My former roommate was having a goodbye-school-hello-summer party, and requested that I make pizza for said event. No problem, I readily agreed, blissfully unaware of what she had in mind. “How many should I cook for?”

Note: never agree, then ask. Ask, then agree.

“Twenty-five or Thirty.”

(insert sound of my mouth hitting the floor in shock and awe) After I recovered from my initial shock, I went about menu planning for that number of people and homemade pizza. In my house’s kitchen. With one oven. When the initial shock wore off, I started to worry. Making one or two pizzas isn’t a big deal…stir, swab, top, cook. Eight different pizzas in short order is a little bit of a different story. Like “War and Peace” vs. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” sort of difference.

As it turned out, it was more like 18 folks, so I ended up making 6 pizzas*.

-I cheated and bought dough for them all. Oopsie. No one cared, it was good dough and the rest of the pizza more than made up for it.
-Good cheese and good graters make a huge difference on the end result and in the making of.
-The sauce recipe from below was scaled up three-fold. Also planned on taking a bit longer to simmer as a result, during which time I went all “mise en place” on the rest of the toppings, and also made pesto.
-The oven was ramped up early, and a pizza stone in on the bottom rack, to try and help the temp fluctuations that would inevitably result.
-Don’t plan on having a break while you do this, as you’ll be topping, cooking, checking, slicing, and serving in short order once you get going.
-Make small square slices of a few pies so everyone can get a bite. When they’re coming out in stages, it helps to keep folks happy so they can return to mingling and rocking out while they nibble each round.

Don’t forget, cleanup is also scaled up. Woo.

The second meal was going to be a small dinner for three that soon changed into a six person, multi-course extravaganza expo. Most dinners I do are generally timed to coincide with a sitting down and eating all at once, but this one’s going to end up with its own post (and hopefully, pics) tomorrow. Timing, of course, is everything. Being able to accurately guesstimate your cooking and prep times, and pacing of the courses, makes a huge difference in serving them right!

2. Drive to the store.

3. Buy bacon.

4. Drive home.

5. Cook bacon.

6. Eat….Oh, you meant how to make-make it? That’s a slight bit more complex. Not much, though. Like you can be in 4th grade. Seriously. Maybe Kindergarten. The hardest part about it is convincing your parents to buy the raw materials you need.

1. Wake up. Go to the farmer’s market. Talk to the rancher who has the pork. He’ll give you the pork belly (3-5 pounds) that you reserved earlier in the week.

Pre-Bacon

2. Upon returning home, bust out the curing salt (#1) that you bought earlier and mixed up to be the recipe from Charcuterie (by Ruhlman, et al) for the curing salt. Pierce but DO NOT REMOVE THE SKIN. Rub 50g or so on the belly, and if you’d like to spice it up with either pepper, maple syrup, brown sugar, chipotles, etc., add about 1/2c or so of that to the belly, ziploc it and throw in the fridge. Grab a drink and party! You’ve done half the work at this point, so celebrating is mandatory.

3. Over the next week, flip it every other day so the cure is on both sides. After the belly firms up quite a bit, ie, after a week to 8 days, you’re done curing. SCHWEET!!!

4. Wash the cure off the belly, let it soak for 30 minutes in water. Repeat for an hour with new water. During this time you’ll want to go crank up your smoker to about 200F. I use pecan and apple wood for smoking, you can use pretty much any wood you like. Smoke at 200f for about 4 hours. Remove from smoker. Trim the skin from the bacon. Take pics. Pop champagne. Cheers yourself, because you’re awesome and you’ve now completed makin’ bacon. Vegans everywhere will weep at your passing!!

References:
Charcuterie, The art of curing, salting, smoking and making meat awesome-er.

Here’s some I really liked, with some blurbs about why.

Ad Hoc at Home

Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc may be one of the better ones, and the most approachable of his series of cookbooks (followed by Bouchon, then French Laundry). Ad Hoc includes things like cutting and tying whole chickens, which is something I hadn’t seen done as nicely ever. Also, lots of good recipes and techniques are covered through the rest of the book that you can pick up and use to your benefit in every day cooking. Keller and Co. even went to a home kitchen to test every recipe in the book(!) to ensure they could be done at home. The pictures are well done, the text as well. Large enough to read and see, unlike many smaller format books. Expensive (relatively speaking) but I think most folks should flip through it and see, you might be convinced.

