Penny’s egg was small–closer to a quail egg than a chicken’s egg in size–but I can honestly say it was one of the best eggs I’ve ever had. The yolk was almost orange when we cracked it open. We fried it butter and ate it as an appetizer before dinner last night.

Now I will go out and see if we have another egg yet!

Update: There was!

I got around to using the sausage attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer this weekend and made my own sausage. It was astoundingly easy. All you do is cut up the meat, add herbs, and run it through the attachment. I didn’t bother with casing since nine times out of ten I cut it off. I ended up with a mild Italian sausage that tasted awesome on this pizza:

A couple of weeks ago, Marcia and I were lamenting the lack of molecular gastronomy restaurants in San Francisco. What is molecular gastronomy, you ask? It is a branch of cooking where chefs use physical and chemical processes of cooking to create different, creative dishes. For example, they might use sodium alginate and peach juice to create faux caviar, which they would serve on top of oysters. Or they might print a menu out on edible “paper” that you are expected to eat. Or they might use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. (Here is an article on the subject if you want to know more.) While there are only a few restaurants in the world that specialize in this cuisine, somehow it seemed like one them should be near me. This doesn’t seem to be the case, however.

I don’t have access to liquid nitrogen or edible paper, but I was interested enough in this to experiment with some of the easier-to-understand concepts. Therefore, the Molecular Gastronomy Dinner Party was born. We invited 10 friends to my house and treated them to a multi-course meal with molecular gastronomy-like twists. We served the meal tapas, or small plates, style.

It sounds very complicated but it really was just us having fun. At some point, Marcia looked up at me and said, “We are playing restaurant!” And that is what it was. We were pretending to have a restaurant and all our friends were the guests.

Marcia in my kitchen

Everyone who came helped out by making some food, loaning us their silverware or glasses, or by cleaning up. Sous-chefs! Here is how the party went:

Appetizers:

Reversed Martini. Kyle thought this one up. Since vermouth is a traditional aperitif for fancy dinners, we had vermouth aperitifs with olives touched (barely!) with gin. It was a twist on the American martini, which is gin with a touch of vermouth and a side of olives.

Deconstructed Pesto, which Justin and Stephanie made for the party.

Dinner Part I:

Drink: Champagne Cocktails with Creme de Casis “Bubbles,” which you can read about here and here. With the champagne, we toasted everyone’s accomplishments since everyone I know seems to be getting promotions or moving or making other life changes. We also had non-alcoholic ice tea.

Zucchini “Spaghetti.” Raw zucchini cut to look like spaghetti, tossed with olive oil, garlic, parmesan, pepper, basil, and fresh tomatoes. Everything came from the garden.

Nasturtium Flower, Grapefruit, Spinach, and Roasted Beet Salad.

Vichyssoise. A vegetarian soup (also from the garden) served in shot glasses. Here is Leona drinking it.

Salmon with White Chocolate Wasabi Sauce and Faux Caviar. The caviar are tapioca pearls that I soaked in soy sauce and vinegar and then rinsed in oil. This dish surprised me. The flavors were pretty good. (Did I mention that I hadn’t made any of these dishes before?)

Jalapeno Fire and Ice. We have a bunch of jalapeños from the garden, so we prepared them two ways: One, I made a spicy salsa and served it with veggie chips. Two, I made a jalapeño sorbet, which we served in frozen limes.

Dinner Part II:

Drink: Champagne Bellini with Peach Foam. Marcia got this cool contraption that lets you make foam using a pressure valve of some sort. I don’t know how it works, but it’s neat. We made the foam by mixing egg whites, peach syrup, and fresh peach juice together and poured it on champagne.

Veggie Bruschetta made by Krista

Cuban Cigars that Marcia made. The ingredients of a Cuban sandwich wrapped in phylo dough to look like a cigar.

Duck with Pear “Onions.” This was the only dish I didn’t come out as well as I would have liked. I had this plan to cut pears to look like onions and stack it on a duck breast. It didn’t work out, so I just ended up sautéing a duck in pear/onion sauce and serving it. It tasted fine.

Cheese Plate arranged by Troy

Fig from the cheese plate

After all this, we hung out and eventually had dessert: Strudel that Avi made and “Coffee and Cream,” Italian coffee ice served in coffee cups and topped with whip cream.

Then we played Rock Band.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this dinner party sounds insane and you would never put yourself through something that elaborate. I confess that the next morning I woke up and thought, why did I just have a giant dinner party with all that weird food? I guess sometimes I do random, complicated things and drag my friends along with me. However! I the party was a big success and very fun. And I am so very grateful to Troy for helping with the dishes:

I am very into molecular mixology and molecular gastronomy right now. I don’t know why, since I don’t have regular gastronomy/mixology down, but whatever. Anyway, Marcia and I made these awesome champagne cocktail things with creme de casis “bubbles” last weekend. You can read more and try the recipe on Marcia’s blog.

Since there’s very little information on the web about these kinds of things, we had to semi-guess how to make them. I’m proud of myself because I’m pretty sure my doctored recipe is better than the original. Now I need to figure out how to make whatever this is.

Sorry I haven’t blogged. I can’t blog when there’s a heatwave. I can’t do anything during a heatwave except hide from the sun and moan about being hot.

But I have been meaning to tell you about our mushroom farm. We bought it at Maker Faire a couple of weeks ago. It looks like a molding loaf of bread in a plastic bag, but it is actually sawdust and rice bran that has been cured of bacteria and infused with water and mushroom culture.

We bought the organic Shiitake Mushroom farm for $19.98. The guy who sold it to us said that they guarantee one pound of mushrooms from the farm. I was a little doubtful, because $20 for one pound of mushrooms is pretty high. However, that is the minimum amount that they guarantee, and the farm is supposed to go through 3-5 cycles, and besides, it’s just cool to watch.

