I'm blaming the tequila

So what if it was 5 days ago when I had a tasty but particularly lethal margarita - well, it was perhaps the two glasses of wine before the margarita that did me in. Here's a pic of my tequila-related injury, where my leg lost a battle with a coffee table - still looks nasty, 5 days later, but it definitely didn't hurt at the time!



Anyhow, I'm convinced it's the tequila that's thrown me off balance this week. It could also be the oppressive heat we've been having in New England, combined with my allergies flaring up and going to a friend's birthday dinner that ran pretty late on Wednesday night, but I'm going with the tequila as the primary culprit. I ended up being very tired on Thursday but I had some egg yolks sitting in our fridge that I needed to use. So despite my bleary-eyed exhaustion, I was determined at 8:30pm to make David Lebovitz' Goat Cheese Custards.

His recipe can be found here, along with some beautiful photos, but it's super simple and consists of just 5 ingredients (ack, I hope I don't sound like that awful chick on the Food Network): fresh goat cheese, sugar, milk, egg yolks and vanilla. Throw all in a blender then bake in a water bath. Should have been a fast and easy dessert.

We'd bought some fresh goat cheese that came from a farm in Massachusetts (available from Whole Foods, we are not that dedicated in chasing down our food - yet) and was very tightly vacuum sealed, making it much harder to cut open in my tired state. I hacked my way through the heavy outer wrapping and threw the freed goat cheese log into the blender without much thought. The rest of the ingredients went in and I whirred away. I tasted it to see what it was like (quite good, like a tangy cheesecake) and noticed that the mixture seemed to still be a little lumpy, so I gave it a few more seconds of blending and assumed it would be fine.

Pouring the mixture into the first ramekin resulted in a puddle of lumps. I leaned in for closer inspection and pulled up shredded bits of plastic as the source of the lumps. After I uttered "what the?" and upon seeing the offending plastic bits, my husband helpfully said "There's an inner wrapping of plastic around the cheese - did you remove it?".

No - no, I definitely did not remove it. I didn't even see it. I'd never been the one to handle this cheese before (my husband is always the one to add goat cheese to salads) so it was unfamiliar packaging to me. The struggle with the outer wrapping had worn me out and the lighting was dim where I had the blender so the goat cheese package got the better of me. I tried to salvage it by straining out the plastic shards, but only a thin liquid came through which didn't look like it would bake properly. I was too tired and there were too many bits of plastic to pick them out (I'd been thorough in my blending), so I declared defeat, threw the mixture in the trash and went to bed. So much for trying to be resourceful and use up some leftover egg yolks - at least I know it will be tasty the next time I attempt this recipe and I will definitely be looking for any and all plastic wraps in the future.