Hell's Kitchen Terrifying Tapas

Diabolical chefs can take a stab at this delectable detestable tasting menu. For starters, yeah,  we'll have the poached bullfrog. Sorry, poison dart frogs are not in season. White mice is nice. Give your guests the evil eye, well, eyeball...lucky if you have a pair.  Follow up with some finger food and mealworms to round it out.

Tapas are little dishes meant to be served with drink.  A devilish take on dim sum, if you will.  I  leave it up to you to experiment and pair with your favorite Halloween concoction.  Maybe wash it down with www.instructables.com/id/Ghoulish_Egg_Cream/ a fancy egg cream drink.

Disclaimer: May cause emotional and/or physical distress. Long term effects of consuming said products have not been studied. I do have www.instructables.com/member/Lithium+Rain/ Lithium Rain approved asbestos pants so feel free to flame on this highly distasteful but edible ible.  Extra points for sensible use of puns.

No endangered species were harmed in the making of this ible.

I was thinking to use chicken but everything tastes like chicken so I used pork sausage, the other white meat. Yeah, it may not be kosher with pork but I don't think eating a dissected frog from the start is either. You could make it with beef or seafood too.

I am sure you can do this with vegetarian or vegan substitutes but I would not suggest cannibalism or zombieism.

You will need:

flour
eggs
water
salt
food coloring

couple of strands of pre-cooked spaghetti

sausage or ground meat, the sausage casing adds an additional texture/membrane to cut through

tomatoe sauce, ketchup, catsup or other blood-like concoction

pot of boiling salted water to cook

no need for a pasta machine but you can use one to roll out pasta sheets if desired

If you can't stand the heat of the kitchen, stay the H. E. double-hockey-sticks out of the kitchen.  May involve use of sharp cutting instruments, supervise all children and adults alike.

I will now reveal the ancient Chinese secret to making those "soup inside" dumplings and apply the technology here.

The liquid filling used inside of the dumplings has been previously frozen so that the chef just takes a frozen individual serving-size lump and wraps it with dough to finish.  No injector or blow-outs involved.

Make "blood squibs" or packets of blood-like material by lining a freezer-safe plate with some plastic wrap.

Place tablespoon size dollops of tomato sauce on the plastic wrap.

Leave room around all of the dollops.

Cover loosely with more plastic wrap.

Freeze for a couple of hours until the sauce sets up.

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Cut up sausage in serving-size chunks.

Cut a slit in the bottom and form sausage into a Y-shape.  It should resemble the bulk of the torso and thighs.

Parboil to set the shape and to ensure that the meat is cooked all the way through when enclosed in the pasta.

After parboiling, set aside to cool or stick in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Refer to this www.instructables.com/id/Homemade_Gourmet_Fresh_Pasta/ ible for making fresh pasta in different colors to expand your palette with natural ingredients.  But today I am just using a couple of drops of commercially prepared chemical food coloring to do the trick.

This is just a basic plain pasta recipe.

About 1 cup of flour
1 egg
water to bind
bit of salt

Some people just dump everything on a cutting board to make the pasta dough but I like to keep things in containment, makes for easier cleanup.

Get a mixing bowl or other suitable container to mix in the flour and egg.

Stir around with a fork until the egg is dispersed and makes little maggoty mealy clumps.

Start adding water little by little until some of the dough starts to form large clumps.

Dust your hands with flour and dig in to start mixing it all into one mass.

Knead and pound it out with your hands.  Keep on folding and pressing down. When it doesn't want to stretch or starts to firm up, let it rest in the fridge covered for an hour or two.

So, the rite of passage of every young scientist is frought with the fears of their first frog dissection.  And you all know the guy in the all the crime scene investigation TV shows eating his sandwich while doing a murder autopsy. Why not dissect a "frog" or any other type of roadkill at the dinner table.  Makes for great conversation and allows to you play with your food while you eat it.

We will be taking a bit of pasta dough and turning it green.

Add a few drops of food coloring to the lump of pasta dough and knead well to disperse the color. It will be similar to working with two-part epoxy putty to get it mixed uniformly.
It might have been easier to add the color at the start of the dough making process but I didn't want to make too much. Then again, you can never have enough of the  "green" or " dough."

