A Biscotti Recipe, or Why ocelot rarely cooks

[ocelot]

Original: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2000/12/14/2413/2941

For extra credit, my anthropology teacher assigned us to cook something that's a holiday tradition for our family to bring to the party at the last class. I decided on biscotti, since that's about the biggest holiday-food tradition my family has...

Here's the recipe. If you can interpret it, it'll probably turn out alright, though I haven't actually tasted it yet... The biscotti is best dipped in something. I'm using Mexican Hot Chocolate, but you can use warm milk or coffee or regular hot chocolate or whatever.

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1. Copy the ingredients down from the email your mom sent, because you haven't bothered to hook up a printer yet.
   
2. Go to the kitchen to see what ingredients my roommates already have. Check off most of them. Go to the store for the others.
   
3. Decide to get dinner while you're at the store since there's nothing in the house, as usual. Stand in front of the deli case for 5 minutes trying to figure out what they have, finally deciding on a chicken enchilada.
   
4. Go to the dairy case. Stand around for 10 minutes trying to decide whether to get salted or unsalted/sweet butter since the recipe didn't specify. Finally decide on sweet because it's a sweet recipe. Stand around for another 5 minutes trying to decide which box contains a half cup. Decide on the smallest (which ends up containing two sticks, or one cup. Which ends up being a good thing).
   
5. Pick up 1/2 gallon of milk for the mexican hot chocolate.
   
6. Look at grocery list. Get distracted. Wander up and down the aisles for 10 minutes before remembering what you're supposed to be doing.
   
7. Go to get cloves. Immediatly find ground cloves, but not whole cloves. Stare at shelf for ten minutes looking at them. Find them right beside the whole cloves. Notice that another brand of cloves is twice as big, comes in a cool glass container, and only costs 50 cents more. Notice that the other brand is called "Fancy Cloves" and not whole cloves. Spend 5 minutes debating whether Fancy Cloves are the same thing as Whole Cloves, and whether it will effect the recipe any. Decide it won't. Get cloves.
   
8. Go look for sugar crystals. Last weekend they were on a special display at the end of the aisle. Find display, but there are no green crystals left. Wander up and down the aisle looking for green crystals, not finding any. This is a disaster. The sprinkles *must* be green, because you never see Christmas trees that are red or yellow or whatever. Find some slightly larger than usual green sugar crystals. They aren't the same as usual, but what the heck? It isn't like the teacher is going to know.
   
9. Check out cookie sheets, since the ones you bought on Sunday turned out to be too big for the teensy tiny oven. But they're all industrial sized or very expensive, so that won't work.
   
10. Go to checkout. Pay. Realize once the checker is done packing the bags that you brought your own bags along. Unpack plastic bags and get a 5 cent discount for bringing your own bags. Whoohoo!
    
11. Go next door to drugstore to get a cookie tray and something else which you can't remember. Spend 20 minutes wandering around staring at all the random junk the drugstore has (it's really more like a department store. Lotsa random stuff). Find cookie sheets. Compare size between the medium and large sheets (which you bought Sunday) and decide that the medium will be ok. Pick it up and realize it's all greasy. What are these? Pre-greased cookie sheets? Or were they used and returned? Who knows.
    
12. Spend another 10 minutes looking at tupperware and thermoses to transport this stuff in tomorrow, before deciding that what you already have is quite enough. Go pay.
    
13. Get home. Copy down the rest of the recipe because it seems more efficient than running back and forth between the computer and the kitchen every step. Check email. Check to see if the compromised servers you reported the other day are still online (They are. Grr).
    
14. Go to kitchen. Wash greasy tray (which will have to be greased again later, but at least you'll know it's edible grease...)
    
15. Get out all of the ingredients and necessary cooking instruments. Spend 10 minutes searching for appropriate mixing bowls before realizing there is one in the drainer and that the rest is small enough that regular bowls will do for the rest.
    