Joy of Cooking

The Joy of Cooking, venerable and stoic though it may be, is a dense encyclopedia of recipes and information. Not much isn’t covered in this, and can be handy for making a pie to whipping up hummus. Revised several times over the years, it’s fairly up to date on temps and times and the like. Consider this the google of cookbooks, with its index and appendices. You can make every bit of a four course easter dinner from its pages and end up looking like a real champ if you please.

Really, though, it’s just a mish-mash of a few recipes I’ve seen and cribbed and parsed and mangled to make this over the years, and I like the flavors it imparts. For the wine, I normally have a decent Zinfandel on hand which I open, sip, and swirl in as I make this. Works out well that way. One glass for me, one for the wine, one for you, one for me, one for you, and soon the pizza just becomes a happy transition to pepperoni jokes later.

Where was I? Oh, right, pizza sauce….

The Stuff:
2 cans of tomato paste
2 roma tomatoes. diced/chopped/blended very finely.
1 shallot minced
2 cloves of garlic (or more, depending on your taste)
1c red wine
basil
oregano
pepper
Optional: pinch of baking soda. A small pinch, maybe two.

And Things:
Add wine, shallot, garlic, basil, oregano, pepper to medium high pan.
Once wine boils, burn off alcohol, turn down to simmer until reduced by 3/4 or so, depending on flavor potency desired. (15 minutes?). Do NOT let the spices burn. If you are not comfy doing this, call me, and I’ll demonstrate. Please have a sister on hand as payment.
Add tomatoes, tomato paste. Stir, cook until the tomato chunks are mushed up to your liking, about 15-30 minutes at most.
Sample flavor. OPTIONAL: If the sauce is too acidic for your liking, add tiny pinch of baking soda, stir thoroughly. This will cut some of the acidity of the sauce. Be very careful how much you add, and make sure it’s mixed well.

Spread sauce onto waiting crust, use as a dipping sauce, or each other, depending how much wine you’ve had.

And always have a second bottle handy for good measure.

This time, of course, is no exception.

Let me just say outright that I’m not a big spicy kind of guy. By that I mean, I can look at a jalapeño and break out in a sweat. I figured that making my own mustard wouldn’t be so terrible, though, since you just blend and puree and tada, you have mustard. Sounds simple enough, so last weekend I procured mustard seeds, and planned to make…(cue dramatic music) home made mustard!

Mustard isn’t one of those things you normally associate with singing hair and causing third degree burns, but as I am now aware, mustard can be used for a great many means to cause fire damage to humans without really trying. For instance, you could open a running blender full of the stuff and manage to get some sprayed across your face. With normal yellow mustard, this isn’t a big deal. With secret death brimstone and fire mustard, this may require a several day trip to the ER. I know, I found out first hand.

Recipe, of sorts:
3/4 c. yellow (or white) mustard seeds
1 bottle of white wine
2 shallots
3 cloves garlic
1/4c. rice vinegar
salt
water
optional: allspice, tarragon, other spices.

Open wine, pour yourself one glass. Sip. If wine is sufficient for your drinking, then continue.

Pour mustard seeds into a 2c. measure, and add in enough white wine to cover with 1/2″ to spare. They will expand over the next couple hours, so you may need to add more. After four hours of soaking, continue on.

Have another glass of wine.

Dice/mince/chop the ever living crap out of the shallots and garlic. Pour 1/4c wine and vinegar together, add a pinch or two of salt, and place into a saucepan over low heat. Add veggies. Stir occasionally, sipping wine. Once the liquid is reduced by about half, drain the mustard seeds and add that to pan. After you’ve gotten the resulting liquid down half, remove from heat and strain.

Sip wine.

In a sufficiently choppy device like a blender or food processor, toss in seeds, blend once for good measure, add liquid. Stir and blend. At this point you will need to the water to add to adjust the consistency. Remember your mustard will thicken slightly overnight. As you pulse the blending, add a dash of water until happy with the thickness. Blend until the desired smoothness is achieved. I’m more of a smooth mustard fan, so this takes a couple extra minutes.

Sip wine between blends.

After smoothness is achieved, transfer to a glass or stainless steel container and store in the refrigerator for up to however long you forget to look at your condiments for.

Refrigerate, finish wine, and then serve as needed. The mustard, that is.

Of course, you may wish to sample your mustard, since, oh, I don’t know, you might find out how spicy mustard seeds can be when they’re used. And by spicy I mean like the title of this post.

