It's the Holidays - and Friends Help

I am buried and overwhelmed and wearing my Don Quixote hat these days when my general outlook is more Sancho Panza on a good day and Aldonza on a bad one.

But I have a friend named Liz. She's a new friend but I met her Doing Things. Things I mean to write about here but keep quiet when push comes to shove because the desire to hide has gotten larger than the desire to share. Doing Things is how I keep it from growing too big.

Liz and Nathan sent me a package in a plain brown wrapper. I have said before that you cannot stop The Taunting, but this year the windmills and the Don Quixote of it all made it very, very close. But here it is the Taunting in it's plain brown wrapper - it followed all the rules - I knew it was coming but I didn't know what it was, it had packages that needed to be opened in order. And shockingly and beautifully it had Poppets. A Poppet. You cannot lie to a Poppet.

One of the Red Poppets came over to help and check out the Paper Poppet. Like all good taunting Packages this one came with instructions. The Paper Poppet is so beautiful and so full of Poppet that it was decided that he was going to have to find a way to be. He has decided that he would like to be a Billboard on a rooftop in Poppetropolis or perhaps a wall mural in the side of a building but he thinks he would prefer the rooftop view.


The Paper Poppet carefully removed himself from his charge much to the delight of the local denziens. The Choco's appeared joyfully on the scene. Not only was it chocolate it was chocolate that they had never tried before! NewThings!

And then they noticed that they needed to call over their friends and shouted across to the circus where the Coffee Poppets had been working out logistics for a food stand.

Because there is very little that makes that particular social circle as happy as things that combine their two passions, and here it was!

In bar form for relatively easy transport!

Plans and recipes were being discussed with logistics being undertaken and plans made to return for the others  . . . which left Red alone until Merri wandered by with her red balloon.

Packages are very exciting. It's all the wondering; "What could it be" and the excitement of red yarn.

Merri helped Red with the package and they spent some time guessing because they knew that Liz is a Maker of Things, and that meant that the inside could be almost any Thing.

And when it was opened the Thing was the best kind of Thing - A Thing from a Friend that could live in Poppetropolis and also BE a Friend!

They have all informed me that her name is Scarlet.

Sunray is looking into a rental for her now.

V-Day - Tangy Citrus Chicken and the Element of Timing

I think I've figured it out, I have somehow made mortal enemies with some form of intelligent virus, and every time I have three or four days of health and productivity, my enemy lies in wait lulling me into an ambush where I suddenly find I am host for a new round of microbial battle.

But sieges are won through persistance and I don't care how long it takes, I'm finishing The Valentine's Day Menu Saga - So there! Hah! Ha hah! Fie on you tiny battalions. True Love and Tangy Citrus Chicken will still be shared with the world!

Or at least True Love for Tangy Citrus Chicken because it was really, really good.

A recap:

The Boy of the House wanted to do something special for His Girl, but he didn't want her to think he just bought her things. He wanted to DO something for her, and he decided to cook her a Valentine's Day meal. In order to do this after he had chosen his menu, he had to get through religious dietary restrictions, 2 blizzards, learning a few new cooking techniques and the actual cooking itself. He enlisted me as coach and the Poppets as assistants. I didn't sous chef for him much, because he wanted to do it himself, but I did help him keep track of timing, because one of the most difficult parts of meal planning is making sure everything gets to the table served at the right temperature.

So part of that is figuring out how long things take to make and working your preparation plan accordingly. It was a wonderful week working on this and I wanted to keep the memory with all it's details and special insights and recipes, so I'm putting it here in the Dreamtime, for me, for His Girl and our families, because happy things are easy to make smaller and this way we can keep pieces of it as large and adventurous and as loving as it actually was. This is the final entry in the story.

The menu consisted of Tangy Citrus Chicken, Spinach Leek Tart, and Glazed Sweet Potatoes. He was serving non-alcoholic mojitos to drink with dinner and dessert was a Peanut Butter and Chocolate Mousse Terrine with Cappuccino.

So this is the order that things were learned and made:

We learned how to use the Bialetti Mukka Express first. The Coffee Poppets were strong enablers . . I mean supporters of this effort. You can read about that here, f you haven't already. We did that at the beginning of the week before the dinner.

Then the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Terrine takes a couple of days so that was started the Thursday before Valentine's Day with the Choco Poppets. You can read about that here.

That entry was when I realized there were two ways to tell the story: Linearly for the date, or each entry could hold the recipe and tell the story of the dish from decision to delivery on the table. I chose the story of each dish with the date story mixed in so that each entry has the full recipe.

Which meant that I told the story of the Glazed Sweet Potatoes next, which includes the appearance of the Drunken Poppet and the participation of the Pumpkin Spice Poppets. It was supposed to be made in advance on Saturday, but had gotten moved to Sunday morning, as you can see here.

This is when The Skeleton Who Wants to Run a Flower Shop reminded The Boy that he had to do things like set the table and that tables should have fresh flowers. The Boy had never arranged his own flowers so that was another thing he was going to have to learn.

But first The Boy had to make the truly romantic and highly work intensive Spinach Leek Tart. The recipe for which is here, and the entry also includes the slightly manic digression on buying mushrooms before a blizzard.

As you see from the photo that opens this entry, the Skeleton will not be denied. He was waiting, as are we all, for the Tangy Citrus Chicken, the keystone of this V-Day meal, to get underway.

You may remember that the whole thing began with this as the centerpiece recipe. It had his two required elements; it was a meat meal, and it looked "tasty". It has some heat to it which is something His Girl likes, but wasn't so spicy that he wouldn't like it. This was actually the recipe that we really wanted to make in advance to make sure it worked, but circumstances prevented it.

There was also the timing-to-be-hot issue. Tangy Citrus Chicken cooks in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour and 15 minutes and then gets finished off with a quick broil. Spinach Leek Tart gets cooked at 400 degrees but it doesn't cook very long, only 15 minutes for the last step. The glazed sweet potatoes would have needed about 20 minutes at 350 degrees if it were the whole batch but we were only going to replate enough for the dinner, because the original recipe serves 8-10, so it would probably be about 15 minutes too.

