You know what's even more gross? Eating an herb that tastes like soap.
Yes, to me, cilantro tastes like soap. And if you're at all like me (and thousands/millions of others) you would agree that cilantro is certainly not an enjoyable taste. In fact, I remember finding a video a few months back explaining why it is that some people just hate cilantro. Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate it again, but I did find this much more in-depth article. I'll admit that I was too lazy to actually read the whole thing... oopse. Much easier to read was http://www.ihatecilantro.com/, a website featuring various odes to the hatred of cilantro. One of my favorites is a haiku that goes a little something like this:
"Here, have some salad."
Alas! Cilantro within
Taste the soapiness.
But I digress. The beauty of me working my way through GGC is that I can modify any recipe any way I want! And I'm nothing if not a rebel ;-P So during my shopping trip I decided cilantro was out and basil was in. I was making pesto, and I've traditionally heard of pesto as being made with basil, so I figured this was an acceptable (and more palatable) substitute. I had some shrimp in my freezer at home as well as the leftover ricotta, so all that was left to buy was sourdough bread, pecans and Parmesan cheese! GGC actually recommends using dry jack cheese, but notes that if you can't find it then Parmesan is an adequate substitute. As for the bread, the recipe calls for pain au levain or hearty white or sourdough, so sourdough it was (a totally arbitrary decision on my end).
Step one was making the pesto. I was a little intimidated by this step since it involved putting the pesto ingredients in a food processor and processing them until they formed a "paste." Wellll I don't own a food processor, so I decided a (hopefully adequate) substitute would be my roomie's smoothie maker-- she wasn't home to give me official permission to use it, but again, I'm a rebel.
The smoothie maker wasn't that big (it is, after all, intended to make one smoothie), so I opted to chop the ingredients in steps. First up were the pecans-- about 1/2 cup to be exact. Cowering ever so slightly as I pressed the power button on the smoothie maker, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the blades chopped the nuts quite easily! Unfortunately they only chopped the nuts in the very immediate vicinity of the blades, forcing me to wedge a fork around (without the power off, of course) to mix up the nuts so that everyone got a turn near the blades.
Next up was the basil-- the recipe called for a "bunch of cilantro with big stems removed," so I estimated about 6 big stems worth of basil leaves, but this quantity is easily adjusted based on one's affinity for basil. The basil also chopped up surprisingly easily/evenly.
Admittedly the results were more "chunky" than paste-like, but I was fine with that. A little chunky pesto never hurt anyone (well, anyone without a nut allergy that is). The nuts/basil were supposed to be food processed with some of the grated Parmesan cheese, but there was no way all of that was fitting into the smoothie blender. Instead, I just put the Parmesan right in the bowl with the basil and nuts. The recipe called for 1/4 cup of finely grated Parmesan, but with a rebel yell I cried "More, more, MORE!" and went with a very heaping/bordering on 1/2 cup serving of cheese.
Looked pretty good to me! Next came 6 tablespoons of olive oil to give this a smoother and more spreadable texture.
Even better! It tasted pretty good too, although my olive oil isn't the highest quality out there, so I think that may have put a little damper on the overall taste. Anyway, on to the sandwiches!
The shrimp I had removed from the freezer hadn't quite thawed all the way, so I gave them a quick turn in the frying pan to melt any remaining ice. Probably not a great idea, but as we all know I'm a what? I'm sure you've got it by now ;-)
Now it was time to assemble the sandwiches, but due to a shoddy cutting job by the bread machine at Safeway, all the slices of bread had gaping holes in them (sadly I wasn't able to hit my tried and true Wegmans this week due to some time constraints-- a decision I'm regretting now). Oh well, I'll persevere.
Step 1 was spreading 8 ounces of ricotta evenly over four slices of bread that had been olive oiled on one side. Spreadable cheese + holes = mess, but I chose to ignore this fact.
Next came the pesto, again spread evenly.
Looking good :-) Then came the shrimp, you guessed it, spread evenly.
My penultimate act of rebellion was proceeding to add EVEN MORE Parmesan cheese. I had been snacking on it during preparations and decided it was good enough to earn a more prominent place in the sandwich.
Next came the second slice of olive oiled bread and I was ready to grill... well, as ready to grill as one can be when their sandwiches all have huge holes in them. My plan was to choose whichever side had the smaller hole and start there. It worked well enough, but once some ingredients started to seep out they sort of charred themselves onto the pan, which combated the non-stick features. I compensated by adding dashes of olive oil and cooking spray (not necessarily at the same time).
Taste Review:
Unlike most of our taste test sessions, we were both pretty quiet as soon as we started eating-- I wasn't really sure what flavors I was getting because the whole thing tasted pretty bland. Upon further reflection it was clear that the pesto is the strongest taste. It was good that we had the creamy ricotta to contrast the chunkiness of the pesto, but since ricotta is pretty bland it didn't actually create a well rounded flavorful foil to the pesto.
Highlights were bites where we got a shrimp. The recipe called for so few that they weren't actually spread evenly over the sandwich, so we didn't always get shrimp, but when we did they provided the flavor enhancement necessary to compliment the pesto. So, obviously, an improvement to the sandwich would be covering it in shrimp as evenly as we covered it in ricotta and pesto.
Overall, the sandwich was just sort of bland. I wanted more Parmesan to enhance the flavor (surprise, surprise), but Colin wanted more pesto. The point here is that we needed something else. I also got a funny aftertaste, which I attribute to either the sourdough or the olive oil. It would be interesting to re-try this recipe with white bread and higher quality olive oil. I didn't end up finishing my sandwich, and that's always a bad sign. It was just too bland. As usual, there's room for improvement, but this one just didn't do it for me.
FINAL RESULTS:
Sandwich: | Grilled Ricotta and Shrimp with |
Gooey-ness: | 2.5 |
Aroma: | 2 |
Appearance: | Big hole, overly-charred with a nice Parmesan dusting. |
Taste: | C+ |
Gooey Scale | Aroma Scale |
| 1 = still cold/hard | 1 = can’t smell a thing |
| 2 = slightly melted but still firm | 2 = tender waft |
| 3 = melted evenly | 3 = makes your stomach growl |
| 4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite) | 4 = strong scent |
| 5 = runny | 5 = overpoweringly pungent |
| 6 = sloppy mess! |
Next Week: I'm travelling for the next two weeks, so I'll try to squeeze in at home sessions early on in both weeks, but at a minimum I promise field reports from my destinations!
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