Food Lab 23: Crepes

OK, it hasn't actually be four full months since the Food Lab crew assembled. We had a lab planned

back in the middle of April: candy making. We were going to do caramels, lollipops, and chocolate truffles. Unfortunately, at the last minute, the IAs were unable to join us, and seeing as Mama IA was the instigator of Candy Lab, we didn't feel right about proceeding without her.

So, blessed with extraordinarily good weather that day, Chef Spouse and I hung out with Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee in their backyard playing with the Green Egg smoker to which they're providing a temporary home, grilling flat bread and veg of all sorts, and trying out the molecular gastronomy kit The Executive Committee got for Christmas. We made lemon foam (for our grilled asparagus) and balsamic vinegar pearls (for our grilled romaine). And chocolate truffles, which wasn't really a lab because Chef Spouse makes them all the time, but he did NOT use the Super-Secret Recipe provided to him be a friend of ours for purposes of, I quote, "sexual blackmail."

But I digress.

May and June were busy travel months for various members of your Food Lab team, which left us next able to gather on Sunday, July 14, also known as Bastille Day.

Bastille Day food lab?

Crepes, bien sur!

First, to get you in the mood, go ahead and start the video below of Edith Piaf singing La Vie En Rose.



So we used both Julia Child recipes, sweet and savory, an extremely simple sourdough (using the sourdough starter I've grown over the past several months, who goes by Fred), and a buckwheat batter. All were made the previous day.

The thing about crepes isn't the batter, though. The batter is simple: flour, eggs, butter, salt, milk, and water.

It's the flipping technique.

I should back up. Several years *before* he started getting serious about cooking, Chef Spouse decided he wanted to learn how to make crepes. So we got him official French steel crepe pans (sorta like these), and he perfected his flipping technique. He can actually flip with both hands at the same time. It's pretty impressive. Like a dope, I didn't take video.

Anyway, according to his notes, here's how it works:

1. Combine the wet ingredients, then beat in the flour and salt until the batter is the consistency of a milk shake
2. Heat your crepe pan, add a little butter, then pour in just enough batter to cover the pan
3. Flip when golden brown by making sure the crepe is loose, then slide the crepe away from you until 1/4 is hanging off the pan, then flip with a flick of the wrist

In more detail:

Butter: use a full stick of frozen butter and rub it on the pan between crepes to avoid using too much. The butter should sizzle but not brown.

Pouring in the batter: a traditional crepe pan will take about 1/3 of a cup of batter. When pouring it in, tilt the crepe pan so the batter runs down it and fills the pan. Pour the batter across the top from left to right (10 o'clock to 2 o'clock) across the top, with the bulk of the batter pouring out at the top of the pan (12 o'clock). The batter will slowly pool to the bottom and join up.

When to flip: never let crepes cook until they smoke or the edges get brown, or they will crack when you roll them. The crepe should shake loose in the pan before flipping. A very quick shift (forward/back) of the wrist will let you know if the crepe has separated from the pan yet.  You can't flip a crepe that is still stuck to the pan.

How to flip: as Julia Child states, you must have courage. Hesitation will kill your flip, a la -->

We did discover one key thing. If you’re short, you need to stand back from the stove for the flip because your arm needs to be lower  than stove height. If your arm is too high, you can’t do the motion correctly, and you end up with a mess. The problem, of course, is that if stand back from the stove to flip your crepe and miss, the crepe hits the floor.

Now, you don't have to have a crepe pan. You can use a more traditional fry pan/skillet. The problem is that it ups the degree of difficulty on the flip significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY.

So what did we fill all these crepes with? Spinach sauteed with onions and pancetta, mushroom duxelles, lightly steamed asparagus, home-smoked salmon (see above, re: Green Egg), homemade duck confit (which we also tried adding to the crepe batter itself, tasty but hard to flip), goat cheese, and Gruyere.

