that's entertainment

I made vegetarian Cornish pasties last night, after coming across this recipe at Albion Cooks. Frankly, I was terrified that I'd screw up the dough, because I had never made pie crust or a pastry in my life. Turns out it wasn't so bad. Turns out the rough puff pastry recipe I used totally kicked ass. I am now jonesing for a pastry blender to make the process totally painless (cutting in the butter with a fork was kind of annoying, and I freaked out at one point with the fear that leaving too many large clumps in would ruin everything! EVERYTHING! but it turns out that dumping an arbitrary amount of cold water into the mix was fine, and then dusting it with a little flour and refrigerating it for a half hour while I made up the filling was also okay, and in the end I was so pleased with the results that I have now told Brock and Becca, posted on Facebook about it, and, finding those measures unsatisfying, have brought my glee to this blog. I bet I'll tell anyone who happens into the lunch room today about my triumph, too.) My only qualm is that they weren't that moist in the center, but a) I'm not sure they should be dribbling juices out, looking at all Google's image results, and b) I suspect I could've trapped more moisture in by not venting the pockets as much as I did (three decorative cuts! so fancy!). I have so much filling leftover that I may try to fiddle around with rectifying this situation. Alternatively: gravy.


In other exciting news, last week I spent Thursday night tracking my cat around the apartment with a rag in hand, trying to wipe the crap off his ass where it'd gotten stuck in his long pantaloon fur. The dude is peculiar in his tolerance for bothersome intrusions into his personal space; he'll scoot away the minimum distance - sometimes only moving the body part under attack - to escape my reach, but he seems to forget an instant later (or never realize in the first place) that I am the perpetrator of these acts, and will still come when chirped and gestured at. Even after Becca and I attempted to capture him in a towel to trim off the worst of the crap-matted furs and he spasmed out of our grasp, he merely trundled a few feet away on my bed to observe us, apparently prepared to let bygones be bygones if we'd put away that towel. We were going to put away the towel, right? Ah, scritches.