His Girl was due over by 5:00, which we meant that the chicken had to be in by 4:00 at the latest. Then the potatoes would go back in the oven at 4:55 and the tart by 5, moving the temperature to 375, with them sitting down to dinner at 5:25. At least that was how it was supposed to work when we started that morning.

INGREDIENT LIST FOR TANGY CITRUS CHICKEN

3/4 of a cup of lemonade concentrate, defrosted

1/4 of a cup of ketchup

3 tablepoons of brown sugar

3 tablespoons of white vinegar

1 teaspoon of soy sauce

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoonn freshly ground black pepper

1 chicken cut into 1/8ths

1/2 cup of flour

1/4 cup of canola oil

On the day before the blizzard the biggest concern we had was finding a full kosher chicken or even better one pre-cut into eighths. Turkey everyone had, but chicken, not so much. I found one and only one pre-packaged chicken ( no way was I going to the butcher on such short notice). It was one chicken, in eighths - obviously meant to be, but it also meant that we couldn't do a test run on the recipe.

Instructions for Tangy Citrus Chicken

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl mix the lemonade concentrate, ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce ginger, paprika, chili powder . . . . . .

"Umm wait a minute did we already say chili powder? I put in Garlic Powder I think?"

"Are you having the Drunken Poppet call out the list?"

"No."

"Here let me teach you a system." here is the system. We put out all of our ingredients on an area of the counter. That does 2 things. You know that you have all your ingredients so you don't suddenly find out you are missing something, and you can keep track of what you have used.

As soon as you use the ingredient,if you are done with it then you can put it away ( shortens cleanup time) if you can't put it away because you need to tend to the recipie, you move "included" ingredients to a different counter or counter area on the other side of your body so you know what you used and what you didn't use yet. We lined the spices up, topped off the Drunken Poppet's cup and sent him to help elsewhere and let the Highly Caffinated Poppet help line up and inventory the spices. As you can see your starter counter gets clearer and clearer as you go along.

So to continue:

. . . . garlic powder,onion powder, thyme , oregano, basil salt and pepper. Mix and set aside

The simpler way to say that would have been "take everything but the last three ingredients on the list mix together in a medium bowl and set aside." But it really was handy having each spice listed in the recipe. It acted like a check list.

And so that's what we did.

Well, that took longer than we were expecting. Hmmn.

Now we went to the next item which was:

Dredge the chicken in the flour.

Well our chicken was packaged and it was going to feed a lot more than the two people the dinner was planned for, so when we unpacked the chicken to clean and prep it for dredging we decided to butcher it a little bit more so that it would be easier to serve and eat. Which meant the boy had to learn these things since it was him that was making the meal. We were overshooting our window. We had thought that starting this part by 3pm would give us plenty of time, but there was some shuffling of other family members and we were about a half hour off schedule. Luckily it ended up that His Girl was going to need us to come get her. This meant The Boy could concentrate on doing things in the right order rather than trying to stall or take shortcuts.

So the meat was dressed and he learned how to dredge the chicken which is a way of lightly taking damp chicken through flour.

In a large pot ( yeah it said pot - you don't need a pot, you do need a super big frying pan with deep sides. ) heat the oil over medium high heat. Brown the chicken until the skin is crisp on all sides.

Remove the chicken pieces to a baking pan in a single layer.

Pour the spice mixture over the chicken. Bake covered for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

"Awesome - now it's my turn! You have an hour to set the table and clean up!"

Apparently the Skeleton Poppet had been waiting patiently. He taught the boy how to mix the preservation cut flower food into water by measuring into a large bowl and mixing it there.

Helpful tip - slightly warm or room temperature water works best for the mixing.

The other Poppets that had been helping in the kitchen were helping to take out the good fleishig (meat) china and silverware. The boy set up the mint garnish for the mojitos as well as a water glass in case she didn't like mojitos as much as he did.

The Skeleton Who Wants to Run a Flower shop taught the boy how to cut flowers to the right height, and use a funnel to fill or refill vases once the flowers were arranged. ( It keeps the water from getting everywhere and you don't have to change the position of the flowers)

The best way to cut flowers : Cut with a sharp knife on a diagonal. Remove leaves that would be underwater on the arrangement, but keep the thorns on the roses, because taking them off shortens the life of a cut rose.

Here is the first arrangement. It went on the painted chest in the dining room.

You always arrange flowers for color and balance. Here is the Skeleton helping The Boy to settle a pink rose into the centerpiece. Fun fact, that is a Waterford crystal bowl that Spook ( the poppet) usually lives inside when it is on the shelf because he likes the disortion of looking through the cut crystal. Hmmmn, I'm letting The Boy use my good knives, the good china and my real crystal - some people might look askance at this, but these things are meant to be used, they're better that way.

With some fussing the table was set. He lit candles.

The chicken had made it in by 4:30. The potatoes were replated in an oven to table ceramic and went in at 5:20.

The temperature was moved to 375 and the tart was put in at 5:30. The Boy muddled the mint and mixed the mojiotos, so they were ready for when His Girl arrived. The Perfectly Normal Husband had left to pick her up before and brought her over by 5:40.

The Chicken came out at 5:45 and cooled down while the Tart finished at 5:55, which is also when the sweet potatoes came out. (Please note that the sweet potatoes were basted every 10 minutes during the second session in the oven, just like when they were cooked originally.)

Everything was served at the table and The Boy served His Girl by 6pm.

Like all good staff I ate in the kitchen. My kitchen has a swinging door so I kept it shut, so the kids had some semblance of privacy. The Perfectly Normal Husband was upstairs - slogged down with work. It was actually surprising that he was home at all this time of tax season. I took a plate up to him. Except for the sweet potatoes, he doesn't like them and I figured why waste them. So I can say honestly not only was the meal excellent, but all of these recipes will be going into the regular rotation.