Of course, at the end, we had sweet crepes. We had all sorts of plans for them, but it came down to two things: a gooseberry/blueberry compote Mad Kitchen Scientist had made with mascarpone cheese and, of course, Crepes Suzette (because setting things on fire in the kitchen on purpose is fun).

What did we drink? Well, wine, of course, and French 75s, one of my very favorite cocktails ever. Booze, simple syrup, lemon juice, and champagne. Ah, but what booze? The traditional is gin v. cognac, and we tried both. They were both lovely, with gin clearly the winner for warm weather, and cognac clearly the winter version. We then moved on to trying rye and silver tequila. After all, a French75 is basically a Tom Collins topped with champagne rather than club soda, so why NOT try it with a whiskey sour as the base? And we needed a comparison booze. Well, the silver tequila blew us all away, so we then moved on to the inevitable silver v. resposado comparison. Resposado was better.

Finally for Mad Kitchen Scientist, who was sad we didn't have a recording to play:

Food Lab 22: Irish Cooking (Sort Of)

Chef Spouse has a good friend who lives in Pittsburgh who is a pretty serious cook himself (Mr. Pittsburgh even considered throwing over computer work for culinary school), so since he and his good friend who is a girl but not a girlfriend were visiting us for the weekend, we decided to lab it up.

The IAs were able to join us as well, so we had a full kitchen and MANY, MANY ideas. After quite a bit of back and forth (and speculation about where we might be able to procure liquid nitrogen), we arrived on "Ethnic cooking: Irish" in honor of St. Pat's weekend. And since we all still have lots of tasty, tasty lamb, we decided to go in a shepherd's pie direction, plus The Executive Committee was interested in learning the mashed potato technique Chef Spouse learned in his cooking course at L'Academie de Cuisine.

This quickly expanded, as it tends to do, to include making fresh farmer's cheese (two versions, one with cow milk, one with goat milk), making three different types of mashed potatoes, making a traditional colcannon mash, making cabbage cooked in bacon, making a Meyer lemon cocktail (as Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee had found some lovely Meyer lemons at the grocery), and testing various brown liquors against each other in a manhattan.

As usual, we had "an absurdity" of ideas, and we also had "an absurdity" of cooks. (We've decided that "an absurdity" is the official Food Lab term for excess, so in other words, every single Food Lab we ever do).

Lesson one: eight cooks really is too many, even for our relatively spacious kitchen. So all y'all who've been hinting that you'd like to join us (you know who you are): you really, really do need to franchise this idea. We don't have room.

Drinks first:

We looked at a bunch of recipes that specifically called for Meyer lemons, and ended up choosing this one, for a Meyer lemon blossom, in part because it called for celery bitters. Of course we have celery bitters, along with at least 10 other types of bitters ranging from the typical (Angostura, Peychaud's) to the obscure (rhubarb, gin barrel orange, the aforementioned celery). Hey, we're serious about our cocktails in this house. It was decent, but it really amped up when Papa IA had the idea to muddle some fresh sage in.

We also decided to try 3 brown liquors - Irish whiskey, rye, and bourbon - in a manhattan and taste test.

While all three were delicious, Mad Kitchen Scientist and I clearly preferred the rye version (spicy and not as sweet as bourbon, but still with a solid kick), while Papa IA like the "gentleness" of the Irish whiskey version.

Why is Irish whiskey more "gentle"? The proof is lower.

On to the mashed potatoes. We labbed Yukon golds versus russets, and boiling versus baking. Why would you bake potatoes you're going to mash? The secret to creamy, decadent mashed potatoes is: one, don't over-mash as it breaks down the starch too much and renders them gluey; and two, and perhaps even more important, potatoes can only absorb so much non-potato material. The less water they absorb, the more space there is for butter and cream.

You know another way to make them even more decadent? Reduce the cream before you start adding it. Yowza.

Mad Kitchen Scientist preferred the Yukon golds, but I liked the baked russets best. They had a really nice roasted (no other way to describe it) flavor.

