meeting #5

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garXiv:0805.0001
Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 19:00 CT
Title: Meat, Fat and a Crushing Obama Victory
Authors: Chris, w/ a big assist from sous-chef sarah
Goodness: About 4lbs
Categories: gastro-ph
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I wasn't quite sure what to make for everyone, and I eventually got to thinking that you cannot possibly go wrong with meat, fat and wine! So lasagne it was to be...my favourite childhood food. I've since learned to make it much better than the foul frozen things you can buy around the world. There must be a single frozen-lasagne factory supplying the world with overly-salty limp concoctions. Urgh!

I discovered while experimenting on some friends a few years back that the more red wine you put in the meat sauce, the happier people become. So for 2.5lbs of lean mince i used easily half a bottle of wine. It also lets you cut back on the tomato sauce, which is always too sweet (unless you make your own, which i didn't have time for). And...as a minor concession in exchange for keren's fabulous salad -- no garlic!

Fresh pasta makes for a killer lasagne. People are always terribly impressed ("you made your own pasta? wow!"). Little do they know how simple it is! I had the assistance of a very skillful, albeit slightly inebriated, sous-chef (yay sarah!). I think we used maybe 2cups of flour to maybe 2 eggs and a half-dozen egg-yolk. Save the egg whites for the pavlova! Mix. Knead. Keeping kneading. No, you're not done yet, keep going. Now roll. And roll. Roll a little more, we need it a bit thinner than that. Ok, now meet my pasta machine, arnie (pasta la vista, baby!). Roll it through here a couple of times and we have lasagne sheets cut to size for the dish. Total pasta time: ~20mins.

The moussaka is almost hte same as the lasagne, just with lamb mince instead of beef, and eggplant instaed of pasta. Don't forget to generously salt the eggplant for an hour! Gets the bitterness out. Mix up a triple batch of bechamel+cheese sauce, and then we can construct both lasagne and moussaka at the same time, layering all 3 primary requirements.

For dessert I made pavlova. Or, more properly, sarah made pavlova while i watched and offered occasional encouragement (go team!) in this her first ever attempt. I think everyone agreed she did a fabulous job, even though the specially-imported-from-OZ passionfruit pulp turned out to be in syrup, not just pulp. crap! Anyway....tasted pretty good. If you want to have a crack, I use this recipe. The trick is to warm the eggs slightly. Take 'em out of the fridge and sit them in tepid water for 10-15mins. You want them just above room temp, so the proteins bind, and you get a stiff meringue you can shape properly.

Steph & Nathan made an amazing german cream strawberry thing, whose name I can't remember. Guys -- put the name here! Whatever it was, it looked particularly scrumptious, and tasted just as good. Please tell us what it was!