Easter vs. Miss Put-Upon, Round 2

Oh Easter. It's full of such memories...hours of church, lilies causing allergies to explode, 80-degree days followed by unexpectedly frigid Easter egg hunts...but mostly what I associate Easter with is food. And family. Slash Jesus. But namely, food. Last year was the first Easter that I couldn't spend with my family and their smorgasbord, but I was excited to create my own Easter feast like a Real Adult. One ham, some kind of side dish that I can't remember, and a majorly failed dessert later, I had succeeded...in giving myself an epic bout of food poisoning. My enthusiasm for the leftover ham that I had been looking forward to thus voided completely, I don't think that I have been able to eat ham since.

This year I'm trying for an adult Easter again, only I'm not in charge of the ham, or of much else.  My friend and I decided to co-host (read: I buy into the idea, she hosts at her apartment, and I show up just like everyone else) a potluck Easter dinner.  The guests have been asked to bring a variety of items, and I'm a little bit afraid that we'll have a bunch of rolls and not enough beer (I should maybe try to have more faith in my friends, but it's a legitimate concern). The one thing that no one signed up for was dessert. Of course, any Easter dinner worth Jesus' time should have dessert, so I volunteered to bring one.  Which is not such a stellar plan, because I am notoriously bad at baking, primarily because I consistently fail to read the directions through fully. But! it's my Easter Duty so I press forward--and I hope that you can benefit from my step-by-step Easter potluck instructions.

Step 1: Remember that it's Easter. You've been planning on this dinner for weeks so of course that means you're forgotten that it's this weekend. Quick! Figure out what dessert you will bring...it can't be something you've never made before...but your baking repertoire only consists of 3-4 items that are tried-and-true edible.

Step 2: Consult your favorite Web site. So you spent the entire day walking around looking at cherry trees, talking to your friends, and pondering on the baked good you'll bring to the Easter potluck, which is now tomorrow. End up deciding to make something like a blondie crossed with a lemon bar even though that blatantly violates the Must Have Made It Before Rule. You like to live on the edge.

Step 3: Visit the grocery store. While you're there, wonder why in the world there are so many people there on a Saturday afternoon.  See the giant pile of hams and remember that it's Easter again. Smugly remembering past adventures with brown sugar, buy a new bag.  While standing in the baking isle, remember that you forgot to check on whether you had baking powder and baking soda before you left the house, because when you walked to the kitchen to look, you got distracted by jelly beans. It's cheap so buy some more, but gamble on whether you have eggs.

Step 4: Double check the recipe and your ingredients. Reading ahead is key in baking. Notice that the butter needs to be melted, and microwave the lemons for a few seconds to get more juice out (just like they showed you on Food Network!). Pat yourself on the back because things are going so unexpectedly well. Get excited about using the neglected microplane part of the grater for the lemon zest. Note that you did already have both baking powder and baking soda. Note also--with relief--that your roommate has eggs, which you will steal shamelessly.

Step 5: Begin screwing it up. Lemons are hard to zest when they have already been juiced. And zest is remarkably hard to get out of the microplane. There's lemon juice in all the paper cuts you accumulated at your desk job over the past week.  The brown sugar is lumpy anyway because you forgot step 2 of the recipe, even though you read the whole thing through three times. Throw the whole thing in the pan and walk away. Concoct a plan to buy cookies on the way to dinner and pretend you made them. Return to the kitchen 25 minutes later and notice that the cookies are actually much thicker than in the picture and not nearly done in the allotted time. Begin to fret about how much longer they need and when they will be overdone.

Step 6: Take your best guess. After about 25 toothpicks have donated their lives to the effort, conclude that you would prefer underdone brownie-like baked goods to overdone ones, and that they are probably fine anyway. Let cool, then notice that the middle is actually not quite done. Consider putting them back in the oven and then wonder at yourself for thinking that would be a good idea. Decide that overdone baked goods might in fact have been better after all because squishy ones don't look too delicious.

Step 7: Plan how to drop them on the table anonymously. And if they find out that you're the one who brought the mushy cookies, hope that some of the attendees will remain friends with you regardless.

The Aforementioned Risotto

Risotto and I have an abusive relationship. Sometimes I cannot remember whether it improves the quality of my life or makes it worse. I know it improved my life when I wasn't the one making it. Foolishly, I requested the recipe. It's not particularly difficult and yet it is extremely difficult. I made it 3 times and it was okay but I wasn't in love anymore. It wasn't a huge failure any of those times, though I did have to collect aluminum cans in order to afford the ingredients, and I still couldn't buy the saffron, so I just kind of decided that risotto was not worth the money or the effort. And it's a lot of effort--all that stirring. But Christmas was a-comin' and what did I find when I peered into my stocking but one of those coveted jars containing about .5 milligrams of saffron, tucked away into little vials which I guarded with my life on the trip back home. Thus inspired, I began anew, and this time, I made that risotto my bitch. My roommate proclaimed it the best attempt yet, and as an added bonus it was a nice yellowy color, not the color of old dog poo like it was before the saffron came into my life.