Then again, all versions had so much butter and reduced heavy cream in them that, even though they had been a little over-processed and weren't texturally perfect, Chef Spouse had to take them away from us in the "tasting" (aka "gobbling down") process so as to retain enough to top our shepherd's pie.

Speaking of, we started with Alton Brown's recipe, and then reorganized it, because it seemed like the order of operations was a little backwards, at least given our ingredients. Alton calls for you to saute the veg first and use ground lamb, but we had cubed lamb leg, so after consulting with Chef Spouse, we decided to process the ingredients more like you would for bouef bourgignon, which he makes every year for Christmas. We browned the meat in batches first, then sauteed the vegetables in the meaty fond goodness, then moved the veg to a large pot so we could saute the meat again with flour (which you need to form the gravy), then combined the meat in the large pot with the veg and added lamb stock, tomato paste, and herbs. We reduced the sauce, popped the lamb mixture into a pan, topped with the reserved mashed potatoes, and baked. It was REALLY delicious, and heated up quite well the next week, which I appreciated, since Chef Spouse was out of town and I have late classes some nights.

On to the cheese: The Executive Committee and Mad Kitchen Scientist had also procured rennet and citric acid. We just followed the process on the rennet package, other than skipping the final heating, so the cheeses that resulted were more like dryish ricotta in texture rather than fresh mozzarella-like. Actually, it was exactly like real Pennsylvania Dutch schmercase, which is a fresh cheese farmers make when they have too much milk, as opposed to the weirdo spread that includes cottage cheese and Worcestershire sauce you'll find if you Google it. Both were very tasty, particularly on homemade bread with a little honey (which is also the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch way to eat schmercase). We had enough remaining to cure a ball of each in brine for at least a week, as recommended, which means we get to try it this weekend, so I'll report back.

Food Lab 21: Dumpllings

Happy Year of the Snake!

Mad Kitchen Scientist has been hankering to play around with Chinese mother sauces, so with Chinese New Year taking place this past weekend, we decided to make dumplings and homemade duck sauce.

We decided to lab:

• Steamed v. potsticker cooking
• Homemade wrappers v. bought
• Rice paper v. wheat based wrappers
• Jam-based duck sauce v. cooked fruit-based duck sauce

In vegetable, lobster, and pork varieties.

We had ALL KINDS of fillings ready to go - finely chopped pork, finely chopped lobster, bok choy, Chinese mustard greens (which were DELICIOUS), Napa cabbage, red pepper, jalapenos, reconstituted Chinese black fungus, reconstituted shiitakes,  carrot, scallions, garlic, ginger, cilantro, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, mushroom essence (the shiitake soaking liquid boiled WAY down), ginger juice...I might be forgetting something. As usual, we an "an absurdity" (The Executive Committee's term for Food Lab overindulgence) of ingredients.

The wrappers are relatively easy to make. We followed this guy's instructions, both on the recipe and on the process for filling them:



As far as the ingredients mix, he's right: you can put anything you like in there. You do need to cut things up REALLY finely, though. We even tried pulsing some of the pork mixture in the food processor. It made the dumplings easier to stuff, but it didn't taste as good - we lost the differences in texture from the meat to the veg. Like making ravioli, you need less filling than you think you do. No, even less than that.

We also found that the wrappers started drying out pretty quickly, which made them a little harder to manipulate and, particularly, seal. Next time we do this, we'll have the filling completely made up in advance, and one person will roll and cut and the other will fill and close. The process needs to move a little faster.

The bought wrappers were a bit larger (just a factor of we didn't have a larger cutting round) and more uniform in size. They come heavily dusted with corn starch, and we ended up dragging them through water before filling so we could close them and get the edges to stick together.

Ultimately, there wasn't much of a taste difference between the bought and homemade, but making them is so easy and fast, I don't know why you'd bother to buy wrappers.

