Hopefully, you've seen my lamb and tzatziki article. That recipe was made in preparation for tomorrow night, Edible Unknown Greek night. My mission today: to consider what I could have done differently, to make each dish both authentic and still unique. Think Greek fusion.
I'm pretty notorious around here for my habitual overuse of black pepper, a trait which comes from my German ancestry. I'm thinking a lot of pepper could do a lot for a tzatziki; I sort of wish I could harvest some of the medieval European herbs that were used in place of pepper before true piper nigrum came into common use.
The lamb? I'm not quite sure- everyone I'm serving it for hates lamb, so I have to magically transform it into something else- but I think, even through the hate, that I'll let the lamb flavor shine through. It's too delicate to waste.
When Savory and I go on cooking binges, we tend not to mention that we each have a raging and private yen for the sheer art of complexity. Our reptilian epicurean mindsets require, as it were, a tremendous number of ingredients, sensitive temperature and timing, or at least a bit of showmanship before we consider ourselves as having truly lived up to the task of cooking something.
While I'm certain that if ever there were a recipe which required us to write a Unix shell script in time with our food, we'd be shuddering in (separate) orgasmic delight, there is something to be said for the simple. In fact, sometimes the simple is the most wonderful thing one can have.
Case and point: oven-roasted corn on the cob. I grew up in a family with both Southern American and German roots, and corn on the cob was something one boiled, slathered in butter, then consumed with those little pokey ceramic things suspending it like some sort of corn spit before our mouths. And of course, the butter ended up all over everything- kind of like inviting the Tasmanian Devil to an all-you-can-eat crab restaurant.
If you've got a gas broiler, you can come darn close to barbecue-level corn on the cob by:
- Strip the corn on the cob of silk and husk.
- Put half a stick of butter in the bottom of a pyrex baking dish, and set your broiler on high over it.
- When the butter is melted, put in your corn on the cob (4 cobs).
- Check every few minutes. When the top of the corn is dotted with roasted kernels in punch-card fashion, rotate your corn, grind on a little pepper, and sprinkle on a little salt.
Once the whole thing is pretty much roasted, you'll have the most amazing corn ever produced from an oven. In four ingredients.
Of course, now I need other methods to deplete my spice rack. Lest it grow, gain sentience, and claim sovereignty over my newly annexed kitchen. Gotta go.
Zabaglione. It sounds like a post-modernistic WWII dictator running about the house screaming of Germans and meatballs. (note: I can make fun of Italians, because I am, in fact, Italian) But in reality is an Italian custard that is many times used as an appetizer or a component of many of the fabulous and artery assaulting desserts that make up Italian post meal cuisine. Notably, this is a side component of quite a few Tiramisu and Zuppa Inglese recipes. Although its not the real way you're supposed to make Tiramisu, just a faster way.
My personal favorite is to make this custard in ramekins and top with fresh berries, as a breakfast or dessert concoction. Of course, there are hundreds of ways to bastardize this custard, substituting Auslese or other German Eiswein, Sherries, or Ports for the Marsala. you can let your imagination run wild.
(Dammit. Every time I write an article I try to put as much schtick as I can into it, but it always inevitably falls back down to a hum drum cooking article. I could emulate tourrettes and just stick a random obscene word in the sentences somewhere I guess. Maybe I'll write a filter.)
Anyway, back to the custard at hand.
To make Zabaglione, one needs the following stuff from your local grocer (or, if you live in Vegas, your local 7-11):
- 5 egg yolks
- 1 whole egg
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup Marsala
Easy, no?
- In a batter bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the egg together with the sugar, beating until it turns a lemony yellow color.
- Whisk in the Marsala, until fully combined.
- Microwave (?!) for 30 seconds.
- Whisk
- Repeat steps 3-4 until it is desired thickness.
But it has raw eggs! I'll die!
If your eggs aren't pasteurized then you just may. But if you're living somewhere that doesn't have pasteurized eggs, you may want to move. Or at least get checked out for tapeworms.
Microwave?! BLASPHEMY!
True, Microwaves are evil. They are the incarnate of Lazy Americans(tm) everywhere, and they usually botch things up like no tomorrow. However. This prevents you from having to make it the old fashioned way, using a double-boiler (or a glass bowl on top of a boiling pot of water, my favorite). You can still make it that way, just be careful it doesn't cook too fast, otherwise you'll have an omelette. And a nasty omelette at that.
It is dark here!
You and your custard have been eaten by a grue.
That about sums up Q&A. I hope I've enlightened you, the viewer, to a world not unlike that of custards. Perhaps someday we will be privy to a custard takeover and have to bow to custard, and when that day comes, you can say you helped birth the enslavement of the human race. Until then, custard will remain our friend as ...
GOOD EATS
swanky music plays
(GOOD EATS is copyrighted somewhere by Food Network or Alton Brown, and because I love them like family, I hope they don't get mad)
