Sunday, May 23, 2010

Fish Biscuits!

So we're moving Dan to Kansas City tomorrow morning. Sammie is being dropped off at our friends' house in a few hours, we packed up the car, and Dan is on Craig's List searching for furniture right now.

But.

BUT.

First, the LOST finale is tonight. The series finale. The one we've been waiting for ever since we got sucked into this little show.

We actually did move our moving date back a few days in order to be able to watch this here.

And Sean and Faith bought their honeymoon tickets for tomorrow rather than this weekend, as originally planned.

As you can see, this is a big deal. However, it's also a four and a half hour long show. So from 6:00 to 10:30 tonight, seven of us will be glued to the TV at Sean and Faith's apartment. Naturally, we are going to need some sustenance to keep us going for that amount of time. So we decided to have a Lost-themed potluck. Also naturally, I volunteered to bring dessert. But what to bring? For an event that is this important, dessert can't just be any old thing. We thought about some sort of tropical fruit crisp, but someone else is bringing fruit salad, so that idea was out. We also talked about rice krispie treats in the shape of the statue or just trying to make cute cupcakes or an awesome cake. But the thing is, my decorating skills are really not up to making any of those. If this was going to be a success, I knew it needed to be simple.

And then came the idea.

Fish biscuits!

If you haven't seen Lost, watch this clip (even just the first minute) to see what a fish biscuit is. It was part of the show during the first season, when Sawyer ate them.



So I decided I had to copy them. First, I went to the store and bought a fish cookie cutter. The woman working there asked me why I was buying an icthmus, and I had to explain that no, actually, it wasn't for religious use, but because of a TV show. With that embarrassment behind me, I then set out to make the cookies.

First, I made these citrus flavored sugar cookies. Thanks to this inspiration, I added equal parts yellow and red food coloring to the dough in order to get the lovely salmon color of the actual fish biscuits. I then cut them out with my new cookie cutter. Dan came into the kitchen at this point and couldn't stop laughing. He thought the color made them look like real fish. I had to reassure him with a taste that they actually tasted okay, and that accuracy is important goshdarnit and we want them to look real.

After baking them and letting them cool, I made the frosting for them. I left it white and then thinned part of it with extra milk to make it possible to glaze the cookies with the frosting. Again, accuracy is very important and we can't have frosting taking away from the color of our fish. Also, the real fish biscuits didn't have frosting so it had to blend in. I brushed both sides of the fish with the a pastry brush dipped in the glaze and let that dry. Again, Dan came in and freaked out because he said that they now looked like dead fish. Another cookie was stuck in his mouth and he left the room happy again.

Finally, I added the "Dharma" on each fish with the rest of the frosting that I didn't use for glaze. I dyed it brown (equal parts red, blue, and yellow) to be authentic (obvi) but couldn't get it as dark as I wanted. Oh well, close enough. I then painstakingly wrote Dharma on each fish. If I messed up, it was easy to redo because the glaze underneath allowed the writing to be wiped off easily.

Here they are drying:

And here are the finished products!





At this point, you're probably thinking...Wait, aren't you leaving for Kansas City early tomorrow morning? Don't you have better things to be doing?
Answer: Probably.

You're probably also thinking... You take awful photographs.
Answer: Sorry, deal with it. I don't know how to take pictures well to begin with, and I was taking those photos at night.

You're probably also thinking...Wow, Kristi, that seems like a lot of effort to make sort of ugly and unappetizing cookies.
Answer: People! It's about authenticity here!

Everyone enjoy the finale tonight!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOVE IT! :) Wish I was there to eat the fish biscuits with you!

Kristi said...

Well I do still have the fish cookie cutter, so we will have our own reenactment sometime!

Diana said...

that's an AWFUL amount of work to watch a tv show.....in my book....