The Spinach Leek Tart was, not surprisingly, a huge hit with His Girl. However, surprisingly indeed, The Boy really liked it too and asked for us to have it again.

The Poppets were as proud of him as if he were their own Boy, which I suppose he is, at least he's Pumpkin Spice and Cappy and The Skeleton Who Wants to Run a Flower Shop's Boy, since they are His Poppets, and these relationships are always reciprocal. Oh and Spook. He's Spook's Boy too.

When the dinner was over and the Penut Butter - Chocolate Mousse Terrine was served with the Choco Poppet adding a little caramel before it left the kitchen. She loved the dessert.

We discovered that the picture above is a really big serving of that particular dessert. The Boy also made His Girl cappuccino with Silk soy milk which wasn't half bad, but not as good as milk would have been (silly rabbis) and then they sat in the living room looking at the Poppet Circus. . .

. . . and talking for a good long while. I told The Boy he could stay with His Girl and I'd clear the table (because the living room and dining room are open to each other through an arch so it's some nice, unobtrusive chaperoning that way) and when I was just about done with the clean up and the repackaging, they came and asked about curfew - which was ten. So they had about another hour and half. Then they behaved just like a regular couple who were 15 and 14, and played video games and watched TV until it was time for her to go home.

I love them for that, as much as I love them for being unlike a regular couple who are 15 and 14.

The Spinach Leek Tart had been cut and served in a way to keep the heart with her initial intact, and the remaining Tangy Citrus Chicken still had enough to feed another four people - which is more or less the number of people at His Girl's house. Because we followed the strictest of the rules when we were preparing things, we were able to send these things home with her. So even though it was a meal, she still got to show off what her boyfriend gave her for Valentine's Day. Which isn't supposed to matter of course, but I remember being 14 and 15 and maybe even 16, when it's nice to be able to show someone else that you are loved and admired, and that someone put some effort into letting you know.

She is definitely loved and admired.

The boy certainly thinks she's worth every minute of it.

The End of the V-Day Celebration Menu

V-Day - The Ineffable Lightness of Spinach Leek Tart

The next Holiday Marathon starts this week. And here I am still catching up with Valentine's Day! Purim is this weekend - A complicated holiday that looks like something simple. It's also the starter's gun for Passover. Passover will have shades of the things that have completely derailed me since Thanksgiving. I am not going to repeat what I did at the High Holy Days however and I WILL finish posting the full V-Day Epic, before my personal trip into the Wonderland of Purim.

We are up to recipe #4 the Spinach Leek Tart, plus the mojitos

His final menu was

• Tangy Citrus Chicken
• Glazed Sweet Potatoes
• Spinach Leek Tart
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Mousse Terrine
• Virgin Mojitos
• Cappuccino

The links go to the recipes already written about in case you missed them and the tale of The Boy cooking a Valentine's day dinner for His Girl

*****

So here is the story of the most romantic spinach dish I've ever participated in.

The Boy does not hate all green things, but he does have strong opinions about many of them. Most of those opinions can be compromised with Bernaise Sauce.

When he sat down to make the menu he had a mental list of His Girl's favorite things. Among her favorite things were spinach and mushrooms. He hates mushrooms. He really only likes spinach in a souffle. He showed me the page in the book. "I want to make this."

"Are you sure? Will you eat it? There's no point in making a meal for two people if you're not going to eat the most complicated dish in it."

"I think she'll like it, it's got all her favorite things so I'll eat it with her."

The boy is not one for flowery poetry or emo declarations from rooftops. He is the absolute opposite of drama.

He really loves His Girl. The proof is in the Tart.

The other thing I will point out is that his understanding of the interaction of different flavors is evident in his selection of this as the vegetable side dish for the meal. The chicken was going to be citrusy and tangy, the sweet potatoes would be "dark" and sweet. He had specifically chosen this side dish to compliment the other two without being too heavy. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. He's good at chemistry, he's been a bit of a foodie for the last couple of years and I suppose I'm just actually surprised that he's listened to us discuss the finer points of great meals and menu planning and absorbed it. Aren't we always just a little surprised when we discover our kids really listened to us after all? Or maybe it's just me.

Even though the whole meal was planned around the chicken; because he wanted to make her a meat meal, because you don't eat meat as often when you keep kosher, and even though the showstopper for V-Day is always supposed to be dessert, which was certainly epic, this part of the meal was truly his gift to her. From start to finish.

The Coffee Poppets had learned a love of mushrooms when we did the Longwood Gardens Mushroom Soup while on vacation. They popped right in when he decided to make this.

INGREDIENTS FOR SPINACH LEEK TART

1 17 1/2 ounce package frozen puff pastry divided

2 large eggs divided

4 tablespoons margarine divided

3 garlic cloves minced

2 shallots, minced

4 oz or 1.5 cups of cremini mushrooms, stems removed, sliced

1 tablespoon of Port, Maderia, sherry or other red wine

2 leeks, thinly sliced use white and pale green part only

1 10 oz box of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1/2 cup chicken broth

1 teaspoon rosemary ( which reminds me - I have to buy more rosemary)

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

juice from 1/2 lemon

pinch of Kosher Salt

pinch of freshly ground black pepper

3-4 tablespoons of bread crumbs

A brief digression about finding mushrooms in the lull between two storms

Let me just tell you that getting the ingredients was a saga. We had gotten a 2 foot snowstorm about a week before. The Tuesday before Valentines Day they were predicting another foot and a half to two feet. The Boy and I were originally thinking that we would make this for Friday night to test it, but we were pretty sure that there would be no going anywhere on Wednesday and Thursday. So we preemptively decided we were going to shop for everything on Tuesday. If we needed something really fresh everything would probably be operational by Sunday morning. I made the executive decision to shop while he was at school - lucky I did!

The one thing I've learned this year is that I live by the Mushroom Capital of the world. I try to buy my produce locally and luckily my local Acme uses many of the same suppliers as my local Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

The other thing I've learned is that in this area, which doesn't usually get a lot of snow, the hint of snow sends people stampeding to the nearest market to buy up milk, bread and eggs. I've never figured it out. I now have a standing assumption that when snow falls from the sky the locals ritually make french toast.

