Bitch, I own puff pastry!

The first time that I stayed over at Kris' house he made me the most incredible omelet the next morning. Cheesy egg goodness with perfectly sauteed veggies - I was in love - with the omelet... the verdict was still out on him (the sage-proscuitto-red potato soup he made me when I was sick sealed that deal - but that's for another blog entry). From that day on though, I knew that omelets were his thing. His shtick. And he made a mean omelet, so I was OK surrendering my whisk to him. It was an unspoken thing. We never discussed that I would never make another omelet. Just like chili is my thing. I've won two chili cook-offs now. It's just something I do well and Kris has never made chili since we've been together.

Then Alton Brown and puff pastry come along. Alton Brown, of course, is the host of the Food Network show "Good Eats." I love him and I introduced him to Kris when I purchased the entire collection of Good Eats on DVD. And now Kris loves him. It's a huge man crush. Geeky goodness served up with, well, good eats.

So after watching many episodes, Kris tried a few of his recipes - one being a chicken pot pie that was topped with puff pastry. Which was just OK to me. The base of the pot pie wasn't rich enough for me. So, this leaves some extra puff pastry and fast forward to a Good Eats episode all about puff pastry, and it's on. My honey, to my amazement and delight, is slicing up apples and strawberries paper thin and is rolling out puff pastry... and he bakes the most incredible little round pastries. I was so impressed. He did a fantastic job. But, there was more leftover puff pastry and I was having dreams of chocolaty, cream cheesy stuffed little danishes and I so wanted to experience the puff. We often joke about me being the executive chef and him being my sous-bitch chef, and being the control freak in the kitchen - I felt the pastries should cook a little longer to give more flakiness. But, I could tell that Kris felt some ownership over puff pastry. I just knew it. I envisioned running to the freezer as soon as he left for work and quickly rolling out and filling the pastry and baking to a golden brown, only to then gobble it all up - destroying the evidence before he gets home.

So, I decided to throw it out there. I asked him if he felt ownership over puff pastry. Would he be upset if I played around with the puff? And he was shocked - Ownership??? What? I would never try to keep you from making something! I was like, oh come on - admit it - you think you own puff pastry, just like you own omelets. You do it well and don't want me stepping on your culinary toes. He is adamant that this is silly talk.

Well, this talk reminds him of something and he leaves the room, only to return with an already organized stack of the Good Eats DVDs, in the order in which he wants to watch and cook with them. WHAT?!?! You felt the need to pick what you want to cook ahead of time - in some attempt to keep me from also cooking these things??

He finally gave in and admitted that YES, he owns Puff Pastry. And, I gave in and decided that I don't need to make cute little round apple covered pastries. I'll just distract him while they are baking, so that they come out a little flakier :-)