Recipe #333 - Pissaladiere - The Verdict!

So it's done. The first recipe has been made. You probably want to know how it went, right? Well, I suppose I can oblige.
The first thing I will say is that I highly recommend you read your whole recipe before starting. Why? Because maybe your recipe will take upwards of 2 hours to make and maybe you wanted to eat before that! And what if your recipe turns out like crap? Then you spent upwards of 2 hours making a meal that was not good and now you have to make something else! That is exactly what happened, friends. Things started good. I got together my cast of characters.

These are the ingredients for the crust. Well, not the maple syrup with Quatchi in the background, that was just back there and I didn't remove it. I am not a professional photographer, people. Move on.

This part went well! Well, not extremely well or anything. I read through ingredients too fast and sometimes get ahead of myself. Let's just say I'm glad that yeast comes in three packs, because I needed them. Don't hold it against me, o.k.? I'm human. Barely. Most days. Once I got the yeast working and things started getting yeasty, I was feeling pretty good. I even took this picture to show you what yeast looks like when it gets all foamy.

Yesterday I made my away message on AIM to "It's getting yeasty in herr, so bake up all your breads." I'm not well.

So then you add the flour and whatnot to the yeasty goodness and you knead it out and voila you have a dough! It's kind of amazing actually. You let it rest in a warm place and then in an hour you have dough that is ready to be kneaded. We all want to feel kneaded, don't we? Or is it needed? I don't remember.

Don't hate me for these terrible iPhone photos. But look at that badass dough, don't you just wanna nom it already? Don't, it wouldn't be tasty at this stage of the game.

While waiting for it to rise, I got together the rest of the nasty mess. I'm sorry, I just can't fake enthusiasm here.

Do you see how I hid the olives behind the thyme? I think I was in very deep denial. Even the anchovies got premier placement over those vomit inducing olives. That other bunch of greenery is parsley. Which I think is very underused. It's tasty.

So yes, while my dough was a-risin' I went and chopped up all this stuff and get it ready to put on the dough. The recipe called for 3 medium onions. I think Martha is batshit crazy though. 3 onions would have been way too much, so I only used one. Did I mention that I will edit these recipes however I see fit? No? Well, I'm telling you now. I sauteed up those onions with the garlic and parsley and thyme. It smelled so good. I checked on my dough and it was rising perfectly. So really, I was feeling hella confident at this point. What could go wrong!?

Don't you wanna eat the shit out of these onions? Damn they are sexy. Good job, Kayla.

My dough was ready, so I started rolling it out. I have honestly never felt a dough like this before. It was so springy! It felt really good though. Am I the only freak who likes the feel of dough? It's not a fetish or anything, but it just feels so good underneath my fingers. Ok, you can seriously stop judging me now. This is my blog and I will romanticize the feel of dough if I want to. So, I rolled it out and put it in my baking pan. Now it's time to assemble. I have no pictures of this step, probably because my fingers were covered in greasy anchovy juice and I didn't want to get it on my phone. The anchovy part honestly wasn't that bad. It wasn't until I got to the olives that I encounter an issue. The first issue, being that deplorable brine smell. The second being that these were pitted olives. The recipe calls for un-pitted, or de-pitted or pitless olives. It was at this point that I started to panic. I went into Nate's room, where he is diligently trying to put together furniture for his office and looked at him, confused. The conversation went something like this:

Me: (In one sad angry breath) TheoliveshavepitsandIdon'tknowhowtogetthemoouuuuutttttt (end whine)
Him: Do we have a cherry pitter?
Me: What the fuck? Are you serious? Who has a cherry pitter?
Him: Well if we have a garlic press they usually have a pitter on one end and you just...
Me: Stop right there. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not even sure you're speaking english. You're just going to have to show me.

That's right, I made him stop what he was doing to show me how to use an olive pitter. Or cherry pitter. Whatever the hell it was. It would have been perfect, except these olives were god awfully tiny and almost went right through the hole of the pitter device. So most of the olives that went onto the pissaladiere were pretty damn mangled. Not like I care. I hope they suffered.

Now the bastard goes into the oven. Martha says to bake for 12 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for another 15. I say, "Screw you, Martha. I'm running an my weekly in WoW and I can't be arsed to get up to rotate a pan." (There is a geek reference in there, I apologize, sort of). But then of course halfway through I panicked that something would go horribly wrong if I didn't rotate the pan and went to check on it. Everything looked good (as it possibly could) so I didn't rotate. It was the principle of the thing. I could have rotated but I wanted to prove Martha wrong.

So after 30 something minutes in the oven the finished product was ready to pull out. I was absolutely flabbergasted to find that my end result looked strikingly similar to the picture in Martha's book!! I seriously almost died. I was expecting it to come out looking like a pool of miniature fish, gooey tomatoes, and hapless olives.

Look at that! It looks edible! Edible as hell, even.

But last came the ultimate test. The taste test. I cut it up and the crust crunched under my pizza cutter. Such a lovely sound. I barely waited until it was cool. I wanted to take a bite of my creation! My somewhat beautiful creation, even! In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit, my first bite had no olive or anchovy. I was a wimp. That first bite? So. Freaking. Disappointing. I'm pretty sure I could gnaw on my own fingers and it would have my flavor than this bite of Pissaladiere had. I yelled for Nate and shoved a piece in his face and told him to eat it. He was also not enthusiastic. He, being the ballsy one, decided that he would try a bite with the anchovy and olive. I watched his face closely, waiting for some sign of emotion. I got the "Not so bad" face. He lovingly picked off the olive (sorry guys, I couldn't do it) and told me to try a bite with the anchovy. He said the saltiness gave it much more flavor. So I did. While I will admit that the anchovy changed the overall flavor of the dish, it was not for the better, in my opinion. Maybe I'm just not meant to be a fan of anchovies. But I was left making this face for the next 5 minutes.

Can you imagine what this face would look like if an olive was involved? I shudder to think.

So I wound up making some pasta and meat sauce and scraping all the stuff off and dipping the crust in my canned sauce. Nate had another few bites but also wound up scraping off the anchovies. I won't call this a complete failure. It looked great, it smelled pretty good, it was simple to make, it just wasn't very flavorful, unless you ate it with the anchovies and olives, which I just wasn't keen on. Nate also made the observation that this dish was definitely meant to eat as an appetizer. Small pieces with a glass of wine or something. I agree.

So my final verdict?
I decided that I will rate everything on three separate criteria. Level of difficulty, appearance (in comparison to the book) and taste.

Level of Difficulty: 2 out of 5 anchovies

Appearance: 4.5 out of 5 anchovies

Taste: 1.5 out of 5 anchovies


Now I need your help. What is the next recipe I will make? Page #333 has been taken, so you'll have to pick another number. I want you ALL to leave a number in the comments. I will use a random number generator to decide who has the winning number. I was originally going to take the first number only, but this makes it more fun. So even if you aren't the first response, you're number still might get chosen! I will pick the "winner" tomorrow night. Comment away!