So I was a little concerned that I might have trouble finding eggs, but I was pretty sure that the rest of my ingredient list was going to be easy. The other reason I needed to go shopping ASAP is that the kosher stuff is not universally available in one place and sometimes you need to hit several places to get all the things you need. Whole Foods is great for vegan versions of things like the cream-cheese-that-isn't and stuff like that, so I figured I would pick up the mushrooms there.

The first thing that surprised me was that the Whole Foods was packed at 10 am on a Tuesday morning - were there really that many unemployed or SAHMs (or SAHDs, we're pretty liberal here) in the area with so much disposable income that they were getting their mandatory milk, bread and eggs at Whole Foods?

The strip mall was empty except for Whole-Food-going denizens who were parking all the way into the next "zone" for all the other stores and shlepping over to find carts. I was practically in a dazed state when a parking spot opened up between a cart stop and a row close to the door. I grabbed a cart and went in, completely focused on mushrooms.

The Mushroom Division at our whole foods is a connoisseurs delight. It's five rows high, it has eight standard varieties of mushrooms. Plus whatever the cool kids are buying that week. Loose. Prepackaged. Prepared mushroomy things you can just heat up. You half expect the Caterpillar from Alice to be smoking something herbal and looking at you smugly when you approach it.

It's the very first thing on the right hand side as you enter the store.

It was empty.

I had no idea that the shelves were green before that moment. Dark Green.

Irrational panic set in and I looked around the rest of the green grocer section. Packed, yes. Stripped bared like Mother Hubbard's pantry? Hell no. Except for the mushrooms. I found a guy with a green apron restocking something and fought my way through to him. There must have been an edge of hysteria in my voice, because he was uber calming as he explained that there had been interruptions in their mushroom deliveries because of the last storm and they were supposed to get some on Thursday but that was now looking very doubtful. There might be mushrooms on Saturday but they had just gotten a bunch in on Monday and well, I could see the vast yawning emptiness for myself.

OK, I thought, Why are people lying in wait and pouncing on mushroom deliveries at the Whole Foods? Maybe if you move upscale in our area people make mushroom omelets or mushroom quiches instead of french toast when it snows? Just in case the nice man made me a list of all the potential mushroom delivery dates and introduced me to the manager, who confided in me that she didn't really get it either. I was relieved to find out that vegans were not rushing the shelves for dairy free whipped creams and cream cheeses. All the rest of my vegetative needs were easily met.

I moved on to Trader Joe's. There I ran into a more localized phenomena. This particular storm was going to hit and possibly immobilize us for Wedsday and Thursday. Friday is when observant Jews prepare for Shabbat, so you have to get everything done before sundown, including the cooking. Which means a lot of Jewish cooks who usually have a few days to buy thing fresh before they have to make meals in advance were rushing the shelves for enough food to last them the entire week. They weren't going to be able to go shopping, regardless of the weather, until Sunday. Trader Joe's carries a lot of kosher items and is very popular with the local community. I was there to buy some back up frozen side dishes and dessert just in case something when terribly wrong with any of the recipes. I know they usually buy locally too, but I checked the mushrooms just in case. Devastated! Barren! Post apocalyptic! Except for three packages on the uppermost shelving with a tiny little old Jewish lady desperately trying to reach the shelf, which wouldn't have helped her because the three packages were deeply set toward the back of said shelf. She would have needed to grow about a foot and a half. And frankly Trader Joe's doesn't look like they keep the Caterpillar around with his size distorting 'shrooms.

The package she was reaching for was one with two large portobellos. Hamburger sized ones. Not what I needed, but I offered to get them for her and warned her there was a local run on mushrooms if she needed more. After all, I am a foot and a half taller than her - no 'shrooms needed. She just needed the one package. I got it down for her. Behind it, lo and behold were two 10 ounce packages of cremini mushrooms which apparently have recently become known as "baby portobellos" and so this package had both names.

I thanked the universe for the benefits of instant karma, assumed it had more to do with The Boy's karma than mine, and grabbed both packages chuckling madly to myself and going to checkout muttering "I'm rich! I'm a happy miser. . . . . "

Good thing too - all Acme had were button mushrooms - which you can use in a pinch but the flavor is different and lighter.

So now I know. If I need mushrooms before a snowstorm, I'm going out at dawn . . . . .

End of maniacal mushroom digression . . . .

Recipe

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out each of the puff pastry sheets into a 10x10 inch square.

Uh yeah . . . we had made the Glazed Sweet Potatoes at the start of the day and had started defrosting the puff pastry sheets about two hours before we needed them. This is officially Not Enough Time.

So we took the sheets out and they had defrosted enough to make a kind of tent structure out of each of them and put them on the heated stove. We used the necessary defrosting time to prep all of the other ingredients. The Boy learned how to wash and slice leeks. It's a little like dissecting a frog. You remove wilted leaves, cut off the roots and make an incision lengthwise to separate it and rinse of sandy particles that may have settled in the layer. Leeks as we learned on the Longwood Garden's recipe are onionlike and we needed both googles and gloves. We may have had trouble with the mushrooms but Whole Foods leeks are powerful good.

The end results of thinly slicing the 2 leeks:

We saved the darker green parts to use in a chicken soup later that week.

Then we moved on to zesting the lemon. We needed a teaspoon of zest. I have a zester. Owning a zester is one of those moments when you realize you cook a lot more than the rest of your social circle, because if you don't have a zester you end up using the cheese grating side of your cheese grater, which becomes massively annoying when you do it with citrus fruit.

When you do it often enough that you are dancing with joy because you found a zester so now you won't need your grater and it's accompanying torn finger skin complete with instant addition of citrus acid, you have crossed a line. It's OK though, my friends still love me, as long as I invite them over for dinner.

So The Boy learned how to use a zester, now he will start his own kitchen someday and assume that a zester is a necessary thing, like a garlic press and and french press.

