Cautionary Cuisine

It’s happened to all of us — somehow we wind up with a wheel of brie in the fridge. The simplest thing to do is just bite the bullet — the wheel that is — and eat it. Admittedly a drastic solution, but you must agree: it solves the problem. There is no longer brie in the fridge.

It’s possible, however, that you may be one of those unfortunate people who buys those tubes of dough — the “pop-open” ones you can use to make croissants. Suddenly the tube of dough catches your eye along with the brie. This is the moment of truth. If you simply take a deep breath, close the refrigerator door, and go for a nice five mile run, you will be just fine.

But sometimes temptation grabs you by the throat and before you know it, you have popped open the tube of dough. Unrolling it, you find that if you are careful you can get two squares of flat dough out of it. Unfortunately these squares of dough are just the right size….

So you rummage around in your cabinets and you find a round baking dish about an inch larger in diameter than the wheel of cheese. Your eyes go wide and you are no longer responsible for your actions.

You spray the dish with non-stick spray. You take one piece of the dough and put it on a flat surface. Then you place the wheel of cheese in the middle and fold up the corners onto the top of the wheel. Having made a total mess of the cheese and one square of dough, you compound your many mistakes by taking the other square of dough and putting it on top of the cheese. You carefully, almost lovingly, fold the dough and make sure it covers the entire surface of the cheese. You smooth out everything as much as you can.

You are not quite sure how you got to this point, but you find that you now have a dough-wrapped wheel of brie. Probably the best thing to do with it would be to simply throw it in the trash. But instead you foolishly pre-heat your oven to 400F. While the oven is pre-heating you decide that you have a few too many eggs. Taking one of them, you beat it and then brush it over the surface of the brie. You carefully brush the egg-wash over as much of the surface as you can, including the sides, without otherwise damaging the poor thing. Why you do this I have no idea. Like I said, you are no longer really in possession of your faculties.

You put the dough-wrapped egg-washed wheel of brie in the baking dish. Now I admit, having come this far, the next step is basically inevitable. You place the dish in the pre-heated oven.

About half an hour later, your mind starts to clear. You start to realize what you have done. You look at your handiwork, still baking in the oven. You notice that it has become dark golden brown on top. You hurriedly take the dish out of the oven and place it somewhere where it can sit for about ten minutes.

In something of a panic, you rummage around looking for crackers or a baguette of bread. Eventually, though, you are forced to confront the consequences of your behavior. You slice into the baked brie, perhaps with a friend or two. You take “just a small bite.” A short time later you look around in surprise … there is no more baked brie.

During the holidays Safeway had this stuff called Kraken Black Spiced Rum. I hope none of you were so foolish as to buy it. Or at least, not more than one or two bottles.

But honestly, I’ve been there. You get home and start taking the groceries out of your recycled-plastic woven grocery bags, and darn if there isn’t a bottle of this stuff just sitting there, kind of glaring at you.

OK, accidents happen. But during the cold winter season some people are tempted to compound their mistake by opening the bottle. You didn’t have to. Rum doesn’t go bad. You can leave it there for years and if you don’t bother it, it won’t bother you.

But you opened the bottle, didn’t you? And now you feel that you have to do something with it. So you think, Gee, I’m cold. Wouldn’t some nice hot drink be just wonderful?

So you put some water on to boil. Nothing harmful about that, right? And you look in the refrigerator and notice you have a stick of butter. So you take a bit of that butter — say, a tablespoon — and then you put it in a 12-oz mug. Butter in a mug. What could be more innocent than that?

But really you are just looking for trouble. And you find a bit more when you look in your cupboard and see some dark brown sugar. And you think, Maybe I’ll take some of that brown sugar — say, another tablespoon — and put it with the butter, just to keep it company. Yes, that’s the story, simple companionship of innocent comestibles.

Suddenly it occurs to you that you have an open bottle of Kraken Black Spiced Rum. And you think, hmn, gee, I wonder ….

Suddenly, before you realize what is happening, you have put not just one, but two tablespoons of black spiced rum into the 12-oz mug. And before anyone can talk you out of it, you fill the mug with the water, which, while you were dithering around, has come to a boil.

Now you are stuck. You mix it with a teaspoon until the butter melts but really you are just putting off the inevitable. Finally, you take that first sip and feel the warmth course down your throat into the center of your being. It is like lighting a fire in your fireplace. And before you know it, you have enjoyed the whole mug of hot buttered rum.