The biggest taste difference came in the cooking method. The potsticker method described in the video was VASTLY superior to just a plain steaming.

We also had our first true disaster: the rice paper. In theory, it should be easy to make. You combine rice flour and water to a paste-like consistency, spread on cheesecloth or a metal screen, steam for a few minutes, remove from your cloth or screen, allow to dry, voila.

One small problem: we could NOT figure out how to get the cooked dough off the screen. We tried everything and nearly ruined our metal screen in the process. What little we were able to peel off intact ended up in gelatinous globs.

This lady makes it look simple, but I'm thinking there's something she's not telling us:



The Executive Committee speculated that she might make ALL the rice paper in the world, being the only one who knows how to do it. You'll notice that there are MANY recipes online for what to put in rice paper, and almost none for how to make it. We now know why.

On to duck sauce. The formula there is pretty simple, too: fruit (either cooked or in jam), soy, rice vinegar, seasonings to taste. The jam-based version won, hands down. The cooked fruit based version was bland by comparison, and even boosting it with some sriracha didn't help. And it's simple to make: a mix of fruit jams (apricot, plum, fig - really, your choice), garlic, ginger, soy, rice wine vinegar, chilies, whir it up with your immersion blender or food processor, finis. Also, tasty.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out what was probably the best thing made: Chef Spouse came up with a blood orange Mai Tai that was out of this world. He used the recipe from In the Land of Cocktails, (Bruce McAlpin version), but replaced the grenadine and orange juice with blood orange juice. Also, he didn't bother making orgeat punch, using the plain orgeat syrup instead. Finally, he added a float of really outstanding dark rum to the top. Mai Tais can be cloying and chemical tasting, but this one was AMAZINGLY good. It may become one of the official summer drinks of the house.

Food Lab 20: Butchering, Part 2

The thing about getting a whole lamb (or two) is that you get the WHOLE lamb (or two).  So after you've separated your shoulder meat, and cut your chops, and prepared your tenderloin, and gotten all fancy with your lambchetta, and boned out your legs, you're left with scraps. Lots of scraps. About 10 pounds all together from the two original lambs. Plus organs.

Being thrifty, nose-to-tail types like we are, we weren't just going to throw that out.

No way.

So Chef Spouse, Mad Kitchen Scientist, the Executive Committee, and I gathered to make merguez, make a second batch of stock, and have some fun with cooking offal.

If you recall, we had made sausage before, and it turns out, we did learn some things! We used the merguez recipe straight from Whole Beast Butchery, with one small change. WBB calls for a whole bunch of yummy spices, and some "wet works" (jalapeno, garlic, red onion, etc.), but it does not call for any additional fat. Who in the what where? That seemed unacceptable to us, so we added about 1/2 pound of lamb fat for every 3 pounds, totaling at just about 2 pounds of lamb fat all together. Hey, we'd rendered all that beautiful lamb fat; we had to use it for something.

OK, so what is it that we'd learned from last time?

First, DO NOT attempt to stuff 20 pounds of sausage in one afternoon.

Two, soak the casings for a while before you use them to cut down on the nasty smell (MAJOR improvement).

Three. you need the BIG tray for your Kitchen Aid sausage stuffing attachment,

Four, Mad Kitchen Scientist had improved his casing handling technique, and Chef Spouse had improved his forcing the meat through technique.

And we were only stuffing about 4 pounds of sausage - we packed up the rest loose. One thing that was kind of cool is that the added fat, which stayed fairly intact in the pieces I'd originally shaved/hacked it into in the loose sausage, basically emulsified into the meat in the process of putting it through the mechanical sausage stuffer. Can't wait to see how it cooks up!

At the same time, we had two lamb hearts (above) and four lamb kidneys (below) to deal with.

The hearts we simply stuffed with (hearts have chambers) and wrapped in bacon and roasted. Verdict? As The Executive Committee observed, fat brings flavor, and the heart is a VERY lean muscle. The bacon added some flavor and salt, and the texture was very like liver, but not quite as rich. Mad Kitchen Scientist and I liked it. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee were more "meh." We all agreed it might benefit from some sort of marinade.