Much like my mustard turned out.

Seriously, I think this stuff can strip paint from twenty feet. I know it called up horseradish and wanted to fight. Be careful. You’ve been warned.

I bombed another attempt at experimentation. It happens. Supposedly.

So there’s this Bacon Takedown coming during SXSW, which, normally, I’d avoid, but for this year I somehow am getting involved in this major mistake of bacon making. My willpower was weak and they liked my twitter handle so now I have 14 days to ponder and practice my possible permutations for submission. Today’s didn’t fare so well. I was going to do a puff pastry with bacon, blue cheese and apple, but it ends up that having a rolling pin really DOES help make your dough better. Who’da thunk it?

Puff pastry dough is a fairly simple set of ingredients: flour, salt, water, and butter. Lots and lots of butter. Like 2.5 sticks worth. Simple enough even a caveman could do it (you should see my beard, i’d fit that nomer right about now). Make 1/2 cubes of two sticks, chill, add 1 teaspoon of salt to 1/2 cup of cold water and stir till dissolved, mix 2 cups of unbleached flour in a mixer with the 1/2 stick of butter and water/salt till mushed, then mix in the cubes of chilled butter till you have “pea-like consistency” from your dough.

Uh, what? Did you say UNbleached flour? Crap. (apparently this isn’t a real big issue, but try and find it anyways)

pea-like?

Right. So that step clearly botched, I move on.

“Roll out into an 8×12 rectangle.”

Hm. Roll? Hell I don’t have a rolling pin so the coke cans come out and I go to work. Despite sleeping through geometry and getting an “A” (true story) my dough rectangle looks more like a portait of Jesus than any linear-sided polygon. I didn’t notify the media and the catholic church, though, instead I “carefully fold the dough over to make a 4×8 rectangle.” This worked, oddly, thank you plastic wrap.

Right, yes. the butter? I see those patches, too. Apparently that’s ok for now. Mmmhmm. Yeah…

At this point, my bacon I was partially pre-cooking was done (175F for 1.5 hours). I decided to pre-cook due to how I wanted the whole cook to look when I finished.

Bacon half-done, dough refrigerated, I grab apples and blue cheese. Slices of three kinds of apples to test the cooking factor they each have, and cut some equal sized chunks of cheese to go with them. Now to sort this mess out, my noggin has come up with the perfect plan to make 200 small bites for an amusing crowd of bacon lover.

Granny Smith (upper left), Braeburn (u.r.), and Pink Lady (bot.)

Puff-pastry bottom bacon cups.

Rolling a half-strip of bacon, filling with apple and cheese and placing into dough, what could possibly go wrong?

I know I can't roll dough, just shut up about it, ok?

Well, the butter which melts off the edge of your cooking sheet might start smoking, and then the puff pastry might not cook all the way through, but the bacon and apple and cheese sure come out pretty freakin’ tasty.

Nom.

Roomie 2 and I ate most of the bacon without pastry, and that was good. The cooked edge of the pastry was good. And the apple slices with cheese were also good. It just stopped short of greatness. I won’t submit it unless I think it’s got Zazz. And greatness. And that’s why I’m going to go back to the drawing board and rethink what I’m doing for the Takedown.

You’re welcome.

In moving, I found that I have a serious attachment to finding out how hot it really is.

Can I take your temperature?

Schweet! I can probe you like you’ve never been probed before.

In honor of my roomie’s birthday, I made dinner. To please her particular palette, we had cow, cheese, tomaters, and mushrooms. And because I’m totally into geeking out on how to cook things in the most ridiculous manner possible lately, this became more than a journey, it was an ADVENTURE. Clearly. Would you be reading this otherwise? Wait, don’t answer that.

Your mom likes my beef.

First up, the steak. The king of steaks, really, some delicious ribeyes. Normally I find some MAN(tm) steaks, but this time I needed boneless ones of reasonable thickness. Once procured, those delicious babies were washed and pated dry, coated in fresh ground black pepper and a good pinch of alderwood smoked salt. Which, btw, is cheaper to buy than to try and make. Trust me on this one. After they were dusted, steaks were summarily asphyxiated in their pre-final destination, vacuum bags. Sadly, this step makes a lot of the seasoning go awry, hence the usage i had of the stuff.