16. Put one stick (1/2 cup) of butter in a microwave proof bowl. Microwave for a while.
    
17. Break two eggs into a bowl, and seperate the yolk and the white from the third. Dump the white into the bowl with the other eggs, and keep the yolk seperate. Realize that it was the yolk that needed to go in with the other eggs, and the white that needed to be kept seperate. Dump yolk in bowl with other eggs and scoop out approximatly one egg's worth of white into the other bowl.
    
18. Remember a time in 7th grade when you went to the cast party for the school play, and brought cookies. The guy you liked (a high school senior) said "Who made these cookies?". Before you could proudly take credit, he held up his cookie and said, "There's a hair in mine!". You ran and hid in shame.
    
19. Go to get a hair tie and put your hair in a ponytail before continuing.
    
20. Check butter. Microwave it another 30 seconds. Try to get lid off of the flour container. Remove the small lid that covers the hole in the top (which isn't supposed to come all the way off...) and try to pour flour into measuring cup. Decide that this is not working. Remove the whole lid and try to scoop with the measuring cup, but the cup is too big for the container. Use a smaller measuring cup to scoop. That works. It looks like about 2 cups or so, possibly a little more, so dump it into the bowl and skimp a bit on the third cup.
    
21. Microwave the butter for 10 more seconds, just to be sure.
    
22. Stir together flour and baking soda, spraying some of it around the counter in the process.
    
23. Realize you forgot to preheat the oven. Preheat it to 350.
    
24. Take the butter from the microwave and pour in with the eggs. Mix. The email said to mix until it was pale...something... Is it pale yet? What type of pale is it supposed to be? Decide it's about as mixed as it's going to get.
    
25. Try to find something to grate orange peel with. Find 2 wrong sized graters. Find the correct sized grater (the one with the really tiny holes). Start grating orange peel into a bowl. Wonder how to tell when you have one teaspoon of orange peel without measuring. Decide bowl is too unstable for effective grating and transfer to plate. Grate some more. Grate knuckle a bit. Grate orange a bit more carefully. Decide that there *must* be at least a teaspoon here. Pour orange peel into butter mixture. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir.
    
26. The email also said to pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, but the wet ingredients are in small bowl, so that won't work. Figure reversing the instructions can't hurt anything...
    
27. Remember to re-grease the cookie sheet.
    
28. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Stir. Realize you're not getting anywhere with the spoon, and mix with hands. It's way too crumbly and flaky - never going to hold together like it's supposed to. Panic. Search for mom's phone number (she moved in June, and you still haven't memorized it). Search for phone. Yell "Where's the phone?" to roommate. Find phone. Yell "Nevermind," to roomate (who probably didn't hear in the first place, since he's in the garage). Call mom. Get answering machine. Explain problem. Realize that you forgot to add the sugar, which would just make it even more crumbly. Panic some more and babble into the answering machine to cover it up. Ask mom to call back when she gets a chance.
    
29. Decide to start over.
    
30. Go to garage to check email to see if the recipe is correct (And to see if those compromised servers are still there. Yup, sure are). Spend 20 minutes writing down the story thus far so you won't forget it.
    
31. Read the recipe again, and realize you were supposed to mix the sugar in with the eggs until thick and pale yellow (ah, so that's what was supposed to be pale!), and then mix in the butter, etc. Realize you actually copied the recipe down correctly, and just didn't read it. Try to figure out how this will result in better dough, as the net liquid does not increase. Shrug. Go back to the kitchen to try again.
    
32. Get back to kitchen. Wash all the dishes. Get all the ingredients out again.
    
33. Measure out flour (into a saucepan this time, since there isn't another mixing bowl and you need the original for the butter, etc.) using a better measuring cup that you found in the dish drainer. Measure out exactly three cups, using a knife to level it as you were taught in cooking class.
    
34. Measure out 3/4 cup of sugar while you're at it.
    
35. Seperate the eggs. Correctly this time.
    
36. Start microwaving the other stick of butter. (See? It's good that they come in packs of two!)
    
37. Mix sugar in with the eggs. It isn't really pale yellow, but the yolks of organic eggs are brighter than those of regular eggs, aren't they?
    
