5768

I miss the green onions at Taco Bell. :/ You made me remember. You take this pain into you, sir. You take it into YOU.

5769

chives are just tiny scallions.

5770

Chive flowers are delicious.

5771

Maybe next time you do British night, you should make Cornish pasties.

5772

Oh god oh god I’m triggered

CORNISH PASTIES TRIGGER ME

Okay, you deserve story time:

So I tried to make Cornish pasties once. And only once.

Ahem. I was gonna go for chicken, carrots, corn, maybe peas in a rich white gravy with handmade dough. Taking advice from SeriousEats and similar joints, I decided I’d do a vodka-based pastry dough to maximize tenderness by inhibiting gluten production while wetting the dough.

So I go through the whole laborious process of cooking up the chicken filling, then cutting like 1/2 cup each of frozen butter and shortening into like 3 cups of flour with my food processor. . .

. . . and then I promptly fuck up and use fluid ounces instead of tablespoons on my miniature measuring cup I was pouring the vodka into (basically a little 1/2 cup measuring glass dealio I use for making mixed drinks since it’s marked in tsp, tbsp, fl oz, and mL). AKA, doubling the amount of liquid that was supposed to go into the dough.

Which, of course promptly ruined it, turning it into a gooey mass the consistency of cake batter rather than beautiful pastry dough. Oh, and it also used up all of my vodka. My fairly nice (to me at the time) $15/750ml vodka.

Devastated, I drove out to the liquor store, bought another bottle of vodka, then bought more butter at the grocery store and restarted the dough recipe.

It still came out a little gummy, but I persevered, making about a dozen pasties, eggwashing them and baking them to perfection.

Whereupon we learned that my girlfriend, despite finding the concept intriguing, could not eat them. The whole “pie-crust-esque” shell stuffed with savory food instead of sweet pie filling was too much for her brain to process and it revolted at the taste. Which meant I now had like 10 large pasties to eat by myself. (Spoiler: I did not succeed)

Undeterred, I took the remaining dough and stuffed it with jarred cherry filling. Unfortunately, by then, it had sat out too long and gotten a little soggy (butter was melting), and the liquid from the filling only made things worse, so by the end, I had these awkward blobs of melting dough barely containing sticky cherry goo. By then completely frantic, I nonetheless lobbed them into my deep fryer, whereupon the immediately disintegrated into a million pieces of rapidly burning dough and caramelizing cherry-goo, and not deep-fried fruit pies at all.

@Ginger_Yellow, I mean you no offense, BUT I WILL NEVER COOK YOUR PEOPLE’S GODDAMNED PASTIES EVER AGAIN

5773

A real fucking tragedy. I can feel your pain. I want a fried pie thing now.

5774

I STILL WANT THEM

5775

Can you not freeze pasties? Maybe not after they’ve been baked?

5776

Oh sure, yeah. But as you might imagine, after all that pain and horror, I was decidedly un-enamored of the concept and only managed to polish off a couple of the things as leftovers in the proceeding days before trashing the lot and weeping profusely.

5777

Yeah, kitchen disasters are such a bitch. Not only do they rob you of your time and effort, you get unexpected shit to do instead. You lose a tasty dish, with the added insult of a sticky mess to clean up.

One of the biggest tantrums I’ve ever thrown as an adult was when I dumped a quart and a half of freshly made, boiling hot tapioca pudding over the stove top, the kitchen counter, and the floor. The only way it could have been worse is if I’d somehow flung it onto the ceiling and then down my pants.

Cornish pasties are worth it, though! Give it a couple more years, then persevere. My tapioca timeline is February 2021.

5778

You’re giving me flashbacks to the Curry Tornado of 20…uh…17, man.

5779

Giving me flashbacks to the saddest moment on television!

5780

Maybe I’ll cause you more mental grief, but have you considered using frozen pie pastry?

::ducks and covers::

5781

I’ve got a weird personal policy of, to the extent that is feasible, making stuff as from scratch as I can at least once. Sometimes…rarely, but sometimes…I discover certain things are absolutely not worth the effort.

Pie crust is absolutely not worth the effort in my book. Frozen all day!

5782

I totally get you. The first time I made this:

I made the dough from scratch. It’s already a bit of work to make. Making the dough turned it into a marathon of horror. While it came out fine I decided never to make the dough myself again. A few frozen pie crusts works great. As good as the pie is, I’d never have made it again without pre-made pie dough. And that would just be too damn bad.

5783

Yeah, that’s a good point. I actually enjoy the whole pie crust process now, and I can usually integrate it into whatever else I’m doing. But not always. And it’d be crazy not to do a dish like Sformato di Caciofi on account of refusing to use a pre-made crust. I’d use canned artichokes, too.

Which reminds me that I need to try to make Sformato di Caciofi. Closest I’ve come is an artichoke quiche.

5784

I use frozen artichokes. Always buy extra because you want to trim the slightly tough leaves. You want it as creamy smooth as possible. While the leaves are edible, they throw the texture off a bit. I’ve made it several times and it really makes a difference. One of my favorite foods of all time.

5785

You piqued my interest. I linked to the woman that did a write up of having that in Florence. The description sounds divine and the cooking technique quite cool.

The artichokes are trimmed, then cut into thick slices, coated in flour and egg and deep fried earlier in the day.

When the chef is ready to make the tortino, he pours oil into a small pan, which he places over burning hot coals. To make the fire even hotter, he aims a fan into the fire, to bring up the heat (see the photo below and let me know if you think this complies to any fire codes you’ve ever heard of).

Once the oil is heated, he lays down several of the artichoke slices.

While they start to sizzle, he then beats three eggs (and maybe a bit of grated parmigiano?) in a shallow dish, adding a bit of salt, and pours them gently, in a thin stream, into the pan. Grabbing the pan by its long handle, he tilts the pan up and uses a specially taped-together long fork to spin the already cooking eggs in a counter clockwise motion. It all happens so fast, that it’s hard to see what’s happening. Somehow the eggs rise up at the sides, forming a sort of border, while the artichokes and eggs remain tender and slightly soft in the center. Soft waves of egg form ribbons that turn the whole things into the tortino.

Like a spun egg quiche. It looks divine.

image

5786

That’s ridiculous.

5787

Okay, the video helped a lot. He’s heating one side of the pan super hot, so as he slowly spins the outside of the mixture, the eggs there cook faster. Like French scrambled eggs with a twist.