Cooking

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Re: Cooking

Post by owl »

I got a waffle iron and have been waffling things! Tonight I made zucchini-Parmesan almond flour waffles with sumac labneh, but mostly I’ve been doing cheese and egg waffles for breakfast.
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Re: Cooking

Post by Lunkhead »

Whoa, that looks and sounds very yummy. I didn't even know it was possible to do cheese and egg waffles, that sounds amaaaaaazing, especially making "chaffle pizzas". We were in Target a week or so ago and we get mesmerized by all sorts of kitchen gadgets we don't actually need but now have plenty of space to store. Erin was looking at the air fryers and I was looking at the mini waffle makers.

https://www.ehow.com/13721655/how-to-ma ... gg-waffles
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

I have one of the Dash mini waffle makers and it's pretty great, but I only ever use it to make small amounts of dessert for myself. If I were in a relationship and had a house with more kitchen space I'd probably want a full-size one.
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Re: Cooking

Post by owl »

The one I got is Dash brand as well, but I think it might be a full-sized one—it has four compartments in it as you can see in the pic above, and I think the mini ones are just all one piece. I think full sized is good because it means less cooking time for the same amount of food. I haven’t tried the chaffle pizza thing yet. I did try some Birch Benders waffle mix with chocolate chips in it, and that ended up being a huge mess—it fell apart and I had to chip a million little pieces of waffle out of the iron with a plastic spoon. But regular chaffles work great and lift cleanly right out of the iron after a minute or so.
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

Yeah Dash started out with the minimaker things but they've started making full-size appliances too. I think I use the My Pint ice cream maker more than the waffle maker these days, incidentally.

For my own cooking, lately I've been cooking a lot of meat, since I started using Crowd Cow, which is like Butcherbox but actually a good deal. And unlike meal kit boxes, they don't load the box up with pointless cost-justifying ingredients, and they provide recipes as inspiration but not, like, "here is what you must do" with them. Basically it's a proper butcher but as a delivery service.
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Re: Cooking

Post by owl »

This morning’s plain mozzarella chaffle with slight bonus cheese pull:
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How much meat do you get a month with the butcher service? We have a pretty nice one in town called The Conscious Carnivore, but I mostly tend to just buy from Aldi, where we do most of our grocery shopping. They have really affordable grass-fed beef and lamb.
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

I've been working on figuring out how to do pizza in my context. I say "in my context" because it seems like making pizza is a little like childrearing-- it's different, at least a little bit, for everybody.

What's been working for me is based on Adam Ragusea's "easier pan pizza" method. For this method he uses a pizza dough made using milk instead of water, with a dash of garlic powder added for flavor. It's cooked in a 10" skillet. He uses non-stick, but I don't have a 10" non-stick so I use my wife's grandmother's 10" cast iron skillet. It works fine, the seasoning on the skillet makes the pizza not stick, not to mention you smear the pan with oil and salt and oregano before you put the dough in it.

The trick, and it's not novel, is that you put the dough in the pan and then brown the bottom on the stovetop before you add the toppings. Then once you have the bottom the way you want it, you put your toppings on and put the skillet under the broiler to cook the top. So far it's working well for me. I have found that:

1. I MUST use cheese that I've grated myself-- pre-grated, as everybody will tell you, doesn't melt right when you just stick it on bread and try to broil it.
2. Ragu is fine for pizza sauce. I tried making my own and couldn't get teh ratios right, then tried it with good ol' Ragu Old World Style Chunky and it tasted.... like pizza. I'm not a sauce snob-- we use a LOT of Ragu at our house. It's very affordable IMO.
3. In the cast iron skillet I've gotta watch the bottom and move the pan around or it'll cook unevenly. I know that's not supposed to happen with cast iron but in my context it does.
4. I can't quite get the spots of browning on my cheese like Adam Ragusea does, but maybe I'll get that when I've done it a few dozen more times. Also, he uses an electric stove and I use gas so maybe that is the difference-- again, context.

Here's one I recently made:
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Here is Ragusea's video:
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Re: Cooking

Post by Lunkhead »

Dang, I really want pizza now. Those look so good! Maybe I will work up the gumption to attempt to make one of those pan pizzas, even though I'm not much of a cook and it would only be for me since Erin doesn't eat flour. Seems easy enough that even maybe I could do it. (fingers crossed) Also, I have to say, I always really like Pizza Hut pizza. In college there was a tiny Pizza Hut kiosk in one of the buildings in a pretty central location and I must have eaten a thousand individual cheese pizzas from there.
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Yeah this is the method to use to get close to a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza feeling.