I have only one word for you. OK, actually three words, but one concept. Well, one main concept and some subsidiary concepts. But if you continue to indulge in semantic and epistemological quibbling then I’m afraid you will miss out on the gustatory insight I intend to present.

The, uh … idea … is “sliced pickled jalapenos.”

I can hear your initial reaction. “Woah,” you say. “Jalapenos may be all well and good for the macho trencherman, but I have no desire to turn my dinner experience into an MMA competition. And I am darned well not interested in having a re-match an hour or so later.”

Ah, but here you see the beauty of this concept. Or idea. Or whatever.

First of all, the jalapenos are sliced. You are not going to let a whole jalapeno have a crack at you. At the very least, it will have to come at you in pieces.

But you’ll say, “Even sliced jalapenos can be wicked.” But here’s where the pickling comes in. You are probably already familiar with other food items that gain a different character as they are pickled. The jalapeno is no exception.

When sliced jalapenos are pickled they become … not tame, but, shall we say, civilized. The fire is still there, but it is a refined, cultured fire. Instead of blowing your dish all to hell, it gives it that touch of energy that keeps it from becoming bland and flaccid.

Put pickled sliced jalapenos in your chili, in your casserole, even in your baked macaroni and cheese. Your dishes will stand out from the crowd. Not because they send people running to the water pitcher in desperation, but because they pique the palate without overwhelming it.

An amusing comment on the book 1984 by George Orwell is to say that it is supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. People should take the following as a warning about what not to do with food, not an instruction manual.

There are some people who have been known to do the following.

1. Buy a bunch of thick cut pork ribs. Some have bought several pounds (at least two packages) of these ribs.
2. Having done that, they compound the mistake by washing the ribs, then poaching them for an hour and a half (more is bett… I mean worse… here.)
3. Now that they had all this messy meat on their hands, they should probably have just thrown it out. But they proceeded to throw good money after bad by getting two (or as many as necessary) large baking dishes and fitting the meat in these dishes in a single layer.

4. Some people, finding themselves with nothing to do while the ribs were poaching, actually made the following even worse mistake:

   a. They took two cups of catsup and put it in a 2-quart saucepan.

   b. They then wasted perfectly good powdered mustard by putting two tablespoons of it in with the catsup. Some, having left-over mustard from hot-dog barbecues, decided to waste that by putting it in the mix instead.

   c. They also took about 1/2 cup vinegar and put it in.

   d. Having more honey than they knew what to do with, they threw some of that in the pot as well (about 1/2 cup)

   e. They then made fools of themselves by adding a lot of cayenne pepper (how much depends on how foolish they were feeling).

   f. They then cooked it for about twenty minutes, and thinned it with a can of chicken broth to make sure there was a lot of it.

   g. Some people, having more money than brains, instead bought a couple bottles of Stubb’s Barbecue Sauce instead and warmed it in a pot. They then added water to make sure they had enough to cover the ribs. Again these fools added cayenne pepper to the point where they suffered second degree burns while tasting it.

Having compounded their mistake by making one of the above mistakes, they made still another error by putting the sauce in with the ribs, trying to cover them if possible.

By now a major disaster was obviously in the offing. These idiots took the pans of ribs, covered them with perfectly good aluminum foil, and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour or until the ribs were soft.

They then tried to pass this mess off as their dish at a pot luck or barbecue. It was pretty clear that this was not well received because after a short time nobody was able to find any sign of the ribs. Someone had obviously taken them out in the back yard and buried them. Or something. You have been warned.

WARNING! Do not try this at home! Professional drivers in a closed course! Or whatever….

Anyway my wife goes to Cosco. I am very glad she does this. She always surprises me. Sometimes she comes home with 12 lb of brisket, or a few ribeyes. Whatever is on sale.

This time it was a salmon fillet. Hmn. It was about 3 lb (at $9 a pound). That’s actually a lot. I asked, “Are you going to eat it with me?” Answer: “No.”

Oops. Now what do I do? Obviously the most intelligent thing would be to feed it to the hordes of feral cats that live around here (a cat had a litter of kittens in the woodpile next to my shed last year — they were really cute for about 1 month.) But I doubt that would go over well. And I don’t want to ruin a good thing. A surprise brisket or nice steak every now and then is not something to be sneered at.

Well, the fact that only I would have to eat it meant that I could experiment.

