When She Who Must Be Obeyed stumbled downstairs yesterday morning, she was greeted by He Who Will Not  Be Ignored:

He remembered the Batter Blaster can in the fridge, which I had purchased a few weeks earlier. Time to make the pancakes.

Because batter is so much thicker than cream, when the stuff is sprayed out of the can, it doesn’t so much gush as ooze:

Other than the novel dispensing method, it cooked just as you would expect a pancake to cook: Wait for bubbles to form on top before flipping it over.

The finished result is at the top of this post.

How did they taste? They were a bit sweeter than I prefer, but otherwise tasted like any pancake made from a mix. They were definitely chewier, probably from the gluten that formed during the extrusion out of the can.

I don’t know that we’d ever make Batter Blaster pancakes again, but there is definitely one application where the can is superior to homemade: writing.

Spell out your child’s name for a birthday breakfast and you’ll be the coolest parent ever.

Nothing will make you feel better about your cooking failures than watching chef Gordon Ramsay excoriate a hapless member of his kitchen brigade. So when my second attempt at a berry dessert crashed and burned, I watched an episode from the recent season of Ramsay’s The F Word, which is where I saw this recipe.

He made it look so easy:

Wouldn’t that make you want to try it yourself? If not, why are you reading this? Waiting to read about another failure? As if.

I made the lemon curd first, weighing out 170 grams of unsalted butter and 400 grams of sugar to go with 4 lemons and 6 eggs. (The amounts for everything are doubled; I made the recipe for eight.)

I zested and juiced the lemons, and beat the eggs.

All of this yellow stuff went into a saucepan over low heat.

I stirred the mixture constantly until it thickened, then I passed it through a fine-meshed sieve to remove the zest.

The curd waited in the fridge while I made the phyllo crisps. I thawed out a roll of phyllo sheets, laid down a single sheet, spread it with beaten egg white, the repeated the process two more times until I had three layers.

I used a biscuit cutter to cut the phyllo into rounds.

I need to point out that working with phyllo is exactly the same as handling an ancient Egyptian papyrus document in the British Museum: you work in terror of  having it crumble in your hands.

Ignoring a confusing step in the recipe, but taking a cue from the video, I dusted a tray with confectioner’s sugar, placed the rounds on the tray, and then dusted the tops. I fried them six at a time over medium-high heat in clarified butter until they were puffy and crisp.

When I was done, I let them cool on a rack while I moved on to the berry prep.

I washed a quart each of raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries, then trimmed and quartered the strawberries.

Time for the final assembly: I placed a spoonful of the curd on each plate, topped it with a crisp and then more curd.

A layer of berries was next, then another crisp and more curd.

More berries, another crisp, a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, and then the remainng berries were arranged around the plate.

This might be the perfect summer dessert. The combination of textures  — firm berries, soft curd, and crispy phyllo — work well together. And the taste was a perfect balance of tart and sweet.

So I can cook a berry dessert, with almost the same ingredients as before. Maybe I just need to avoid whisking for a while.

“Pickles,” declared the t-shirt I saw last weekend, “are cucumbers soaked in evil.” Given my recent string of kitchen failures, I expected nothing less when I opened the jar of dill pickles I put up almost two weeks ago.

When I tried a few at lunch today, they were perfect: cold, salty, crunchy, slightly sour, and still tasting of fresh cucumber. I could taste the garlic and dill, but felt the red pepper flakes came close to overwhelming the balance of flavors.

These will disappear quickly, so I’ll get another batch of cukes at tomorrow’s farmer’s market and refine the recipe further. Will I soak them in more evil? Oh yes: delicious, delicious evil.

P.S. I will eventually tire of the Electric Ladyland reference used in all of my follow-up posts to date, but not yet.

I didn’t mean to take up all your sweet time
I’ll give it right back to you one of these days

I concluded the post about my first attempt to make berry gratins with:

I’ll make this again because the recipe didn’t fail me, I failed the recipe. Lesson learned: Don’t fuck with Cook’s Illustrated.

Look at the photo: you’d think I succeeded on my second attempt. And you’d be wrong. All I managed to do this time was not burn the tops in the broiler.

On this second go-round I paid particular attention to the zabaglione, figuring I hadn’t thickened it enough the first time. I really put my back (and arm) into the whisking. What I would up with was this:

I had a lovely bowl of thick, eggy goodness and an understanding of why I need a balloon whisk.

And this is where I set off on the fail boat. The recipe requires that the zabaglione should sit in the fridge for ten minutes to cool. I left it in the fridge for over an hour, assuming that this was a stopping point in the recipe before final assembly. Au contraire, ten minutes really means ten minutes. When I retrieved the bowl, the contents had deflated into a runny mess, rendering my incipient case of whisker’s elbow worthless.

I tried to rescue it by adding the whipped cream, which I let go to very stiff peaks — no luck. I even tried beating in some mascarpone, as had been suggested in the comments from my first try — still no joy.

So, we ate another dessert’s worth of berry-and-egg soup.

I’ll give this one more try, and after that, it’s quits. But in the meantime, I’ve discovered a superior berry recipe, which I will divulge in a day or so.

Yesterday’s summer recipes post would be incomplete without the followup, “101 20-Minute Dishes for Inspired Picnics,” published a year later. These picnic recipes may be even less complicated than the dinner recipes, but they’re all clever deviations from the usual fare. Again, here’s what Bittman has to say:

But at some point, you may get the urge to vary the menu a bit. With that in mind, I’d like to make a few — or, actually, 101 — suggestions, ranging from snacks to dessert. With a little shopping, a little effort, and 20 minutes or less for assembly, you can create the kind of carry-out food that will put the local prepared food shops to shame while saving you a small fortune. No matter how faithful you are to your old favorites, I’ll bet you will find something intriguing here.

I’m dubious about the cold pizza with fresh lemon, but I’m definitely giving some of these ideas a try.