bisquick and often a pancake maker. And it was years ago. So when I saw that my pancake batter was misbehaving in a certain way, I couldn't recognize that it was because of too much flour, or not enough cream, or etcetera. Finally, I didn't do my research on the cooking methods. This was an intentional decision since I thought too much research would take the fun out of everything, but I should have expected to run into issues when I didn't even know how to follow some of the directions.

So I've given myself some homework: fix this recipe and make myself some historically accurate pancakes.


The pancakes (and bacon!) at Mrs. Rowe's are better than the pancakes (and bacon!) at Kathy's, and I will fight anyone who thinks otherwise.