The hardest part for me is stretching the dough to fit the pan. Practice is helping. The most expensive part of this is the cheese.
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Also, last night I watched an episode of Chopped that was all pizza makers. It was very charming.
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

FWIW, I am a sauce snob, and my favorite pizza sauce is the Kroger store-brand marinara.
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Re: Cooking

Post by owl »

We were on a pizza kick for a while, making cast iron no-knead pizzas every Sunday. We have a wood-burning grill in our kitchen now and sadly we haven’t used it yet, but it would be great for pizza, which I’m not really eating these days either :( the no-knead method is really easy though! We were doing a simple tomato paste-based sauce, and preheating the skillet in the oven.
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Yeah one of the reasons I like the 2-part method is I don’t have to handle a 500-degree skillet ever, and I don’t have to attempt to lay my dough into said pan while hot. I’m sure there is some kind of adherence sacrificed between the crust and toppings, but I haven’t felt the lack. Oh also I don’t have to preheat the skillet for an hour...
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

I kind of feel like a lot of home pizza making methods are designed to make the process as complicated as possible!
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Though it DOES limit the size of the pizza to the size of your pan. I will admit, I will not be making 14-inch pies this way.
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

I do the traditional fussy pizzamaking thing with a baking steel and so on but I don't preheat for hours, I just put my oven on the max convection setting and that generally gets the steel up to 650°F before the rest of the oven gets to 550°F, and I am supremely lazy when it comes to making the crust and whatever.

My pizza potluck article includes the pizza dough recipe I use, and notably I don't do a bunch of kneading or hwatever, I just get the crust together enough and let it slow-proof in the fridge for a few days (which is also what Adam Ragusea's always talking about in his pizza-related videos) and when it comes to making the pizza itself I just like... roll it out a bit and then stretch it some, and then I dust my pizza peel with corn meal and then assemble it there, and then slide it onto the baking steel. And if you don't want to get a pizza peel a cutting board is fine, and if you don't want a baking steel then a cast-iron pan or even a metal baking sheet is fine.

People do absolutely go overboard with making things as complicated as possible, but I think that's a tendency of "enthusiasts" who want to be snobby about things. Back when I was watching Bon Appétit before their giant racist reckoning a year ago, I was constantly frustrated by how much they were overcomplicating their "perfect" pizza, and making their lives harder on themselves by trying to be ultra-fancy with sliding the peel under it and using a special countertop pizza oven and whatever. And, fucking hell, they ground their own flour, too. Who's got the fucking time for that, much less equipment?
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Yeah the Perfect Pizza vids were over the top, but I did find the "Every way to make" videos useful to some extent. I didn't agree with all of Emiel's results, and I reaaaaaaally got tired of him going "mm" before he started to speak every. single. sentence... but still, those were useful.

I am enjoying Stump Sohla on the Babish channel now.
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

The things that really bugged me about the "every way to" videos were that 1) they didn't do all of the legitimate techniques but did a lot of stupid gimmicky things just for the sake of the lulz, and 2) the fucking fake MOUTH SOUNDS he made while doing the overdub really grossed me out.

Anyway. Tonight for dinner I made teriyaki salmon with a lovely shaved fennel and red onion salad-ish thing. The salmon was just one of those Bristol-brand "My Fish Dish" pre-prepared things but the fennel was a bit more improvisational, where I thinly shaved fennel and red onion in about a 4:1 radio and then sautéed it in olive oil for a few minutes until it was all just barely caramelized, then added some garlic and lemon juice and pepper and simmered to reduce. It was delicious and I should have taken a picture.
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Should’ve come out of the oven a couple minutes earlier but still, pretty good I think— we’ll see when I break into it...
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Re: Cooking

Post by fluffy »

mmm, edible wreaths

Is there anything stuffed inside or is it just a round plaited/braided bread?
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Re: Cooking

Post by owl »

WHOA that looks good!

I made hashweh the other night with cauliflower instead of rice. I need to adjust my seasonings next time (I didn’t have allspice and put some coriander instead), but it was pretty tasty and a good way to get lots of veggies in without even noticing.

I also made my favorite tomato cobbler the other day with these biscuits and have been eating some for breakfast every day, yum!
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Re: Cooking

Post by jb »

Just plaited bread. It’s pretty but underproved— tastes too much like dough. I never really knew what underproved meant before, as much as I like watching baking shows, but now it’s obvious. The first proof is when the yeasties really procreate and make the dough taste like bread! Duh. Anyway, not awful just not like, yummmm.

Need to try again, though I’m not sure I have enough flour. We are way from home, dodging the inauguration, at a rental house.
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