You will have to get a feel for how much dough you will use in each step.  You can always pinch off excess or add another piece if you fall short.

You can make the frog any size you want but mine was about the length of a regular fork.

I wanted to have the top of the frog green with a lighter underbelly.  You could make it all green if envy the color.  You could also make the red and black poison dart frog if you wanted a challenge.

Take a piece of green pasta dough and squish it out to an oblong shape.

Cut a slit in the bottom and stretch out to form the legs.

Cut and shape a similar piece from the uncolored pasta dough.

Place the sausage "guts" and a "blood squib" on the dough.

Start to join them together by "gluing" with a bit of water so the dough sticks together.

Wrap and meld all the edges together to form the frog.

Shape the legs and appendages.  Use a fork or knife to make details for the webbed feet.

Since this had some meat and frozen filling inside, I cooked the pasta things right after I made them.  You could throw it back in the fridge but I wouldn't really let this sit around to dry.

I used a rice cooker to cook the treats.  You can use any pot of boiling salted water like for regular pasta but the rice cooker was easier to keep things simmering while I did this instructable.  With fresh pasta, if you are making a big batch, change the water when it gets too gummy from all of the excess flour that is cooked off from fresh-made pasta.

Fresh pasta cooks faster than dried but you want to also ensure that the filling is heated through thoroughly.

After parboiling, you can put your roadkill on the grill for some visually appealing "tire track" marks.

Ratatouille, anybody?

Well, rats in New York City are the size of cats but I guess we will have to settle on another lab rodent, our friend the mouse.

You could shape this like your favorite hamster, gerbil or guinea pig.  What do you mean Wally the Gerbil never really went to summer camp and you said he liked it so much he stayed there?

Similar to our frog, take a piece of dough and stretch out to an oblong shape.

Since this uses only one color of pasta dough, you can make it one long piece.

Cut a slit in the bottom and stretch out to form the legs.

Place the sausage "guts" and a "blood squib" on the dough.

Add a tail with a strand of pre-cooked spaghetti.

Start to join them together by "gluing" with a bit of water so the dough sticks together.

Wrap and meld all the edges together to form the mouse.

Make the front pointy shaped.  You can form ears if you want.

Shape the legs and appendages.  Use a fork or knife to make details for feet.

Take a piece of dough and flatten it out to be a small disk.

Poke a hole in the center.

Insert a few strands of spaghetti and close around the ends of the spaghetti with the dough.

Place a blood squb and a piece of sausage on top of that in the center of the dough.

Bring the dough around to wrap the center of the eyeball.

Leave the sausage partially exposed so it resembles an eyeball.

The classic is found here  www.instructables.com/id/Finger_Food/ .

With any remaining dough you can also shape some missing digits if desired.

Place some scraps of meat or sausage links along a layer of dough.

Add some bits of the frozen tomato sauce.

Wrap around and seal.

Form the fingertip and create bends where the finger joints are.

You can add an additional detail for the fingernail by using cut up vegetables or a different colored piece of dough.

With any leftover pasta dough and no filling left, just slice into strips.

Stretch and roll strips into worms.

Boil them up for a mess of mealworms.

Make some gnocchi for grubs.

Prepare with ground beef for "dirt" and mudsauce.

Sprinkle with ground black pepper or black sesame seeds for maggots.

I will leave it up to you to prepare your own blood sauce and try to make it presentable to your guests without them tossing their cookies before they eat it.

I would say "just dig in" or methodically use your scalpel to dissect your food.  Be careful of spurting blood when eaten as an hors deouvre or if you decide to do an Ozzy Osbourne on the tiny creature.

So here for your dining consideration is our mixed grill platter.  I would have made this a dim sum platter with traditional transluscent starch dough but didn't get a chance to go to the Chinese market for the ingredients. Have your next mongolian barbeque or hot-pot with some of these fine foods. Of course, add your traditional twist to pierogies and other dumplings. Bon appetit.

Happy Halloween and to all a good fright.