The kidneys were BEAUTIFUL. And we didn't have a lot of fancy ingredients. So we just used Julia's base recipe from Mastering (this one is very like it). You carefully remove all the fat and silver skin from the kidneys, saute them briefly (only about 4 minutes) in hot fat (we labbed butter versus lamb fat), remove them and deglaze the pan with shallots, white wine and lemon juice...and then the magic happens. You remove the pan from the heat, take your pre-mashed butter/Dijon mustard mix (did I forget to mention that?) and melt it into the pan juices, slice the kidneys VERY thin, then return them to the pan and reheat the whole thing on low briefly. Sprinkle with parsley.

Again, Mad Kitchen Scientist and I thought they were great. Chef Spouse and The Executive Committee were less enthusiastic.

So now I've butchered a whole animal, gone a second round on sausage, and tasted two new types of offal.

Next up? Something in honor of an upcoming holiday (no fair guessing!), and the return of my (now former) colleague and his spouse.

Food Lab 19: Butchering, Part 1

This lab was a little unconventional. Until we rendered the fat at the end, there was no cooking.

There was a lot of knife work, though.

Let me take you back a few weeks. When we were doing Food Lab: Pasta, the Mad Kitchen Scientist informed us that he had a hookup to get a freshly slaughtered lamb or two. All of us perked up, particularly when he informed us that we could likely do the butchering.

Sure enough, he was able to secure two lambs (affectionately nicknamed Bo and Peep), which were slaughtered a week ago, skinned and gutted, and allowed to hang. Mad Kitchen Scientist picked them up Saturday, and brought them to our place for cutting up Sunday (we have the most counter space).

The IAs were unable to join us, and The Executive Committee, less interested in the process of cutting up an animal and perhaps a little squicked out, decided that watching football while knitting was the better part of valor.

So we aproned up, collected extra paper towels and bandages, sharpened the knives, cracked open Whole Beast Butchery, and got to work.

What did we learn?

There's a reason butchers have band saws. We had a hack saw, and with some elbow grease it did work to do things like sever the neck from the spine, crack the breastbone, split the spine and pelvis, and separate the joints. And when the hack saw didn't cut it (no pun intended), we had a cleaver and a mallet at hand.

Before you ask: yes, we all cut ourselves, but none of us seriously.

The main disassembly actually happened pretty quickly. The steps were:

• Separate the neck from the rest of the body (and save it for stock or merguez)
• Separate the upper rib cage between the 5th and 6th ribs
• Separate the lower rib cage between the 12th and 13th ribs
• Separate the "saddle" (which includes the pelvis)
• Remove the back legs at the hip joints 

All together, for both lambs, that probably took us 90 minutes.

Then we got into the fine work. Which took about five hours.

The upper rib cage turns into two shoulder roasts and two shoulder racks, plus the forelegs come off for the stockpot.

The lower rib cage is where you get your rack of lamb, Frenched or not (your choice), or lambchetta (which is like porchetta but, of course, with lamb).

The saddle becomes tenderloin, boneless loin chops, or lamb "porterhouses" (bone in loin chops).

The legs get boned out into roughly five sections per leg, with each leg producing 4-5 pounds of meat.

Plus each lamb gave us about four pounds of sausage meat.

Of course, we also got the heart, kidneys (still attached to the main carcass upon arrival), and the liver for both lambs.

And we rendered out about 10 cups of lamb fat.

Does that sound like a lot of work? It was.

What did we learn?

I don't think we appreciate butchers enough. This is hard work.

If you're going to do this, you MUST have a reliable method of sharpening your knives at home. We had to stop to resharpen multiple times. You also need multiple hack saw blades.

