Ahoyhoy!

Happy birthday to my mom!!!

Lesson of the week: my sister and I are not chef extraordinaires.

Here's the backstory to the statement above... As a birthday present to our mom, we decided to go all out and make her a dinner at home..not any kind of dinner, mind you, but a nice, fancy shmancy dinner which included a soup, an entree and dessert! Our theme for the night? Almonds, almonds and MORE almonds! A little ambitious you might be thinking? Nah..my sister and I can do this..I mean...how hard can it be to follow a recipe? (Famous last words right there...)

After much kafuffle and debating, here's the menu we decided on:

Appetizer - Almond Gazpacho (cold soup...)
Entree - Grilled white fish; tagine of winter root vegetables with chickpeas & toasted almonds
Dessert - Cinnamon hazelnut meringue with frozen praline mousse

mmmm....

Anyways, there were problems with the shopping (I think my sister went to 3 different places in 2 hours...)...we needed whole almonds, blanched almonds, shaved & blanched almonds...And did you know that you need to bake a meringue for 3-4 hours?! Well I didn't..until I looked at the recipe at 2:30pm that day and frantically called my sister to start baking NOOOWWW. So off she goes to the fridge to get the eggs so she can get cracking (HAH! I pulled a Mabel.) on the meringue-making. Unfortunately for us, we have 3 eggs in the fridge, and the recipe calls for 6. Shafty...and off my sister goes to the supermarket again!

While my sister is slaving away on the meringue, I was still at work..my master plan was to get in at 7am, take a short lunch, don't take any breaks and leave by 3pm. Well, I didn't get out until 3:15, but then I sat in the parking lot for another 20 minutes in 30+ degree weather. Why you ask? Because my dear old 1989 Prelude refused to start (it does this when it gets too hot outside...) I finally got home at about 4:15, and it was pure panic from then on.

*sigh* the soup had too much garlic for my taste and too much vinegar for my sister's. The honey we added made it a little better, and my parents looked like they enjoyed it =) The main dish was awesome, though a bit spicy for my own tastes. (Sarah, we had a secret ingredient...a cinnamon stick!!!! YOU CAN'T SEE IT!!!!!)

The meringue cake deserves its own paragraph because of all the kafuffle it caused. The missing eggs were just the beginning of the disaster that was our cake. Note that wax paper is not the same as baking paper...which we found out after we had taken the meringue out of the oven. The wax paper was stuck to the baking tray, and the meringue was stuck to the paper...not any kind of stuck mind you, but CAKED on. I think it took me about 1.5 hrs to scrape all the wax paper off...and by the time we started to put the cake together, it was already 10pm. Individually, the meringue layers and the almond mousse filling tasted great...so together, it should have been a masterpiece. Unfortunately for us, the moment the second layer of mousse hit the cake, everythign started spilling over the plate edges onto the table. What a MESS, but mmm, so delicious. In the end, we decided to eat the cake the following day after spending the night in the freezer in a bowl.

*sigh* It was delicious, but man, that was a lot of work. I have a newfound respect for chefs all over, and anyone who makes a meal for more than 4 people...really...props to you all. I think I'll just stick to Rice Krispies Squares and chocolate oatmeal cookies =)

posted by Em @ 9:01 a.m.