Rolling Out The D'oh!

I’ve come to the conclusion that if I never have to deal with dough again it will be way too fucking soon.
Today’s cooking experiment was a recipe I got from Giada, the crazy/hot Italian chick on Food Network. When I watched the episode in which she made it, despite the fact that in addition to being more than a little aroused by her I’m also a little bit scared of he, due to whatever it is about her that projects an image of not being quite right in the head, I managed to notice that what she was making looked really damned good.
It was also a recipe that, while somewhat challenging (mostly in that it would be somewhat time-consuming), would allow me to make use of one of the springform pans I’d bought a while back to make the cheesecake for that chick from my Negotiation class.
(At dinner last night Kathleen mentioned that at work that day she’d bumped into the woman I made the cheesecake for, and she informed me that she still looks good. Not terribly exciting or important, I know, but I just thought it was worth mentioning.)
So in addition to thinking that it looked like it would be good, I was pleased to see an opportunity to use one of the pans without having to resort to making cheesecake.
Still, I was a little wary, as it did involve messing with dough for the crust, but the recipe called for using ready-made pastry crusts. All I would need to do was roll them out. How hard could that be?
…
Now that the damn thing is in the oven and (most of) the flour I’d put on the counter for rolling out the crusts is cleaned up after it somehow managed to spread itself all over my kitchen, I can tell you that it was a pain in the ass.
The ready-made crusts came folded, and after I unfolded the first one I started to roll it out to fit the pan it began to separate along the folds, splitting it into three separate pieces.
Undaunted, but a little annoyed, I simply pressed the pieces together into a big lump of dough and started rolling.
And rolling.
And rolling.
The goal was to roll it out into a 13 ½ inch square.
My crust looked to have taken on some sort of fractal pattern, but somewhere in the whorls and spikes there was a 13 ½ by 13 ½ square, so I laid it over the springform pan and began spooning the filling over it, causing it to sink into the pan, which was the approach I decided to take, as there didn’t seem to be any other way to get the crust into the pan and still leave some of it hanging over the edges.
Of course, much of it didn’t hang over the edges anyway, so once I rolled out the other crust (which, by the way, to be infuriating, rolled out perfectly and without any sort of mishaps) I was forced to push it inside the pan to join it with the other crust, so the top of the crust will not overlap the edges of the pan as it was intended to, or will it have the “decorative border” called for in the recipe.
Unless you consider “angrily mashed together” to be a decorative style.
Still, it does smell good, and I’m sure that, appearances aside, it’ll taste just fine, but at this rate I’m going to get as much use out of those springform pans as I will out of that package of condoms I bought God knows how long ago…
So now that the schools are closed I find that I have more company on the trails when I go walking. Not too much, though, as most kids remain holed up inside playing video games or watching the MTV, or whatever it is the kids do these days.
(Yes, I was being ironic when I said “the MTV”)
It also means that the various community pools are open, one of which I walk past on my regular route.
Usually there are swimming lessons going on whenever I walk by, so I’ll spare a glance to see if there are any cute swimming instructors. Usually there aren’t, as they tend to be mail, and even if there were I wouldn’t be able to get a very good look, as there are some trees in the way, and I realize that it wouldn’t be a good idea for some strange guy to be walking by every morning and staring intently in the general direction of young children in swimming suits…
In contrast to a normal week I was positively a social butterfly this week. Monday I went to a movie with Scott, Tuesday I had lunch with Kathleen, and last night I had dinner with Kathleen and Brian.
I guess it was nice to be so uncharacteristically social, though it would have been nicer if any one of the people I was social with had been a single hot chick.
(Note that I qualified that with “single” so that Kathleen has no basis to yell at me for saying that I don’t think she’s hot, or, alternatively, saying that I do, as she’s already excluded from consideration before we even get to the hot part)
Honestly, though, it wouldn’t have done me any good for them to be single hot chicks, as odds are I’d still only be spending time with them as “friends,” or if they had been dates I would have inevitably done whatever it is that I do that pretty much prevents me from getting beyond the first couple of dates.
So it was probably just as well that I spent my time with my shaven-headed, bearded boss, Kathleen (whom I’ll continue avoiding opening a can of worms with by not describing her), and her fine-ass husband…oh, wait, ignore that last part.
I have now taken today’s crazy Italian chick-inspired meal out of the oven. It looks okay in the pan, but we’ll see how the sides look once I remove the pan.
Maybe it didn’t turn out as well as hers did because I’m not dressed up as nicely as she is when she cooks, or because I’m not constantly smiling.
Often there’s some sort of set-up on her show. Friends are coming over for dinner, to watch the big game, or to go on a picnic, or whatever, and so it falls to her to feed them all. Usually what she’ll do is pick some sort of standard American fare and Italian it up by drawing on some recipe she encountered while traveling in Italy or that her mother taught her when she was just a little crazy chick.
On the show I watched yesterday, though, I found it kind of interesting that the friends she was having over for dinner were all male. And there were like five of them.
In any case, now that my attempt is finished I think I’ll cut it loose from the pan and see how it turned out.
I may be back later, but if not, have a good weekend.