So, if your household has some extra income, or regularly chooses the purchase of expensive cheeses over making a car, house, or credit card payment, I suggest you print this recipe out and give it to one of your loved ones to make for you.

Million-Dollar Risotto*
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil 
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup risotto (Real Italians use Vialone Nano, but Arborio is okay plus cheaper and at this point, you are probably counting pennies)
Small handful of dried porcini mushrooms
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 teaspoon saffron (Did I sufficiently impress the importance of this ingredient on you? Because without it, you might as well not even bother)
3 cups chicken/vegetable broth (Or water and bouillon...more on this later)
1 cup grated ridiculously-expensive-f'reals-version-not-fakey Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese (Buy a little extra though, for sustenance)

Ponderous Steps:
1.  Soak the mushrooms in warm water for about 15 minutes; when re-hydrated, drain and chop coarsely. This is the first thing to mess up. For whatever reason, I kept forgetting to chop the mushrooms after re-hydrating, probably because I was so stressed about the stirring that I knew would happen shortly. This is one option but it means the mushrooms are huge and kind of gross at the end, as they don't magically shrink when you put them in food. Go figure.
2. If you DON'T have a gluten-intolerant roommate then you can add 1.5 cubes of bouillon to 3 cups of water, heat it, and add the small pinch of unicorn hairs saffron. If you DO have to cook gluten free, there's a grand total of one (1) brand of broth that she can eat, and it comes in a carton, thus tempting you to not heat the broth separately because after all you could just pour it directly from the carton which would make sense, right? Well yes it would but don't fall into this corner-cutting trap because then you don't heat the broth with the saffron and then you end up with poo-colored rice. I don't know what would happen if you just added saffron to the rice without heating it in broth first but I'm not willing to find out because, last I checked, I wasn't made of money. Nor does it grow on trees, plus I just took the dog to the vet where they pronounced her completely healthy in exchange for $200, so I can't just go throwing saffron around all willy-nilly.
3. Saute the chopped onion in 3 tablespoons of melted butter and one tablespoon of olive oil, until the onion is translucent.
4. Add the rice and saute 3-4 minutes. And the fun starts already:  Stir the whole time so that the rice does not burn.
5. Add wine and stir until it is completely absorbed.
6. Add the broth about 1/4 of a cup at a time, stirring with a wooden spoon until each is completely absorbed. When you pour in new broth, it should sizzle, otherwise you didn't let the last broth absorb enough. This is a very scientific test and it's almost impossible to tell whether the next broth with sizzle. And don't forget to stir the whole time. Somewhere in here, between the stirring and the grating of the incredibly hard cheese, you'll start to get really hungry. This is where the extra parmegiano-reggiano comes in--it's a snack you can eat one-handed and you'll be able to stir happily for hours.
7. Continue this adding-broth-and-stirring regimen until the broth is used but make sure you don't over cook the rice. This probably won't happen because you'll have the heat turned up real high to make the broth evaporate faster, thinking that this makes you real smart and have to do less stirring. That's not the case, and that will probably make it undercooked, if anything.
8. When the rice is al dente set it off the heat and immediately stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and 3/4 cup of the grated cheese.
9. With your last remaining strength, stir the mixture furiously to make the risotto, cheese, and butter blend and get nice and creamy.
10. Serve to thankful people (at least they better be thankful) with some grated cheese on the side but maybe don't mention how much butter is in there. Make sure the dinner conversation revolves around how tired your arm is from stirring.

*It has an Italian name too but I don't speak Italian nor can I remember how many times to put "Alla" in it.

(I Said I Would Make The) Chocolate Mousse
This year I made our family’s traditional holiday chocolate mousse. Usually my mother makes it but she relinquished its preparation by saying, “it is too much trouble and besides you are making pie.” There is an old saying: pain is the first thing you forget. But even though an entire year has passed since my mother last made the mousse, she is still able to recall in vivid detail the anguish of its preparation.

Here’s what you need:
8 egg yolks
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
½ cup suagr
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup water

One week before: troll for bowls. Pursue bowls with the same feverish intensity that people who are about to move hunt for empty boxes. You will need a slew of bowls.

The recipe requires a total of 5 simple ingredients. And the upper arm strength of a kangaroo boxer because there is more folding involved in this recipe than in making an origami zoo. And please note: because you just separated eight eggs to get the yolks, you now have the collateral by-product of 8 egg whites collected in a bowl. Counting the other bowl that contains the yolks, you have already used 2 bowls.

