Stuffed Pizza and UK Lagers January 18, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Adventures in Beer, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, beer, lagers, pizza, stuffed pizza
add a comment
Pizza stuffing components
The time had arrived to topple another food challenge from my 101 things list: Stuffed Pizza. I think stuffed pizza has a sort of mystique. That might be because it’s different than your average pizza–not every restaurant does it. And those that do seem to have a long wait for tables and for baking. Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria here in San Diego does a great job. Our first trip there we called ahead for pick-up since the pizza takes an hour to cook. We got a large Monster of the Midway, which fed the two of us for a few days. You have one slice and you’re stuffed! Much different than thin-crust pizzas, where you can eat half a pizza and still crave more.
Anyway my stuffed pizza began with the James McNair Pizza book recipe, which I’ve used before for standard pizza. For stuffing I went with our favorites to give a great chance for success: Italian sausage, roasted garlic, jalapenos, onion, bell pepper, and pepperoni. I didn’t put any sauce in — just canned diced tomatoes, drained and tossed with salt and Italian herbs. For cheese I used whole milk mozzarella.
Stuffed pizza before baking
I used a springform pan for the pizza, oiled it up, and put the dough in. About 2/3 of the dough was used for the bottom crust, bringing it most of the way up the sides. Inside went the cheese, toppings, tomatoes, and more cheese. After putting the top dough on, I pinched the dough together to seal, sliced the top to let air escape, and brushed the top with olive oil (reserved from the roasted garlic).
Stuffed pizza after baking
It took about 40 minutes total to bake, starting out at 475 and then lowering when the crust browned quickly. The crust sealing came undone in some places, but not fatally so. Getting the pie out of the pan was easy thanks to all that olive oil.
Slices of my stuffed pizza
After letting it sit for a few minutes, I cut it using a chef’s knife. The crust was a little tough, so that made cutting difficult. But it tasted awesome, and the flavors blended together perfectly. The parmesan cheese didn’t stick on top very well, so next time I may try the variation that puts the tomatoes on top of the whole pie.
UK and Italy Lagers
Is there a better companion for stuffed pizza than beer? How about cheap lagers from the UK, ex-UK, and Italy? That’s right, it was also time for another round of my world beer challenge! I had high hopes for Harp and low expectations for Fosters (Australian for “beer”), but blind tasting waved its magic wand yet again.
Lagers in their assigned glasses
Peroni was just plain disgusting, so that was dead last. All the others were pretty good! Steinlager had a rich flavor, but some unwelcome bitterness. Herp, Moretti, and Fosters were all pretty close, but in the end here were the results:
- Fosters – Australia
- Birra Moretti – Italy
- Harp – Ireland
- Steinlager – New Zealand
- Peroni – Italy
In a surprise move, Fosters takes the win and moves on to the final round! Only two groups are left to go: Asia and Germany.
Traditional Christmas Meal: Baby Back Ribs January 11, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, christmas, Cooking, redsage
add a comment
Baby Back Ribs and Corn Sticks
Just a quick post to catch up on our Christmas meal, which furthered my Red Sage Cookthrough efforts. Our Christmas meals typically involve elaborate cooking, which usually means the meat is still on the bone. A favorite in years past has been rack of lamb, but this year’s critter of choice was the pig, and the succulent back ribs contained therein.
Our Christmas meal thus consisted of:
- Glazed Pork Baby Back Ribs and Black Coffee-Guajillo Barbecue Sauce
- Silver Queen Corn Sticks
The corn sticks were made by special guest chef, Amanda the Baking Queen. They turned out quite well–moist, with great corn flavor.
My typical method of cooking ribs is taken from Joy of Cooking: bake them, covered, in a mixture of BBQ sauce and orange juice for around 3 hours at 300 deg, and then grill them to finish. This consistently produces very tender and delicious ribs for me.
The Red Sage recipe for uses a dry-bake method, so I was initially worried that they wouldn’t be tender. They weren’t quite as tender as my usual method, but were still tender. The sauce was the weird part for me. The glaze and sauce both included a lot of vineagar, which I’m not very fond of to begin with. The flavor mostly boiled out, but the sauce did end up moderately astringent. I prefer a sweeter sauce, so I think next time I would cut back on the vineagar and add more brown sugar. However, the coffee and chile flavor really came through and made it quite enjoyable.
Easy Cheese: Making Cream Cheese at Home December 29, 2008
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, cheesemaking, cream cheese
3 comments
Ingredients for Making Cream Cheese
For my unbirthday Amanda was kind enough to start me on my journey of cheese by buying me the Basic Hard Cheese Kit from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. One of my 101 goals is to make cheese at home. I’m not sure why other than it’s part of my DIY nature and I like things fermenting in my house. Anyway the easiest recipe that I could make with my kit was Cream Cheese.
I had personally never really considered that cream cheese was real cheese, but it does use the same mesophilic starter that real cheeses use, so I’m considering it a real cheese. Plus that means I get to cross it off my 101 things list!
Adding Starter to the Half & Half
The nice thing about making cheese is that it really doesn’t require many exotic ingredients. Cream cheese is just made from plain old half & half from Trader Joes, plus the starter that came with my kit.
Cheese Curds Placed in Cheesecloth
The first step is to bring the half & half to room temperature in a hot water bath in the sink, and then add the starter.
After 12 hours you have a smelly puddingsome goop that you put into cheesecloth to drain. The liquid that drains is called whey, and what’s left are the curds. In cream cheese the curds are really tiny so I doubled up the cheesecloth.
Creative Cheese-Draining Device
I was scratching my head for a while trying to figure out how to drain the cheese in a spot far away from the cats. Then I remembered I had my beermaking stuff at home and came up with this contraption: the draining cheese rests on my beer stirring spoon, balanced on my brew kettle. It worked wonderfully! Look Alton Brown, that spoon is no longer a unitasker.
Cream Cheese After Draining
Once the cheese has drained for 12 hours (or in my case, 18) then it starts resembling cream cheese finally. I pressed it into the plastic mold that came with my kit to form it into some kind of shape.
And look what resulted: a beautiful hunk of cream cheese! The taste was fairly good, but a little more sour than I like I think that may have been due to the extra draining time that I did because it was still soggy after 12 hours. But otherwise the texture was right on, and it tastes great on Panera bagels 
With one cheese down, I’m now planning on my next lacto-bacterial adventure. The entry-level hard cheese is “farmhouse cheddar”, so I’ll probably give that a whirl. It takes about a month to age, which will necessitate the purchase of a wine fridge (wafna!). I also want to make Mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses, in preparation for the Great Home Pizzamaking Adventure.
The Final Cream Cheese Product