Zesting takes a long time.

The pastry thawed.

Place 1 puff pastry sheet on an un greased baking sheet.

I use Silpats for pastry now. Any pastry. It's a vast improvement and keeps the pastry fluffy and cleans up super quick. I use it for frozen pastry based snacks too. I have a silpat and a newer brand from Bed Bath and Beyond. Because you need separate ones for meat and dairy and they have two different colors that way. But I admit I think I slightly prefer the silpat for dairy baking anyway.

The writer of the recipe, Susie Fishbein, also recommends using parchment paper for easy clean up.

So you have one square puff pastry sheet spread out. You cut the other sheet into 8 one inch wide strips. Brush the edges of the flat sheet with cold water ( this recipe gave me an excuse to finally buy a silicone based pastry brush - which is also making my life better since all of my cheap paintbrushes that I'd been using before kept being used for poppet projects). Lay 4 of the strips around the edges to form a flat rim, like a picture frame. Brush this rim with cold water. Lay the other four strips on top of those to form a higher rim. Trim the corners as necessary so it is a neat square.

Beat 1 egg lightly and brush on the pastry frame. Prick the tart all over the bottom with a fork. Place in the oven about 7-10 minute until puffed and golden.

So we did that and then we discovered that when you make a 10 x 10 square and cut 8 one inch strips from it, you will always end up with extra dough. So The Boy and The Poppets had an idea:

Which they worked out while the tart was doing this;

You don't actually use the whole egg - you use about 2/3 of it. Put it aside. You'll need it later.

Melt 2 tablespoons of margarine in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and the shallots (both of which the boy learned how to peel and mince while the tart was cooking) and saute 3-4 minutes until soft.

We had a slight mishap because he put the leeks in with the garlic and margarine and when he went to add the shallots he realized he shouldn't have them in yet. So he separated them as best he could - added another tablespoon of margarine and then added the shallots putting the partially cooked leeks to the side.

Then he got back to the core instructions.

Add the mushrooms and sauté 7-8 minutes or until they are soft, add the wine and scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

We may have used slightly more mushrooms than technically needed. We revel in our hedonistic gluttonous use of mushrooms during The Great Mushroom Shortage of Twenty Ten. Mwahhhahhhahhahhahha . . .

He was very good at popping the mushroom stalks and he learned how to slice, but I finished up for speed's sake. He had already done a lot of knife work that day and we didn't want the shallots to overcook.

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of margarine - or in our case add another 2 tablespoons of margarine, which for us made 5 instead of 4. When it is melted add the leeks (Oh! That's where they come in!) and spinach and saute for about 10 minutes until the leeks are soft and shiny. So it was cool, they just had a 3 minute head start.

Add the chicken broth and simmer until the liquid is mostly evaporated ( this doesn't take nearly as long as you think it will so keep an eye on it.) Stir in the rosemary, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

I taught him how to fling his dash of salt and pepper with panache. The hidden panache is a vital ingredient. In almost everything really, if you think about it.

Remove from heat.

Lightly beat the remaining egg and and combine it with any egg you might have put aside earlier - add it to the spinach-leek mixture, mixing well. Carefully spoon the mixture into the prebaked tart, keeping the rim clean.

Sprinkle the bread crumbs,

This is where he added the heart, and now you all know His Girl's first initial. He coated the heart lightly with only two coats of egg wash.

Now here's where the first lesson from when we started planning kicks in.

Bake for 15 mintues. Serve warm.

The tart was done except for the final baking- the Tangy citrus chicken was next, but it would take an hour and fifteen minutes to cook. The most important thing in planning a meal is to make sure that the food gets to the table all at the same temperature it's supposed to be served at. I'll discuss how we managed to oven settings when I write about the chicken recipe but the tart was set aside while the chicken was cooking.

During that time we mixed up the mojitos, hand muddling the fresh mint and determining that Sprite is way better in virgin mojitos than club soda. (So why is the rum always gone? Oh right - they're underage and possibly the Drunken Poppet got there first).

He taste tested it with the sweet potatoes and declared the mojitos the drink of choice to go with dinner and set up to figuring out the best way to serve it in a timely manner when he set the table.

Here is is sample:

Mojitos were the only thing he made that wasn't brand new for him. He developed his mojito making skills after sampling one when we saw Waiting for Godot. He does put together a classy drink. It's probably because he comes from a long line of bartenders.

When the tart was finished cooking it looked like this:

You'll have to read up on the final recipe to find out what happened with it.

But I defy any mushroom and spinach loving girl to find a more romantic pastry than this one.

In our side of the Looking Glass the Knave makes his own damn tarts.

The Red Queen approves.

V-Day - Like Water for Peanut Butter - Chocolate Mousse Terrine

So yesterday I told the tale of the Boy 's Valentine's Day plan to cook a meal for His Girl. And this led to the epic of bringing the Bialetti Mukka Express to the House. Because he wanted to more for her than just giver her something. He wanted to do something.

The Boy of the House is an excellent gift giver. When he was five and went to the mall he had fifteen dollars to spend on a present for me for Hanukkah and he insisted on picking it out himself. He went where grown men should fear to tred and bought me a ring. It was a silver interpretation of an amalfi swirl with an oval of abalone in the center being framed by the swirl. Most of these rings are trite, or the composition is off balance, and it would be one of the things that you love because your child gave it to you, but it wouldn't make the "wear it everyday" rotation.

Somehow he found the only silver cart ring in the known universe that was not only something that I would buy myself if I bought silver cart rings, it was perfectly proportioned on my freakishly long fingers and exactly my taste. So I found that I loved it in addition to it being given to me by my five year old. And then when I realized that it was MY taste and NOT his, I hugged him again and told him that he wasn't allowed to start dating until he was 126.

If he could do this at 5, I feared for his dating years. I still have the ring - the abalone separated from it about a year and a half ago and, yes I will actually take it to a jeweler to get it replaced. I've never seen another ring like it, though I'm sure it was mass produced. It's like he willed it into existence.