Juicy Juicy

Once sealed (double, in my preference), they got dropped into a steaming bath to cleanse them of their evils and melt their delicious fat and collagen molecules. 133F or 56c for you metric nerds. Next time I’m going to go for 135f (57c), btw.

Probing mah meat....

Easy part? Those sit there for an hour or so while I flex the ol’ chopping muscles and work on the other pieces, Manchego and Mushroom on puff pastry, and Roasted Tomatoes con queso. Yes, you should move in with me for your birthday too. Sadly, all our bedrooms are taken and I’m not ready to share mine with you…yet.* The best part about both of these is the high flavor-to-work ration involved. Manchego and Mushroom mash involved dicing garlic, cremini ’shrooms, kalamata olives, and shredding cheese. Oh and unfolding some puff pastry. Once the steaks go in, you can get the pastry out and let it sit for ten minutes while you welcome the date/birthday boy/birthday girl/booty call over and say hello, before you go back into the kitchen and prepare the evening’s foreplay. I mean food.

chopped and shredded.

Once you fry the garlic and shrooms (with a dash of vinegar), toss with the olives and cheese, spread over the puff pastry, and place in a 400f (204C) pre-heated oven for 15-17 minutes. While that’s cooking, get your next cooking sheet ready with non-stick spray, and slice some good tomatoes (fresh from the farmer’s market) about 1/2″ (12-13mm) thick and lay on it. Add a drop or two of olive oil on top of them, smear around, and season with fresh ground pepper and salt. Simplicity in itself, eh? About this time, you should definitely open the bottle of wine you’re going to have with dinner (2003 Salentin Cab Sauv) and pour you and her a glass. Sip and chat, then when the buzzer goes off for the manchego, yank that out, put the tomatoes in for 20 minutes, and check the steaks. They should be at 45-50 minutes, so start a frying pan on highest heat you have. Get some olive oil, butter, truffle butter, or, if you’re a freakin’ pimp, duck fat and truffle butter, ready to sear those bad cow parts of love.

A mouse nibbled. Really. Yeah....

Also get the parmesean out, cut the manchego pastry into 2″ squares and arrange on a serving tray. Set the table if you forgot, be sure to fold the napkins into pimp origami shapes and keep the plates in the kitchen till you’re ready to serve everything. Steaks should be at an hour, and the tomatoes should be near done. Put the fat of choice (butter in this case, with truffle butter topper) in the pan to melt.

Funkadelic

Pull the steaks out, and cut the baggies open. Put the steaks in for about 20 seconds a side(or till sufficiently browned for your flavor). Plate the steaks. Take out the tomatoes, and grate some parmesean over those. This should melt nicely onto the maters as you plate them, add a small dollop of truffle butter to the steaks, carry to the table, and serve that stuff up right.

Maters!

Now that’s where I end with the pics. I ended up eating cuz it was delicious and needed my mouth’s attention.

* feel free to send a list of qualifications you feel would make me change my mind, of course.

Today we’re going to talk about making lobster tails and asparagus with crab puff thingies. (Saying “thingies” to your potential partner when serving is required for the above guarantee)

Holy crap, I know! I can barely keep it in my pants either right now. Breathe, people. Anticipation can double it. Trust me (and try it sometime). You will need to do a lot of work in a short amount of time to make this, to the point you might be feeling like you should be on Iron chef afterward you do it all and have made your primary target fall deeply into your clutches. Not a big deal, planning and prep work can get you through it ok.

Things you’ll need:
Sous Vide cooking setup (if you don’t know how to use one, be warned you can die. Merry CHristmas)
two Lobster tails, unless you’re the only one eating, in which case adjust as needed.
Asparagus
butter
salt
pepper
onion (diced)
tomato paste
cream
white wine (Pinot grigio, chard, whatever fits with your palette and lobster)
puff pastry
cream cheese
chives
parmesean cheese
Krab, or crab, if you’re feeling like getting some bonus love.
mushrooms (cremini are fine for this)
two eggs, duck are good, but chicken work. Quail might require 4 and look really overdone, plus make me think you’re a jerk.
eggwash

A lot of this requires fairly close (sub 5 minute) timing to achieve best possible results and three burners on the stove plus a sous vide, so read twice, plan accordingly for dishes pans and cooking areas, and have hot pads all around.

First steps…
Prep Sous Vide and get it starting to raise to 140F, it will be cooking for 35-40 minutes potentially. Very important that you determine the thickness of your tails! This will determine the cooking times. Adjust times below as needed so these are done and you can serve within a couple minutes of that time.