So… I’ve been fascinated lately with puff paste. Fascinated as in “wondering what all the fuss is about.” After all, it’s flour, butter, a little salt and a little water. Then you go through this rigmarole of softening the butter, making dough, rolling out the dough, putting the butter in the middle of the dough, then rolling it out and folding it over until your arms fall off or the men in the white coats come.

I’ve tried it a few times. It doesn’t work. People may claim it does, but they are prevaricating.

So I thought, “I’d like to do something with salmon and pastry.” Looked on line and found 6.02×10^23 recipes for “salmon wellington.” All of them claimed to be “easy.” For some reason prevarication seems to be in the very DNA of people who are involved with puff paste.

You see, “salmon wellington” uses puff paste.

Now I wasn’t going to spend a whole afternoon wrestling with a bunch of greasy dough. Of course I should have realized…. Yes, I found a recipe for puff paste that claimed to be “easy.” I guess compared to scaling Mt. Everest without oxygen it is.

The big advantage this recipe had was that you don’t have to soften the butter. Since I’d always skipped that step anyway, this seemed to be a major advantage.

OK — flour in the bowl … a little salt … cut thin slices of butter into the flour and salt … add water … mix until you get a stiff dough. Wow … I actually got something that, if you looked at it cross-eyed, could be called a stiff dough. They said it would have lots of chunks of butter — that was OK, in fact necessary. Mine certainly fit the bill.

Balled it up then flattened it into a “disk.” Threw it in the fridge for an hour. Got it out again and started with the rigmarole of rolling and folding. But you were not supposed to get too carried away with that. I didn’t.

Threw the dough in the fridge for 2 hours this time. Check the recipe for termination (no, you didn’t have to keep rolling the dough out and throwing it in the fridge forever. Whew!)

Now that the puff paste is doing its thing, which is described as “resting”, I could… no, I could NOT rest myself. I started in on the salmon part of the salmon wellington.

First — salmon should be skinless. Oops.
Second — I needed spinach. Oops.
Third — I needed Dijon mustard. Oops.
Fourth — I needed “lemon zest.” Oops.
Fifth — I needed parchment. Oops.

What did I do?

First — made a brief attempt at skinning the salmon fliet. Gave up before anything bad happened. Check.
Second — Had some scallions. They’re green. Check.
Third — had a little powdered mustard. Check.
Fourth — had some lemon juice. Check.
Fifth — had some paper on the drawing easil my grandkids used. Check.

Got the dough out again. Cut it in half. The screams were almost inaudible.

Rolled out the dough. Looked at the piece of salmon. Cut the piece of salmon in half. Looked at the dough. Looked at the piece of salmon. Rolled out the dough some more. Finally the surface area of the dough exceeded, slightly, the surface area of the salmon. Declared victory.

Got the baking sheet, cut the “parchment” to size. Put the dough on the parchment. Put the salmon on the dough. Realized I had to put something between the salmon and the dough — the scallions and some grated cheese. Fortunately I was too tired to actually say what was on my mind.

Got the scallions and cheese under the salmon. Put the salmon back in place then added the spice/butter mixture.

Now let me tell you about this spice/butter mixture. While preparing it, it smelled really nice. I was thinking, “This might actually taste good.” But for some reason it stopped smelling nice when I put it on the salmon.

Too late to do anything now.

Rolled out the other half of the dough. For some reason this half was a bit smaller. But eventually managed to get overlap.

Used an “egg-wash” on the bottom layer of dough, where the edges were exposed. Put the top layer on and tried to create a seal. Haha. Juice came out everywhere, just a little, but just enough to tell me that I was not going to get the beautiful results promised in the recipe. Brute-forced it, then egg washed the whole top surface.

Threw it in the oven. About half an hour later it was done.

Things that went right:

1. The paper didn’t catch fire. (It did brown a little around the edges.)
2. The puff paste turned golden brown on the top. In places.
3. The entirety was only moderately soggy.
4. It was edible.

Things that went wrong:

1. The salmon could have been cooked just a bit more.
2. The scallions were inedible. They were just strings of vegetable fiber.
3. The paper worked pretty well, but it still stuck in a few places.
4. The juice mixed with the egg wash and stuck to the baking pan.
5. I have four more pieces of salmon wellington I have to eat.
6. I have about 1 lb of slamon fillet (with skin) that I have to deal with somehow. Let me assure my readers (both of them) that I will NOT be making another salmon wellington.