Week Eight: Eat Your Feelings
For this potluck, each participant drew from a random assortment of emotions and was tasked to create a dish that conveys the emotion drawn. Each participant's course assignment was chosen before the emotions were drawn.
My assignment was a passionate appetizer. Food and sexuality possess strong ties throughout human history, and the first thought I had was to look up a list of food that were supposedly aphrodisiacs. However, in my infinite wisdom, the google search string I came up with was "sexually charged appetizers." I urge you, dear readers, to run that search string and see what you get. Google tailors top search results based on your browsing history, but even for someone like me, who reads a lot of food blogs, none of my Page 1 results were remotely food-related. The only one that came close was a pun about a historical study of American sexual activities. Too much missionary, not enough Mission Street. Moving on.
In the end, I decided to create a cheese pairing. The non-cheese bits were homemade chocolate graham crackers (phenylethylamine yo) and vanilla candied cherries (According to the reputable food science journal Cosmopolitan, vanilla "mildly stimulates nerves, making sexual sensations feel even better." I don't think I need to explain the sexual connotations of cherries.)
The cheese on the left is the Robiola Rochetta. Made in northern Italy, this soft cow-goat-sheep milk blend has a great tangy finish. The cheese on the right is the Bay Blue cheese from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. It's a fairly mellow blue cheese that's modeled after English Stilton. It's not nearly as pungent as some of the other blue cheeses I taste tested, but it possesses enough earthiness and saltiness to balance the sweet cherries and chocolate crackers.
I was very apprehensive about coming up my own cheese pairing at first, but after about 2 hours of online and in-person research, the conclusion I arrived at is this: it's very hard to get a cheese pairing wrong. Much like the subject of passion, cheese pairing is not a hard science. Sometimes, when you taste two things together, you just know they go well together. It's like making eye contact with someone across Intelligentsia and feeling an instant connection, only to realize later that she was reading one of your favorite novels.
Amber made a happy main dish: homemade mac n' cheese. It's traditional comfort food.
Amanda made a giddy dessert: 3-berry medley topped with mango sorbet and fizzy soda. Pinkie Pie would be proud.
Greg made a bitter salad: strawberry almond apricot salad with lemon honey vinaigrette and aromatic bitters.
Sam made a fearful side: spinach balls. The dish itself isn't very fear-inducing, but the story behind it was great. It's a family recipe, and once upon a time Sam successfully convinced one of her teammates that it was in fact cat poop, which most definitely scared the poor girl. As someone who enjoys food-based scares and psych-outs, these cat poop nuggets (actually made with onion, thyme, spinach, stuffing mix, and garlic salt) are greatly appreciated.
Jaycie made a snarky beverage. Snarky is a difficult emotion to put into food, so Jaycie channeled the great snarky role models of pop culture. Who is snarkier than Severus Snape? Drawing inspiration from the potions professor, Jaycie made an Arnold Palmer, a drink that is part sweet, part sour, and a little bitter. We also had some gummy frogs encased in ice cubes left over from Week Three, which made the drinks even more wizard-like.
Snape... approves?
My personal favorite dishes came from Sarah, who was tasked with making a sneaky salad. What better way to sneak vegetables into someone's diet than to disguise them as other food? Take a look at the picture below and tell me what you see.
Did you guess cat poop, bitter salad, mashed cauliflowers, and mashed avocados? Why, what an astute observer you are. Cheesy mashed cauliflowers were disguised as mashed potatoes, and chocolate mashed avocados were disguised as chocolate pudding. Both were delicious.
Week Nine: Under the Sea
We were short a few people for Week Nine, which meant we had less dishes but more latitude: our dietary restrictions were downgraded from vegetarian to pescetarian. Not as much hyper-creative thinking went into the meal (at least not compared to Week Eight), but everything tasted superb.
The week's theme had Sarah thinking about relaxing on the beach, so she made (virgin) piña coladas.
Sam made SeaMonkey bread. It was loaded with butter, Parmesan cheese, and garlic.
Seizing the opportunity to serve meat, Amanda made a delicious salmon pizza loaded with herbs, goat cheese, and smoked salmon.
I made a seaweed salad out of 4 different kinds of seaweed. The dressing is a pretty standard Asian dressing with soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar. Roasted sesame seeds served as garnish.
Jaycie once again delivered. She adapted one of her favorite desserts from her childhood and to this week's theme. She made a delectable icebox cake using Nabisco chocolate wafers and whipped cream filling. Because the cake is black and white, she shaped the topping into whale tails and called her creation... the Orca-reo cake.
Admit it. It's pretty punny.
Next week, we welcome another new member to the potluck. She just started this Wednesday, and we made it adequately clearly to her that weekly potlucks are kind of a big deal.
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