Puff pastry comes out to start thawing a bit so it’s pliable when you need it.

Remove lobster tail shells without mangling internal meat. Carefully slice the underside down the middle, then break the shells open (with the underside to you) to reveal the tail meat. Pat dry. Lightly salt, place into vacuum bag with 2/3 a stick of unsalted butter cut into pats (ok, 1/4″ thick slices. whatever) laid all around tails. Seal vacuum bag. Place in fridge till you’re ready to use it. KEEP the shells.

Note the remarkably bad job I did of distributing butter…

Pre heat oven to 400F.

Cooking (times relative to Target, T in minutes):
T-45 boil water to soft boil eggs.
T-45 to T-25 Lobster goes into bath, shells go into a medium heat pan to sweat. Soft boil eggs.

T-35 sautee mushrooms, cut puff pastry, slice up crab, mix crab with cream cheese, chives, mushrooms, and shreds of parmesean. Roll up and put onto a non-stick tray, brush with egg wash.
T-25 or so, remove the shells from pan after they’ve sweated out some liquid, add onion, crank heat to med-high.
T-25 to T-20, puff pastry goes into oven.
T-20 after onions are translucent, deglaze with 1.5c white wine. You want to cook till about half the liquid evaporates.
T-15 steam asparagus to your preferrence.
T-10 **this is annoying but worth it** remove onions…strain liquid into a separate container, put pan back on burner with just the liquid. Add tablespoon of tomato paste. stir. Add a quarter cup of cream. Stir that in.
T-10 to T-7 puff pastry should be about ready. Remove from oven for cooling, plate two.
T-7 sauce should be boiling, turn the burner off. remove egg shells.
T-5 start to plate asparagus, shreds of parmesean over that, egg on top of bed of asparagus, salt and pepper.
T-2 taste sauce. If it’s not lobster-y enough, you can add a small amount of the butter from the lobster bag. You will need to reheat to boil if so, though.
T-0 remove lobster from bath. Cut open bag, remove, carefully plate.

T+1 add a pat of butter to the sauce, stir till it’s melted.
T+4 add some of the sauce over the lobster.
T+5 serve.

(no egg, sorry, and I’d eaten the crab puff. Also my sauce is a bit too little tomato-y and thus runnier)

T+90 get some.

You’re welcome.

* every single cent you paid me directly before reading, that is. transmission/reading/prep fees,etc, that’s all on you.

I mean, sorry, I am COMPLETELY serious when I cook. Totally.

This interchange from The Mummy should emulate the sort of fun I have…

Evelyn: Now, what exactly is this man in prison for?
Warden Gad Hassan: Well, this I did not know. But when I heard you
were coming, I asked him that myself.
Evelyn: And what did he say?
Warden Gad Hassan: He said he was just looking for a good time.

(a few minutes later)

Evelyn: Where are they taking him?
Warden Gad Hassan: To be hanged. Apparently, he had a VERY good time.

It’s sort of like that.

For Christmas and his birthday i bought my brother a Sous Vide Supreme. I figured it was something he wouldn’t have (he didn’t) and would be geeky enough he’d like it (he did). He likes to cook, joined me at the French Laundry, and has a girlfriend he should occasionally try and impress to boot, so that never hurts.

Back to me, though, since I’m who you should be focusing your attention on here. I got all jealous at how nice I’d been and decided that I wanted to join the geeky science project kitchen fun crowd somehow. Lots of research and curious googling later, I think I’ve managed to do just that.

See?

Just waiting to be used...

Just mush all that into a box, add electricity and water, and SHAZAM, b!tches, it’s sous vide cooking.

Or not quite.

If you take a moment to read and bookmark this hugely useful page, you’ll note there’s a crapload more that you’ll need to consider about this. Not to mention general food safety, which needs to be first on your mind when you do this crap, even more than normal. Yeah, paralytic somethingorothers as a result of mishandling lobster don’t sound quite as pleasing as gettin’ some after dinner for that butter deliciousness you just made. Just sayin’. Be careful.

The first article I’d read that made it seem quite doable was the Popular Science article that talked about DIY, followed soon after by my roommate sending me Make version of the same after a discussion while watching “Top Chef”. Granted I’ll never be on that show, but it’s fun to talk about. That and chef groupies.