Whip the heavy cream and set aside (Bowl #3—and make it a biggie because 2 cups of heavy cream whipped takes up a lot of real estate). Take care not to whip it into butter. This has happened to me before. And just so you know, even if it were possible to reverse the direction of the electric beaters you cannot rewind butter back into heavy cream.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. This sounds easy, does it not? It is if you can find your double boiler. You swear it was right here a week ago. Ask the only other person who lives in the house with you if they have seen the double boiler. No, the double boiler has not been seen by this sole co-habitant. This answer is followed by co-habitant’s inquiry of “what’s a double boiler?” which makes you think that a medium-sized stainless steel lipped bowl that perfectly fits over your medium–sized copper bottom cooking pot is attractive and could be used in a number of handy ways. You picture the double boiler in the shed filled with vermiculite or spare car parts. Instead of sending out a search party for your beloved double boiler (which, admittedly, you have a very fickle relationship with because you only love it and use it when you make mousse which has not been for a long time), you cleverly engineer one by balancing a stainless steel bowl (wer’re up to 4 bowls and counting) in the medium-sized cooking pot filled with water. When the water boils, put the chocolate to melt in the carefully balanced bowl.

Beat the egg yolks until creamy. It is about this time that you start to look around your kitchen to see what can be used as a bowl. Pondering this takes your mind off the fact that you have no idea what a creamy egg yolk looks like.

Boil the water and sugar together for 5 minutes at a moderate boil. You are making sugar water!

Add the hot sugar water to egg yolks slowly, beating constantly until cool. Realize that you should have used a larger bowl to capture the egg yolks at the get go because they get right frothy when you start mixing in the hot sugar water. Transfer yolks to Bowl #5 and keep going.

Fold melted chocolate into half of the cream that has been beaten.

But wait. The chocolate is not melting in your cleverly engineered double boiler. It’s just sitting there lumpy. How can this be? The water is boiling—yes, stick you finger in it and burn yourself just to make sure the boiling water is hot. Then stick your finger into the chocolate. It’s not hot. Weird. Maybe the pot is too small. Maybe the pot needs more surface area on the bottom to come in contact with the hot water so it can heat up better. So engineer another double boiler, this time with bigger pots. But no. Chocolate still no melt. As a matter of fact, it is turning into powder. Very weird. And unfortunate. Because it is late. And stores are closed. And you said you’d make the mousse. And chocolate is in the name of the recipe making substituions impossible. Maybe the chocolate is old? Check the bag. No expiration date is printed anywhere. Poke more at the non-melting chocolate. You want answers. Scream inside. Call co-habitant over to look at this odd unexpected phenomenon. Stare together at the chocolate dust. Make a third doule boiler out of a Pyrex bowl (Bowl #6) sitting in a big pot of boiling water. Watch the chocolate closely for any sign of change. Wait—is it glistening on the edges? No. It is still chocolate dust. Why is this happening to you? Chocolate melts in a car. It melts in your pocket. Make a mental list of all the circumstances in which chocolate melts when you don’t want it to. Then watch co-habitant run outside to shed—not to get the double boiler in a fit of recollection of its location but to instead retrieve the stainless steel dog bowl left behind by visiting family this summer who brought their dog, Dolce. Wash Dolce’s bowl (Bowl #7), fill it with the chocolate dust and place the bowl in the boiling water. No melting occurs. Crap. Hey, you know what might work? Pouring boiling water into the chocolate chalk. So that’s what you do. It’s midnight. And you still have a pie to make (that will feature meringue of cartoon proportions thanks to the 8 egg white sitting in Bowl #2). You stare in wide-eyed wonder when as you whip the boiling water into the chocolate powder it starts to look like melted chocolate--the way it should have looked 90 minutes ago. Cautiously you continue to pour boiling water into Dolce’s bowl a wee bit at a time. Yes! It’s a Christmas miracle! Now you can fold the melted chocolate into half of the beaten cream (we are up to eight bowls now).

With that crisis behind you, now you can fold the egg yolk mixutre into the chocolate-plus-half-the-beaten-cream mixture.

Now fold in the other half of the beaten cream.

Keep folding.
Keep folding.
Fold some more.
You should fold a little more until all those streaks of chocolate are gone.

Pour the whole thing into Bowl #9, chill overnight (in order to mitigate any strange retroactive chemical reaction having to do with turning chocolate dust into melted chocolate) and serve.

It’s really good. And worth the trouble to see everybody’s face when you tell them you used a dog bowl to make it.

Million Dollar Risotto

The average cost of all these high quality fresh ingredients for this risotto is fairly substantial. You will have to choose between making it or making this month's car payment.