Oh yes, the Perfectly Normal Husband did indeed bring The Boy with him when he chose an engagement ring for me. A ring I might point out that I resisted as unnecessary, because I'm really hard to buy for. But I am the Boy's mother. So maybe it would be different when he really was old enough to date.

It's not.

He made His Girl a bracelet when they started as a couple, (completely breaking the "when you're 126 rule"). He introduced her to Poppets because she is a Neil Gaiman fan, He bought her a one of a kind hand crafted modern necklace for her Bat Mitzvah, where we went to the store and the woman who runs it tried to show him "appropriate" (read "girly, delicate and pink") gifts. I told her to let him look on his own, that he had a pretty large budget and excellent taste and His Girl was not "girly" that way, she was "girly" in a completely different way.

He chose two necklaces both involving the color green - which he knew was the color of her birthstone, one was very modern and sculptural with mottled greens, blues and golds and the other was green tourmaline set in marcasite and antique. He decided to get both and give her one for her Bnai' Mitzvot and the other for her birthday which was several months away. And he knew the date off the top of his head. (He SO didn't get that from me.) When we attended the service for her - the present yet ungiven we saw her new tallit (prayer shawl) had a border on it that was handpainted with exactly the kind of mottling and texture as the necklace he had chosen for her, with all the same colors. Worn together the two pieces look for all the world like they had been made for the same artist.

I figured he had seen the tallit before he went shopping for her. No - he had no idea, he just picked something that he thought she would like, that he thought would look good on her.

He was just really, really right.

By the way Luda, the shop owner, now just shows him the new artists' work that came in.

It's a little scary.

For their first anniversary - which takes place in the middle of the 8 weeks at camp, he got her a Yellow Poppet because yellow is the color for 1 year. Who knew years had colors? How did he know years had colors? He ordered it two months in advance, packed it in his gear, and I found out later left it on her bunk when her group was out with a yellow flower.

No note.

So not only did she see it when the group returned from the hike, but so did all of her bunkmates.

No question who it was from - he owns the only Poppets at camp.

He's making life very difficult for the other male significant others around him.

The Perfectly Normal Husband says that between the Boy and Obama, the expectations for men in long term relationships is going to actually require some effort.

I suppose the men will have to adjust - or be happy that The Boy is a one girl kind of boy.

So now he brought his attention to what he wanted that wasn't a piece of jewelry, but was still a gift. He is a very intentional giver.

He doesn't do these things in a vacuum and he does ask for advice. He and I have discussed that at their age actual jewelry given by a boyfriend should be something that is her taste, but should have something about it that reminds her of him.

Because someday it will be in a jewelry box when she is older and she should be able to have fond memories of the boy and wear it occasionally and tell the stories of the two of them. They are each other's first significant other. He'll always have the Edgar Allen Poe book, she'll always have the necklaces. That's the way these things work. Come what may.

How The Boy went about Gifting a Meal

He brought out the cookbook and asked me to sit with him to answer questions. What was the most important thing to remember when cooking a complex meal like this?

"The most important thing is to serve it all at the right temperature."

"Ok "

"What are you doing?"

"I found the dessert I want to make. Here. Take a look."

Oh. He's really serious about this.

You see, even with all that background, I assumed he was going to make something fairly standard, like a london broil or chicken cutlets or something. He CAN cook, he's been learning bits and pieces at home. He's joined a few cooking clubs at school and at camp, but he was looking at peanut butter- chocolate mousse terrine. Completely from scratch, like melting your own damn chocolate.

"She likes peanut butter, and this looks tasty."

"OK. Read the recipe, make sure it looks like you can do everything it says or that you'll be willing to learn if you don't know the technique and set the rest of the menu."

This was when the discussion of cappuccino came up. I'll admit that I kept my counsel to myself because I was curious as to what he would come up with. He studied the book for a while and noticed that there was a Tiramisu Cheesecake as well - we marked that for home use later.

He picked the main course next - Tangy Citrus Chicken - he looked at it and saw that it was spicy, which she also likes but it looked like it had enough flavor and wasn't too spicy for him.

Then he got the next piece of coaching : When you've chosen the centerpiece of your meal, the next most important thing is to make sure all of the flavors that you choose to accompany it compliment each other.

And if you've chosen to make a meat meal - make sure that the dessert you pick is parve. Parve means neither meat nor dairy. You should be able to serve it with everything. We keep a form of kosher at the House, but when you cook for someone else who also keeps kosher, you use ALL the rules instead of House Rules. This won't make a lot of sense to some of the readers, but those of us who have to balance the whole religious discipline/real life balance will recognize that this is important - there is nothing less romantic than having to wonder whether or not you can actually eat what your sweetheart made you. The non-religious equivalent would be that you you can't boil the pasta in chicken broth for the Valentine's Pasta Primavera that you made for your vegetarian girlfriend.

He checked to make sure - the terrine was parve - yes - Desserts are Go.

His final menu was

• Tangy Citrus Chicken
• Glazed Sweet Potatos
• Spinach Leek Tart
• Peanut Butter Chocalate Mousse Terrine
• Virgin Mojitos
• Cappuchino

"Are you sure?"

"Yep."

Then he made a full list of all the needed ingredients and went through the cupboards to check off the things that we had. He created the shopping list of the things that needed to be fresh or things that we didn't have. He read all four recipes and we discussed the things that he would need to learn, and then we charted out how long each item would take to cook and what could be made in advance.

And this was when we realized the Terrine was going to take 3 days. And that we weren't completely sure what a terrine was - I had thought it was a kind of special pan and I wasn't too far off, but it ends up that it's the same a a loaf pan. Which we have plenty of.

The Boy was scheduled to be off from school on the Friday and Monday around V-Day so we planned the first leg of the Terrine for Friday. The final glaze goes on right before serving it so that would be done on Sunday.

When we post the recipes for the sweet potatoes and the tart, I'll talk some more about the general preparations but for now we'll move ahead with the recipe for dessert.