38. Check butter. Microwave it a bit longer.
    
39. Stir baking soda (2 teaspoons) into flour.
    
40. Grate some more orange (Luckily, the original orange has plenty of peel left). Grate some more knuckle. Wonder what kids book it was where someone grated knuckle into something. One of the Ramona Quimby books? Possibly. Except it was Beezus, wasn't it? And she was grating carrots for carrot salad or something. Decide that you have enough orange peel again.
    
41. Get melted butter from microwave, mix in with eggs and sugar. Add 1 Teaspoon vanilla and the orange peel. Stir some more.
    
42. Decide to add the flour stuff gradually. Do that for a bit, then get bored and add it all at once. Stir. Again decide that fork (you decided to try a fork this time instead of a spoon) isn't working, and use hands instead. Luckily, this time it seems that it's wet enough. It's a bit flaky, but not too much.
    
43. Put dough onto pan. Shape it into shapes not resembling much of anything, but which will hopefully fit correctly in the tupperware container. Actually, they resemble easter eggs. Wrong holiday, but what the heck?
    
44. Push cloves into dough. Get tired of digging each clove out one by one, so empty a bunch into a bowl. Use about half of them, and spend a bunch of time putting the rest back into the clove container one by one. Sprinkle the green sugar on top. See the bowl of egg white and realize that it would have been intelligent to brush that on top before the sugar. Oh well. Find a pastry brush type thing (Thank God for well prepared roommates). It results in kind of a green colored glaze. That was intentional, you know.
    
45. Put biscotti in oven (which has long since preheated and has been sitting there wasting energy for about a half hour now). Set timer for 20 minutes.
    
46. Remove remaining peel from the orange and eat. Get orange juice on grated knuckle. Scream.
    
47. Put two complete octoganol blocks of Ibarra Mexican Hot Chocolate mix in a saucepan with a bit of the milk (You're supposed to use 1/4 of the block for each cup of milk, so 2 full blocks should do for 1/2 gallon, right? If you know math better than me, feel free to improve upon these calculations, but I think it tasted fine). Turn the heat up and cook it until the chocolate starts to melt. Break the chunks up a bit, then add the rest of the milk and stir. Answer the phone, which is ringing. Tell mom that the second round of biscotti seems to have turned out alright. Talk to her for a while. Find a wire whisk. Use it to stir the hot chocolate instead of a spoon, since that's what you're really supposed to do (though the Ibarra instructions just say to dump it all in a blender. Blasphemers!). Mentally sing the hot-chocolate-making song you learned in 7th grade spanish class ("Uno, dos, tres, cho! Uno, dos, tres, co! Uno, dos, tres, la! Uno, dos, tres, te! Chocolate! Chocolate! Bate, Bate el chocolate!"). Decide it's stirred enough. Turn off the heat and let it sit, and wander around the house while talking on the phone.
    
48. Step on cat vomit (at least 2 of the cats are a wee bit sickly). Exclaim "Gross! Cat vomit!" in the middle of your sentence. Clean it up.
    
49. Check biscotti when timer goes off. It's not really "golden brown" yet. Turn off timer so it'll stop beeping, and mentally remind self to check it again in 5 minutes.
    
50. Somewhere around 10 minutes later, remember the biscotti. Check it. It's kind of a mottled greenish-brownish, but not burned yet. Perhaps it would be appropriate for Earth Day. Remove from oven.
    
51. Talk on phone for a while more. Move biscotti from cookie tray to cooling rack (wow, it actually holds together!). Realize that the other thing you were supposed to get at the drugstore was a funnel to pour the hot chocolate back into the milk container.
    
52. Hang up phone. Wash a few dishes, wipe the counter, and wait around for stuff to cool.
    
53. Design a funnel out of tinfoil and waxed paper. Pour hot chocolate into it. About 3/4 actually manages to make it into the container, while the rest pours all over the counter, the floor, your shoes, etc. But 3/4 is pretty good for a makeshift funnel...
    
54. Clean up the hot chocolate mess. Look at dishes in the sink. Realize that you still need to study for the final with is worth approx. 6.6 times more than the extra credit. Realize that you haven't eaten the enchilada you bought yet, and aren't really hungry anyways. Go write up the recipe in excruciating detail instead.