The main part of what you’ll need is a device to accurately control temperatures. Some people consider a crock pot a good way to do this. It is, for the “high” and “low” temps that it maintains. If you want a bit more than that (you do), you’ll need to get a PID controller and a method to heat your desired cooking bath. My PID is from Auber, it’s the smoker/sous vide model ($200), but I also have a smoker I can use it with. I’m good like that. For heating, the Norpro 559 immersion heaters are cheap ($6-8 shipped) and can be made to work in a wide variety of containers–not just a crock pot or a rice cooker. REI, conveniently, sells a knock off of the norpro (rebadge, even, who knows) that does the same functions but for twice the price and immediately available. At least when I went and bought them.

If you do go with the immersion heater method, you’ll need to figure out how much power you’ll need to heat your water. Remember, a larger amount of water can hold its temp steady easier, but requires more power to heat up. As I chose to DIY without a rice or slow cooker, I had to find a suitable container. Simple enough, I did what a lot of the pros do–steam table pans. My local ACEMart has them in a wide variety of sizes, and after some thought I bought two sizes, 25 and 12 qt ($15 and $10), aka 8″ deep full and half size pans. You can get them in stainless or plastics of varying types, and there’s always the Imusa tamale pot if you want a really big pot you can use for something else.

And there ya go. That’s the basic equipment you need to start making eggs in a water bath. Tada! I can stick all of my gear into the 12qt pan and take it with pretty easily as well. Handy.

Of course, Sous Vide means “Under Vacuum”, so there’s a tiny bit more if you want to really make it that extra special sort of toy to play with in your kitchen. The vacuum sealers you see all around can be used, though the pros make use of some seriously ridiculous chamber sealers which would shrink plastic over the face of a small baby if you wanted. They’re running on a budget you and I don’t have or want to spend on this stuff. Heck some people have been known to use ziplocs. Whatever. I procured a food saver ($60 with two rolls of bagging material). Basic, functional, and relatively foolproof. Heck I can use it, right?

Some other parts you’ll wish to consider for good measure:
Thermometer for calibrating/comparing
bubbler/circulator to ensure even heating (despite the rumor, water can have drastically different temps in a pan)
lid for your container you can cut and hack to make it hold all the heating and temp elements.
A good set of tongs
hot pads, etc…

Now the girlfriend to impress thing, that’s a whole nother story.

Scallops in Puff Pastry, with truffles and foie gras, aka, Scallop Wellingtons.

Here’s a towel for that mess you just made.

I was fairly scared to cook these. One of my friends was like “Whatever, just make it.” until I mentioned that two of the ingredients were $100+ per pound. Then I got the “Oh….yeah, be careful.” So….be very aware of what you’re getting into with this one! If you use diver/sea scallops, then you will need to use larger slices of puff pastry, but adjust to fit your needs as needed.

Ingredients:
Mushrooms (get good ones, cremini would be the bottom end of what I’d use for these)

Black Truffle
Foie Gras (Locally sourced as “Duck Liver”)
Scallops
Puff pastry
Chives
Salt
Pepper
Egg

Dice chives.
Dice mushrooms, sautee in a pan for a couple of minutes, set aside.
Wafer/paper thin slice the truffle into pieces about scallop size.

Leave the Foie Gras and puff pastry in fridge as long as possible!
Cut a piece of puff pastry big enough to wrap the scallop completely with a scooch of room to spare.
On the puff pastry, sprinkle a layer of mushrooms, then add a few pieces of chives.
Place a slice of truffle on top.
Slice a piece of foie gras about scallop sized and 1/8th inch thick, place on truffle. Season with a dash of salt/pepper.

Season scallop, place on top of foie gras.

Wrap one end of puff pastry over scallop, brush edge with egg wash. Wrap the rest of the way, and trim excessive pastry as needed.
Place on non-stick baking pan. Brush with Egg wash.
Repeat till done, place in fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F.

Diver scallops may take 15 minutes, the small ones took 10-12. Do a test one first to see for yourself how long you want to bake. My oven and yours may be friends but bake different.

Plus these are fun to eat.

I Klassed it up big time with the baked brie in puff pastry I did with the extra pastry. Awww yeah. These might just get you laid.

Slap yo' momma good.

(Scallops were the cheapest item per pound when I bought these–chives were per bunch
puff pastry was $15
scallops: $8
Hen of the wood shrooms: $24
Foie Gras: $100
Black Truffle: $200
yeah…be very aware of what you’re making!)