A while back, I made a Mango Pepper Vodka Sorbet, which of course required a Pepper Vodka. It's pretty easy; 3 Tablespoons cracked black pepper corns in a fifth of vodka, and give it a shake every now and then for a week.

The thing is, the sorbet (which was awesome, by the way) only required 1/4 cup of the vodka, so afterwards I still had nearly a full bottle of vodka, and I don't drink vodka.

At dinner with J&R a couple weeks ago, I mentioned the dilemma of what to do with a bottle of Pepper Vodka I had no intention of drinking. J ran upstairs to the computer room and produced an Emeril Lagasse recipe for a Pasta in Pepper Vodka Sauce.

It's different that other pasta sauces; it uses one shallot and garlic rather than onions as an aromatic and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Plus the vodka, of course.

I tried it last week and it is a phenominal sauce. The Pepper Vodka brings a damned fine bang to the proceedings, so I thought I'd try it as a pizza sauce this week, using tomato sauce in place of the diced tomatoes.

I expect to be using it as my standard pizza sauce to a while.

Now comes the quest for the perfect crust.

Something to look forward to

One of the frequent topics of discussion at Sunday Dinners with J&R is my proposal of a decadant feast we shall indulge in when they win their bet with G&S, and G&S have to fly up for a visit.

My plan for an appetizer is Deep Fried Crab legs, an idea that came to me while watching Iron Chef America (Battle King Crab).

According to my father, anything that isn't Maryland Blue Crab is an inferior meat that needs all the help it can get (preach!).

But the massive size of King Crab (which is readily available in our area, though it is pricey) is a quality worth exploiting. I figure carefully cracking some King Crab legs so as to keep the meat intact in one large tube (then carefully removing the tendons) will give us a single hunk o' crab about the size of a chicken tender.

Given the looser structure of seafood, flouring won't really work, I think. What is called for here is a breading. I experimented with chicken tenders a while ago in the new deep fryer. Panko (Japanese) Breadcrumbs worked alright, but the crushed Ritz Crackers (generically called butter crackers) were a brainstorm of mine I was quite pleased with. It gave a pleasant butteryness to the tenders, and brought salt to the scenario, which saves me the trouble.

I'll try again and coat the chicken in egg (which I forgot) to try for a proper crust, then try with the crab.

I'm also planning a Tres Leche ("Three Milk") cake. But that's another Blog.

Not dead

Upgraded the computer to Windows 7, which means I have to reload Word, hence my weeklong absence.

The new fryer is awesome. Tried a few things, including three kinds of chicken tenders as research for my planned Deep-Fried Crab Legs.

Longer post to come.

Last night I did a Halibut Provincial (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong) soup. It was sublime. I chose it because, as I've written before, I wan to work with fish more, but also because it uses fennel bulb, which I've been wanting to work with for a while now.

Fennel is a fascinating plant, distantly related to onions, I believe. I think it is unique in the vegetation world because it produces a spice (fennel seeds), an herb (fennel frond) and a vegetable (the bulb or root). I've used the seeds in pasta sauce for years, but this was the first time I've worked with the bulb. I sweated the chopped bulb with a chopped onion and the smell was amazing.

Add some garlic (alright, a lot of garlic), salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme, vegetable broth and of course the fish.

The soup came out with a buttery quality, despite the complete absense of butter. It's a soup miracle!

And the herbs worked well, but a bit more spice is called for, and more salt to bring out the other flavors.

I'll definitly be making this again, though not often, as halibut is expensive around here.

Dessert was a Pepper Vodka Mango Sorbet from Alton Brown, made with fake sugar to keep it inkeeping with the healthyness of Sunday dinners.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Steak & Potatoes epic sometime this week.

PS; We got a deep fryer on sale yesterday. This week will be fun.