We probably didn't need the practice lamb, which was ostensibly why we got two. Yes, the second time around did go a little more smoothly, but as long as you pay attention to the lamb's anatomy, you won't go far wrong in your cuts even on the first lamb. But having two made it much easier to divide things up among three couples.

It did kind of make a mess. Not blood - the lamb had hung for a week, so there was very little blood left. But things did get pretty greasy. It took me and Chef Spouse about two hours to clean up after we were done.

If you're going to try this at home, you need at least two people for purposes of hefting, holding, and cutting the carcass. You need plenty of counter space. You need ample time. You need a hack saw, a cleaver, a mallet, and SHARP boning knives. You need a large freezer to store the results of your labors.And you probably want to plan to get take out, because you aren't going to feel like cooking after.

Next up: Butchering, Part 2, where we make stock with all the bones and sausage with the leftover bits and ends, and the rendered fat.

Food Lab 18: Pasta

Planning for pasta Food Lab began two weeks ago when we feared that the election would never ever never end. A comfort food to calm us should swing states get into a litigious brawl and ballot recounts become inevitable. Instead, we rolled out our linguine and ravioli in super PAC-free peace. Is this a great country or what?

We compared linguine made with flour to one with flour and semolina. We then added spinach to the dough, again making a linguine with flour only and one with flour and semolina. The show stopper was the comparison of spinach/flour ravioli stuffed with squash puree to spinach/flour/semolina ravioli stuffed with squash puree. Chef Spouse took the lead. Mad Kitchen Scientist kept ingredients moving and pots of water boiling (MKS notes: kitchen clogs on feet would be ideal for performing latter task, birks and socks not so much). Elizabeth harvested spinach, parsley, and sage from garden to kitchen. The Empress deftly made bowtie pasta with her tiny little fingers using plain linguine dough. Indoctrination has begun. The rest of us pretty much ate and drank.

Linguine – Plain 

¾ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1 egg beaten
Pinch of salt dissolved in beaten egg
1 Tbsp olive oil

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. This ratio was too wet, so we added 1 tbsp of flour. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling technique [used on all pasta variations we made]: First, use wooden roller to press dough into an oblong disk shape of about a ¼ inch thick. Next, run disk of dough through Kitchen Aid pasta roller twice on level 1. Take dough and trifold it, then turn 90 degrees. Flatten with wooden roller to about ¼ inch thick. Roll dough through Kitchen Aid roller on level 1. Repeat this last step until edges smooth. To make linguine, run dough through one time on each level of Kitchen Aid pasta roller all the way up to level 6. You will have a pretty piece of dough. Cut this into 10 inch segments. Change pasta roller attachment to linguine cutter attachment. Pass each dough segment through cutter to make pasta noodles.

Resting technique: We initially rested the noodles clumped on plate that had been sprinkled with semolina, but realized that layering noodles on plate with semolina between layers is preferable. Another option is to hang noodles to dry on kitchen cabinet doors or other ingenious spot. We were putting ours into boiling water pretty quickly, so we weren’t too concerned about drying time.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm blended concoction of 4 tbsp butter, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley. Salt to taste.

Texture and taste: Before and after boiling, noodles were smooth. When compared with the linguine that had semolina (see next recipe), this pasta was more al dente. Definitely calling for red tomato sauces, with our without meat.

Linguine - Semolina


½ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
¼ cup Semolina flour
1 egg beaten
Pinch of salt dissolved in beaten egg
1 Tbsp olive oil

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. This ratio was also too wet, so we added 1 tbsp of flour. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above.

Resting Technique: Sprinkle plate with semolina, layer noodles on plate with semolina sprinkled between layers.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm blended concoction of 4 tbsp butter, 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley. Salt to taste.

Texture and taste: Before boiling, pasta was grainer and a little drier than flour only linguine. After boiling, the noodles were softer than the flour only linguine, but still had a little graininess. Perhaps best with light creamy sauces or al fresco veggie interpretation.

