107. Seafood Mousse

I know that I’ve mentioned that DiS! offers up desserts and brunches in addition to their giant-ass dinners. Well, #107 is a luncheon. I don’t know why, but for some reason luncheon sounds fancy. Fancier than brunch, right? And seriously, what’s fancier than crustacean-flavored Jell-O?

By the way, Cleve was thrilled when I announced that I was making another savory gelatin. More jellied meat? Yeah. Great. 

This being a luncheon, and one for which I did not want to start cooking at 8am, I made everything the afternoon before. Let’s start with the baking because there was a lot of baking.

I had to do some research because I had no idea what the hell a Dutch Crunch Roll was. I still have no idea what a Dutch Crunch Roll is because my rolls were not crunchy. Anyway, I searched the interwebs and found this recipe. Click on the link if you want to see it. It’s your standard flour/yeast/milk/oil bread.  But thank God (and my parents) for the KitchenAid stand mixer. If I had to knead this by hand I’d probably still be kneading the dough.

So while my massive dough ball rose for an hour, I shifted my attention to the lemon pie tarts. Or Weight Watchers Creamy Lemon Pie in this instance. This was a snap to make, only required 6 ingredients, and was really, really good. Seriously. Super good.

Here is my graham cracker pie crust and subsequent pie. Since this was a fancy luncheon I got all snazzy with the lemon slices.

Then back to the rolls. After an hour of rising, my dough ball was huge! I then cut it into 6 equal pieces, which then became smaller dough balls. Then I made the Dutch Crunch Topping.

The topping confused me. It was a mixture of yeast, water, sugar, vegetable, oil, salt and rice flour. Once mixed it’s to rest for 15 minutes until it becomes frothy. I don’t know if it ever got frothy. It was thick, though. Really thick. Once the topping is on the rolls rise AGAIN for another 20 minutes. It’s not until almost 2 hours of rising that these finally went into the oven.

But ya know what? They were so worth it.

Look! Check out the buns!

These were big and gorgeous. Honestly, they were bakery-quality. I am still in shock and awe that I did this. They were great. Although not crunchy. These rolls were sans crunch.

Then I made the showpiece of #107, the Seafood Mousse. This was pretty uneventful. I just followed the directions: I minced and chopped, I melted and mixed. I did cut everything in half, though because I did not need a full 1 and a half quarts of shrimp-filled gelatin in my house.

So all that went into the mold and chilled overnight.

The day of the luncheon the only thing I had to worry my pretty little head over was the Celery Amandine. This must not be a terribly popular dish because I had a hell of a time finding a recipe. Most that I found contained carrots. And #107 said nothing about no carrots.

So I ended up with a recipe that kinda went like this: boil celery until tender. Drain. Then combine some flour, some onion, some seasonings in a saucepan. Then stir in chicken broth and half and half. And stir. And stir. And stir some more. Then stir in the almonds and pour over the celery.

Damn you, white sauce. There was no pouring. Lumpy, sticky, pasty, stringy, blobby: think of every adjective you would not want used to describe white sauce and that’s what I got. My Amandine might not have been pretty, but damn did it taste good. I ate a lot of this.

So here it is, once everything was in its place and my mousse was un-molded (this one was particularly difficult to get out for some reason).

Luncheon is Served!

And luncheon was eaten. At this point is anyone surprised that I liked the shrimp Jell-O? Honestly, it wasn’t bad. Cleve even liked it. He wasn’t going to chow down on the leftovers (as I did–this was lunch for a whole week), but he ate it. I thought the mousse tasted a lot like the Crab Louis salad dressing except without horseradish–well, and all mashed together into a Jell-O mold.

#107 Seafood Mousse. Luncheon success!