Peanut Butter - Chocolate Mousse Terrine by Susie Fishbein

INGREDIENTS FOR THE PEANUT BUTTER LAYER

2 cups of confectioners sugar

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons jarred creamy peanut butter

8 oz of non-dairy cream cheese

3 tablespoons of parve whipping cream

2 large egg whites.

The first thing you have to do is line a 6 cup loaf pan with plastic wrap. So we had a loaf pan, but we had no idea if it was 6 cups because that's not the way we usually measure the things that go into it.

The obvious solution was to pour six cups of water into the pan and see if that made it mostly full. The Top of a Choco Poppet was about a smidge under the edge of the pan so if the Choco Poppet needed to tread water at 6 cups we were good and if it was only ruff deep we were going to have to compensate.

The above pic was at 4 cups - we were exactly right. It was 6 cups only the tip of his hood was above the waterline at the end. The volunteers dried themselves off after a brisk swim.

We did not use the same pan we had measured the water in so that we wouldn't have to wait for it to dry.

Now it was time to line the loaf pan with plastic wrap

The Boy worked on making the outside tension as even as possible and the Choco's helped weight down the corners on the inside until it was as flat as it could be.

Now it was time to start mixing stuff - originally The Boy was going to go shopping for the ingredients with me, but the impending blizzard made that impractical. When we saw the weather forecast, we made the decision to buy everything that might be needed, that could be obtained on the Tuesday before the snow started.

Here's a nasty little truth about desserts made with non-dairy substitutions. If you buy the wrong thing you will never, never be able to ditch the chemical taste if it's truly fake, or a slightly bitter or flat taste if you use vegan substitutes. Choosing good ingredients is always important, but way more so in a parve desert if you want it to taste like a crowning achievement instead of a poor man's compromise.

So since there were going to be two non-dairy elements to this layer - the quality, texture and aroma, as well as the taste of the peanut butter was paramount. Unsure, I picked up two different peanut butters, Skippy and an organic that I had liked for something else.

The Chocos set up the taste test and told The Boy to choose.

Skippy won. The texture and the aroma were both fuller.

The other advantage we had was a previous awareness of a non-dairy cream cheese that didn't suck and actually tastes and acts like cream cheese. Admittedly, it tastes and acts like low-fat cream cheese but that's still head and shoulders above the other options.

It's called "Better Than Cream Cheese" great for vegans and friends who are lactose intolerant.

Now I wish I had such kind things to say about the parve whipped cream. There is a rant on my part that goes with it along with several unkind things I have to say about helicopter parents, holier than thou kashrut warring co-religionists and powertripping rabbis. But this was about The Boy's Girl and not about me or my arguments with certain religious people. So I went and tried to find something that would meet the abstruse standard of the modern rabbinical world that didn't take like sweet, soupy, chemical, drek.

I pondered soy whipping cream but wasn't sure it would actually whip. Finally when push came to shove and impending snow doom threatened, I figured we would just have to improvise with aerosol canister whipping cream which the Boy would then let settle and deflate and become parve whipping cream again.

It was at least parve, hekshered and not too bad. But I would not go so far as to call it "good" on it's own.

Peanut Butter Layer

In a large bowl with the mixer at medium speed - you mix the sugar, peanut butter, parve cream cheese and the whipping cream.

So that's what The Boy and the Poppets did.

In a medium bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

"Have you ever separated eggs before?"

"Um, no"

"Time to learn"

I taught him how to gently crack the egg in the center and twirl it so that the tapping against the edge of the bowl took the crack about 3/4 of the way around the egg. Gently separating the cracked halves of the shell you let the white start streaming out and use the shell halves as a kind of cup making sure the surface tension of the yolk isn't compromised. When enough of the white had drained that the yolk is safely in half the shell, you gently and slowly separate the two halves and then transfer the yolk back and forth between the two shell halves with the white draining off the edge of the shells until all that is being transferred is the yolk and all the whites are in the target bowl. Then you put the yolk in a sealable container because you are going to use them later. I did the first one as an example and he did all of the separated eggs that followed after.

Here is the Boy separating his first egg and the Chocos supplying color commentary.

Using a whisk he whipped the eggs into soft peaks. This was aslo the first time he had done that, and he was surprised at how stiff the whites got. It takes a while - he would have called it at two different points before it was actually the right texture.

Now he had to fold the egg whites into the peanut butter mixture. This is the part that really makes it a mousse. It's important.

There was a time between the 1970s and the beginnings of the Food Channel where people lost track of how to cook and certain cooking terms. A lot of people think that "folding" is stirring really slowly. It's not. Stirring breaks things down and integrates them into something like a mousse in a really different way. Sometime around 2002, I was reading how Betty Crocker was simplifying some of it's recipe language and "fold" was one of the words they were getting rid of in their blueberry muffin mix.

Poor Boy, sometimes it's really rough to have me as a mother - but I promise you as of this weekend he does know how to fold egg whites into a batter. His risen waffles are going to be amazing someday.

In order to fold the egg whites in you use a soft spatula or flattened spoon and scoop your beaten egg whites into the center of your larger bowl.

You run the spatula around the edge of the bowl, going down under the egg whites so it's like slowly stirring on a diagonal.

When you hit the halfway point you continue the diagonal stirring movement bringing the mixture up and over the eggwhite creating a fold of the mixture over the eggwhites and bringing the spoon down on the other side of the edge repeating the process and moving a little further down the side until you've slowly gone the whole circumference of the bowl.

Since the up and over part is the most important one after you've found the most comfortable way to keep up the folding motion and turning the bowl you'll probably be holding the bowl in some variation like this.

When the egg whites are thoroughly folded in they will look like this:

Now that was a lot of words, when what was really happening was a lot of show and tell. Maybe some of the words are wrong or don't make sense.

I found a video that does it the way we do - Here it is.

And the Food Channel became really popular so maybe everyone knows about things like folding and blanching again.