Spinach Linguine 

1+ cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1 egg beaten
3/8 tsp salt dissolved in beaten egg
4.5 oz of fresh spinach wilted in pan, water squeezed out, pulse down in food processor and add 1 egg

There is no oil in this version.

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above. Need to dust flour on dough between feeds through Kitchen Aid pasta roller due to wetness. After we cut into segments, but BEFORE cutting into linguine, dry dough segments by stacking them on a cooling rack, with semolina between each layer.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm meaty tomato sauce. Salt to taste.

Spinach Linguine – with Semolina 

1 cup King Arthur All Purpose flour
1/3 cup Semolina flour
1 egg beaten
3/8 tsp salt dissolved in beaten egg
4.5 oz of fresh spinach wilted in pan, water squeezed out, pulse down in food processor and add 1 egg

Again, no oil in this version.

Blend all ingredients together with a fork until consistency looks like couscous. Use hands to meld dough.

Rolling Technique: Follow technique as directed above. Need to dust flour on dough between feeds through Kitchen Aid pasta roller due to wetness. After we cut into segments, but BEFORE cutting into linguine, dry dough segments by stacking them on a cooling rack, with semolina between each layer.

Boiled linguine for 3 minutes, drained, and tossed with warm meaty tomato sauce. Salt to taste.

Spinach Ravioli (with and without semolina), filled with Squash puree 

For the ravioli dough, we made the recipes above for the spinach linguine with and without semolina. Instead of making final cut into linguine, however, Chef Spouse cut dough lengthwise in 55/45 ratio so that one length is slightly wider than the other. He then spooned teaspoons of puree onto narrower strip about every 3 inches, leaving at least an inch at top and bottom of strip. The wider strip was placed over the pureed strip and he used a ravioli roller to crimp edges all around and evenly between dollops. He cut the ravioli into equal squares.

Boiled for 3 minutes, then tossed with brown butter and sage sauce (20 sage leaves chopped, 1 stick of butter sautéed until lightly browned).

Nirvana.

Written by The Executive Committee

Food Lab 17: Lobster

At our last Food Lab, when we were thinking about the topic for our next lab, Mad Kitchen Scientist observed that lobster's cheap right now - well, not cheap, but cheaper than normal.

Decision made.

When we were at the Maine Avenue Fish Market, purchasing 4 monsters weighing it at over 4 pounds each, plus 4 smaller crustaceans (totaling over 25 pounds of lobster), we came up with the appropriate term for the amount of (over) purchasing we invariably do when we all shop together: "n absurdity." Yesterday, we purchased an absurdity of lobster. Needless to say, at $11 a pound, this was probably the most we've ever spent on the raw ingredients.

We started out the day planning to make lobster thermidor, using Julia's classic recipe, lobster bisque, and looking to compare a straight steam with a partial steam and then finishing on the grill.

Here's what we learned:

Much like with pizza, grilling was gilding the lily. Also it made the tails a little tough. Tasty, but tough.

None of us had any problems dumping the live lobsters into the pot. Apparently, we're a bunch of heartless bastards.

Complicated recipes may be a bad idea at food lab. We missed several key steps in the thermidor recipe. It was still totally edible, but not nearly as transcendent as I was expecting. And the lobster bisque, well, it needs work. We have a decent amount left over, so we can mess around with it more, but it's way too thick and not as flavorful as I'd hoped: rich, but bland.

Chef Spouse has been doing an official cooking class for about two months now. He recently learned a secret ingredient for savory dishes: 100% cacao chocolate. It really does make EVERYTHING taste better.

Bigger lobsters look really impressive, but they don't taste any better, and they're hard to deal with - you need a BIG pot, and an actual hammer to get the meat out of the shells. 

Bash open your cooked lobsters OUTSIDE. Chef Spouse had to clean the kitchen ceiling today. Not joking.

(Those last two may be related.)

Even though the recipes mostly didn't turn out as expected, though, it's impossible to really mess up lobster.