We took it home and put it on our kitchen counter. Within two days, lumps began to rise out of the farm. Within three days, something that looked like mushrooms began to emerge:

Within a week, we had huge Shiitake mushrooms coming out of the bag. We harvested 15 in all, over a pound of mushrooms, and we have 2-4 more cycles on the farm to go.

Even better, the mushrooms were fresh, tender, and clean in a way I have never had before. I guess like all other food, they are best when fresh. We had them in a mushroom ragu over pasta and then a mushroom strudel wrapped in phyllo dough.

Now the mushroom farm is supposed to rest for a couple of weeks before we get our next crop. Hurrah! If I get as many as I did in just the first cycle on the remaining cycles, I will definitely buy this thing again.

Last night I went out to Cajun food with Justin, Marcia, Stephanie, and Kyle. It was a lot of fun. I had never had crawfish before. Tiny lobsters! I enjoy food that takes a lot of work to eat. Justin has some pictures on his blog.

Crawfish from last night’s dinner. Photo taken by Justin Watt directly before consuming said crawfish.

You make Lemon Meringue Bars.

Yesterday, I decided to try out one of my Mom’s recipes, a twist on lemon bars: shortbread crust, creamy lemon filling, and a layer of meringue on top. They are fantastic. The meringue is so fluffy, it makes the whole lemon bar seem light and delicate. I highly recommend these.

Kyle is getting a little tired of lemon dessert, though. Maybe I will move into savory lemon recipes next.

(My lemon tart)

UPDATE: Lemon Meringue Pie Bars Recipe

Crust:

1 c butter
.5 c powdered sugar
2 c flour
.25 tsp salt

Blend ingredients together and press into a 13X9 pan. Bake 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Filling:

1.3 c sugar
.5 c cornstarch
dash of salt
1.75 c water
4 egg yolks, slightly beaten
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs lemon zest
.5 c lemon juice (4 lemons?)

In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Gradually add water and stir until smooth. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir about half of the mixture into the egg yolks and then return the egg-yolk-mixture to the pan. Stir over low heat until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat. Stir in butter, zest, and lemon juice. Pour filling over crust.

Meringue

4 egg whites
.25 tsp cream of tarter
.5 c sugar

Beat ingredients until peaks form. Spread over hot filling.

Bake at 350 degrees until meringue is light golden brown, roughly 25 minutes. Refrigerate 1 hour or longer before serving.

I made up some oregano pesto since my plant is going crazy. It was delicious! I thought the oregano would have too strong a flavor for pesto, but it works wonderfully. Here’s the recipe:

1 c fresh oregano
20 pistachio nuts (pine nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts would all work too)
3 garlic cloves
pinch of salt
3 tbs Parmesan cheese
1 tbs romano cheese (I used swiss, actually)
2 tbs butter
olive oil

Grind salt, oregano, and nuts together in a food processor. Add olive oil until it forms a paste. Add everything else. Put on pasta. Enjoy!

Kyle is from Kentucky, so at some point, we decided to have a Kentucky Derby party. Never mind that neither of us had ever been to a horse race, we wanted to eat fried food. On Saturday, we invited a bunch of people over to do just that. Here’s a rundown of the day.

Guests begin to arrive:

Marcia

Chris

For food, we had delicious drinks in Laura’s Kentucky Derby glasses. I made bourbon balls and Derby Pie, but that is not enough to feed people, so we got KFC:

Yup, fried chicken, gravy, biscuits, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and cheese curds. All food we hardly ever eat, so it went over big.

Eric (in the mirror), Justin, Stephanie, Kat, Aaron, Dustin, Kyle, and Chris

Next was the race. Did you know it lasts only two minutes or so? It does. To make things interesting, we all bet on the horses–a dollar a horse, all even odds.

Aaron, Robin and Laura watching the race

Likewise Stephanie, Kat, and Chris

No one called the winner, Street Sense. However, Aaron, Paul, and I called the 4th place winner Imawildandcrazyguy. We split the pot three ways, $5 a piece.

Afterwards, we went outside to play Horse Shoes (Get it? Horse shoes?) Justin took some pictures of that in his recap of the party. Meanwhile, I dragged Marcia and Laura to the Artist Colony to see where I’ve been writing.

Laura

Me and Marcia in the tent

Finally, we played with the hacked X-Box, which our friend helped us set up. Kyle and Stephanie are both awesome at DDR. Toward 5 p.m. or so, people started to go home. Still, more fun was to be had when Kyle and other guests started using the DDR pad as a controller for old Nintendo games. You haven’t lived until you have played PacMan with your feet.

Kyle on the second level of Mario Bros.

Good times.

The other day, someone gave us some Pepper Plant barbecue sauce, made in Gilroy, California, and we decided to give it a try on some chicken breasts.

The bottle of BBQ sauce.

My husband has barbecuing down to a fine science. We use a Weber Grill and plain charcoal, which we light with the use of a chimney starter.

The chimney starter lights your coals quickly and without the use of lighter fluid. I think we learned this trick from an old episode of Alton Brown’s show Good Eats, and it definitely works more efficiently than lighter fluid does. (Not to mention it’s more cost-effective in the long-run, since you never have to buy another bottle of lighter fluid again once you have a chimney starter.)

In the end, we had chicken breasts and kabobs with leek, bell peppers, and mushrooms. We sat at the top of the hill in our backyard looking out over the Petaluma hills, watching the sun set. Since it was January, we needed some blankets and candles, but otherwise we were quite comfortable.