Now we take the mixture and put it into the lined loaf pan-

The recipe says:

With the pan in front of you, horizontally tilt the pan to a 45 degree angle. Spoon the mousse into it, the mousse will from a 45 degree angle with the pan. Place the pan into the freezer propping it up to keep the angle.

Well.

What really happened is that we tried this, since we had two people.

I held the pan at the angle and he poured in the peanut butter mousse. But it didn't work out well logistically and what we did instead was pour in the batter trying to avoid one side and then tilting the pan to the forty five degree angle or whatever angle it ended up being that didn't spill over the side. Then we had to find a way for it to stay in that angle in the freezer. We tried a bunch of stuff, but finally we were able to use an empty prescription pill bottle. That worked. We shut the freezer door, our personal three stooges homage over.

This is your mousse. This is your mousse on drug bottles. Any Questions?

No we did not get any pics of this step. The Poppets were laughing to hard to hold the camera.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE CHOCOLATE LAYER

8 oz of good quality semisweet chocolate chopped

1 1/2 teaspoons of instant coffee

2 1/2 teaspoons of water, room temperature

3 egg yolks

1 cup of parve whipping cream

As you can see the Coffee Poppets came along to find the least offensive instant coffee available. The Chocos convinced them that instant coffee is a great ingredient, and no one was asking them to drink it so they should lighten up. The agreed to lighten up in exchange for some of the finished product.

Then they could decide about this whole "ingredient" thing for themselves.

Chocolate Layer

Melt the chocolate in top of a double boiler or in a pan set over a pot of simmering water. Stir until smooth.

Remove from heat and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

Dissolve the coffee in the water into a small bowl whisk the egg yolks into the coffee.

The mixture will look like this.

Add the mixture into the warm chocolate and stir until smooth - beat the cream until soft peaks form.

A word on this. As you recall we're not using real cream, were using fake cream, and we're using fake cream that has been whipped in a whipping can. But there's no way to measure the volume of the whipping cream prior to it being whipped and we need a full cup as a starting point. So we had to spray out the whipped stuff, wait for it to "unwhip" and then pour it into the Kitchenaid and whip it again.

Dude. A Kitchenaid on high with a whisk attachment can give you fresh whipped cream in 3 minutes. In 4-5 you get butter. He started the cream the same time the chocolate was removed from the heat - all in all it took 15 minutes to get that stuff up to something resembling "soft peaks" . I want a better parve whipping cream dammit.

Gently fold the cream into the chocolate until fully incorporated.

Darn tootin' you fold it in "gently"! It took you a whole lot of time to get it fluffy, you don't want to squish it flat with aggressive folding.

Set the peanut butter mousse flat in front of you. Spoon the chocolate mousse over the frozen peanut butter mousse.

Smooth the top.

Cover the pan.

Freeze until the chocolate layer is firm, 6 hours or overnight.

Whew.

The Choco poppets found new recipes in the Ghirardelli Wrappers. I sense Mississippi Mud Bars in our future.

Now the previous layers took place over two days. You have to make the glaze shortly before you serve it. The Boy made the Glaze on Sunday between dinner and dessert.

INGREDIENTS FOR GLAZE

2/3 of a cup of parve whipping creme ( this thankfully killed off the can. It tasted great in the finished dish but I'll be happy if I never have to use it this way again)

6 tablespoons of Margarine

5 oz semisweet chocolate

Glaze

Heat the cream and margarine in a medium saucepan over a low heat until the cream simmers and the margarine is melted.

In order to make the margarine as smooth as possible I taught the boy to stir constantly while melting it in order to keep it from separating into oils and when it was fully melted add and stir in the cream, then wait for the simmer. This prevents the dreaded texture difference that you can sometimes tell in a parve desert that's used margarine.

Turn off the heat. Add the chocolate and whisk until the mixture is smooth

Let cool until thickened, but still able to be poured.

If making in advance place in an airtight container with lid but do not refrigerate or it will be too thick to pour and spread.

You have to remove the terrine form the freezer 15 minutes before serving it. Invert it onto a cake platter:

Note the cool diagonal presentation . . . . . Ooooh . . . . . . Ahhhhhhh . . . . . .

Pour the glaze over the mousse and smooth. The Boy opted for a kind of abstract art thing.

When we packed it up after dinner we poured the rest of the glaze over it for a full on candy coating effect.

The final product served with a drizzle of caramel sauce.

The peanut butter mousse tastes like a sophisticated Reese's peanut butter cup filling. The Chocolate mousse is not sweet at all and acts as a counter and a heavier base for the PB Mousse. The Glaze is awesomely delicious and I will probably make it solo to go over other things.

The yield is 8-10 servings and quite frankly it's very rich so I think we're really looking at something more like 10 -12.

He prepared it two days in advance and it was more than fine. When we made the cappuccino we used a soy based milk to keep it parve. Silk is pretty good.

So to celebrate V-day the Boy

• Spent three days making a dessert
• Learned how to separate eggs
• Learned how to whisk egg whites into soft peaks
• Learned how to properly melt chocolate in a double boiler
• Learned the proper method for folding things into a mixture
• Learned the proper method for melting margarine for a baking recipe
• Learned that even with two people it is very hard to hold a loaf pan at a 45 degree angle and pour out mousse.

Coffee Poppets learned that instant coffee deserves to exist if it helps make chocolate mousse.

I learned

• that when The Boy wants to plan something special, I should assume it will not be simple.
• to cut smaller slices when serving this terrine.
• that at the end of it all when we were doing the clean up, he thought all of the work for whole thing was worth it because His Girl likes peanut butter.

And then I tried not to be a sappy mom when I saw him smile thinking about giving it to her.

• I learned that I couldn't quite manage that, and did the silly tearing up thing that moms sometimes do because they are overwhelmed with love for their kid. But I did manage to not get caught.

I suppose now I'll find out if he ever really reads the blog.

The Choco Poppets retired to rest, and then the Pumpkin Spice Poppets came in the next day to help because the plan called for the Glazed Sweet Potatoes to be made in advance.

Sweet Potatoes remind them of Pumpkins - they are SO there.