'Tis a flesh wound!
Everyone was okay, but Hunny has since learned to be more careful at red lights. Needless to say, neither of us wanted to do anything for the rest of that day. Especially cooking. And it was for the best because OMG, this project was a doozy from start to finish.
This week's recipe can be found here.*
The Shopping
Unlike my last adventure, this time I got to make it to the Farmer's Market!!! And found nothing I needed except the wrong kind of onion and some granulated pepper. I did get some treats though like arugula and strawberries, so that's a win. The rest of the ingredients were purchased at Mama Jean's. There we found everything that we needed and then some. It was like this dish was intended to be made at higher end organic markets. Hmm...
The Cooking
When starting out, I decided I was going to be on my game. I wasn't going to rush the chopping like I usually do when I think I'm being efficient. (Pro tip: chopping and cooking simultaneously is not efficient no matter how much you think it is.) The "method," as the recipe calls it, says to make the filling first, starting off with roughly chopping your pre-cooked chicken sausages. So I started chopping and got exactly what I thought I would: discs of sausage meat. I guess by roughly chop they mean chop, then tear apart so this shit can actually work.
Observe.
After chopping (or tearing) my sausages, I "zested" my lemon. And by zest, I mean I tried using a good old fashioned grater and injured myself in the process.
Obligatory "blood, sweat, and tears" reference.
This process went as well and you can expect, in that it was a horrible idea and I should have put a lemon zester on my grocery list. So yeah, that didn't go very well. My solution to this dilemma was to take a small paring knife and whittle thin strips of lemon zest and then mincing them down. It was all I could do under the circumstances considering neither Hunny nor I wanted to go near our car.
Try not to think about it.
I should probably add here, that all this trouble over zesting a lemon didn't make a damn lick of difference in the end. But more on that later. In my grating adventures (pun intended), I also learned the difference between the grating side and shredding side. I learned this the hard way while prepping my asiago cheese. Did I mention that we're still just making the filling? Let's fast forward a bit. Here is your shit before mixing.
This is going to be great!
And here it is after.
Well, that was anti-climactic.
I wasn't discouraged yet. I knew this was one part down, and I was only twenty minutes in. It didn't matter that the smell of pre-cooked sausages lingered in the air, like cheap hot dogs. Once I made this sauce, it's down hill from here. So I diced my onion. I minced my rosemary. I chopped my garlic. Then, a new challenger approached. The Portobella.
How do I mushroom?
Turns out, you don't just cut up a 12 oz. mushroom. You got to get rid of the big honking stem first. Which begs the question, why do they even sell it with stems? but no matter. After you break off the stem, you have to de-gill it. The gills are the dark brown flappy bits underneath. You attempt to do this with a spoon.
He's dead Jim.
A nifty web video said to cut marks on top of your mushroom, but it's just as well that you go ahead and chop what you need of it. At long last, I was done prepping! I had finally reached the promised land! Now the cooking can commence, right? It's only been, like, an hour since I started this damn dish. It's just down hill from here.
I wish.
I want to share the rest of the excursions I went through, but I value your time too much. I also get exhuasted just thinking about it. I will add, that the "sauce" is really just a tomato-glazed hash with wine. And although your end result will look pretty...
Ooooo!
...it doesn't taste as good as it might look. Non of those flavors meshed well at all. And the chicken sausage just overpowered the rest of the dish so that I couldn't taste any of the ricotta, asiago, or even the fucking useless lemon zest. I want to say that maybe fresh chicken sausage will make a difference, but I'm too unimpressed to even try this again. Especially with how much it cost...
The Cost
Monetary cost
I don't have alternative prices for you this week (sorry not sorry). But after I tell you how much this fucking dish cost, I'm sure you'll appreciate it. Over all, this dish cost around $65 (that's including what I got at the farmer's market). Among the most expensive items were the chicken sausage ($7.99) and the wine. The cheapest ingredient I bought was the onion at $0.55. And if the monetary cost doesn't sway you, wait till you see...
Temporal Cost
From start to finish, this dish took over two hours to make. Half of that time is spent just prepping. That's right. You have to spend an hour just sorting out your ingredients before you can even apply heat to them. And the end result doesn't even taste good. My friend Hummingbird made a good point during this process saying, "Dishes like these are meant for stay at home moms...with nannies." I couldn't agree more.
Mal appetit!
*Seriously, don't make this dish.
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