I'm on a year long journey to cook something each week that I've never cooked before.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Week 9: Let's Get This Pizza Party Started!

After creating my tomato sauce last week, I was somewhat disheartened about making pizza.  Plus there are the issues with my oven.  We bought a replacement oven that was supposed to be delivered on Thursday, but now looks like it will be delivered next Saturday.  Go Best Buy!  (on the plus side they knocked a bunch off the price for our "inconvenience."

In any case, I was going to make caramels this weekend, since the oven is down.  However we've discovered a work around.  We can still use the broiler, even if the normal heating element is dead. It heats the oven perfectly, so long as we put something between it and the food to prevent direct heat.  TA-DA!  Problem solved.  And since I still have my sauce and a batch of bread dough in the fridge, making the pizza after all seemed reasonable.

The dough I'm using is the Olive dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  If you don't own this book and have any interest in baking bread, go get it now!  It's amazing.  Really.  It's so much easier to make bread this way.  No kneading, little proofing, it stores in the fridge for a week.  I can't sing enough praises for it.  You basically make a batch and then whenever you feel like it, you cut some off and bake it.  And it's delicious, light, fluffy... yum!

I made the batch when I made the sauce last week but I haven't gotten to use any of it because of the oven.  With our work-around, though, I figured it would be fine.

There really wasn't much to it.

I prepped my ingredients first since one key to pizza is to bring it all together as quickly as possible.  You don't want the dough sitting around while you're shredding cheese.  The cheese was whole milk mozzarella from a cheese shop at the Pike Place Market.  They also sold pepperoni there for some reason, but it looked good and so that's what I used.  It was a quality sausage and had to be peeled first.  Then I cut as thin of a set of slices as I could.

I got out the dough and rolled it flat to about 1/8 inch.  It was pretty easy to work with, especially coming from the fridge.  My daughter loved helping me roll it out, too, so bonus points there!

I spread my sauce out over the middle.  I used a pretty thin layer, but made sure it covered everything to within about an inch from the edge.

Then a thick layer of cheese, topped by a grid of pepperoni.  It was pretty awesome looking.

Now I ran into a problem, though.  I don't have a pizza peel.  I did all the work on the bread board, and transferring it to the oven was interesting. In the oven I used a set of uncoated terra cotta floor tiles I picked up for just such an occasion at Home Depot.  Transferring a large flat pizza from a breadboard to the grid of 6 tiles was challenging, but I got it done without too much warping.

I cooked it for 8 minutes before checking on it to make sure it was cooking evenly, which it was.  I left it in for another couple minutes then slid it out onto a cookie sheet to cool (so the cheese could set.)

Here's the final result:


And it tasted DELICIOUS!  I was shocked at how good it is, especially considering all the obstacles I had to overcome to make it.  The sauce, week old dough, the oven of doom, no peel...  It's a wonder this ever happened.

The sauce was a pleasant surprise.  It may have gotten a little better over the the week in the fridge, but really I think that even though I don't think it's awesome, it suits the pizza very well.  What flavor it does have is complimentary to the other ingredients.

The dough performed as advertised.  My biggest concern was that usually when dough is in the fridge for a week, you're tearing hunks off to make bread during that time so the top is always fresh, but this dough had simply sat there.  Well, I tore off the top layer and used what was underneath and it was perfect.  It was thick and chewy, but in a good way.  Not like over-kneaded bread, just like pizza.

The work-around for the stove worked perfectly.  There was a slight bit of scorching of some cheese, but that's all.  The stones did their part as well.

Other than the corned beef, this is probably my greatest victory, especially with the obstacles.  They just make it taste even sweeter.  I can't wait to try again with a sauce I'm happier with.  That will just make it even better.

Hmm... I should probably still do those caramels.  The 40% milkfat cream I bought won't last forever...

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Week 8: Possible Fail! Tomato Sauce

My plan was to make a pizza from scratch using homemade sauce, homemade crust, and quality ingredients.  That is unlikely to get completed in a timely fashion, as I'll explain in a bit, but I'm holding the fallback position of homemade tomato sauce for week 8, although that's not going well, either.

My research uncovered a plethora of homemade pizza sauces, each slightly different from the others.  Some use fresh tomatoes, others prefer canned, or for the really simple ones, tomato sauce.

Being an ambitious type, I searched for ones with fresh tomatoes.  I like to do things right!  I found one that I liked, except that it didn't contain all the spices I wanted, so I decided to add them!  Here is the one I ended up with:

10 roma tomatoes
1 large onion
2 T Olive oil
2 T butter
2 small carrots
5 cloves garlic
1/4 c fresh basil
1/8 c fresh oregano
1/4 tsp italian seasoning
1/4 tsp celery salt
1/4 cup red wine
2 T tomato paste

I chose romas because they generally have a good flavor and are more likely to be fresher than others in the middle of winter.  At least that was my theory.  I picked up 5 or so at the Pike Place Market, figuring those would be the freshest, but had to get 5 more at the grocery store to round out the recipe when I decided not to halve it as I'd originally planned.

I blanched the tomatoes to get the skins off and then squeezed out all the seeds.  I then pureed 8 of them and chopped the other two up roughly.  This was per the instructions on the recipe I was following.  In hindsight, since my final goal was pizza sauce, I should have just pureed them all, but it's not a huge difference.

I cooked the onion, carrot and garlic in the olive oil and butter for about 5 minutes to soften them.  Then I added the tomatoes and everything else except the paste.  The original recipe called for two celery stalks to cook in the sauce and get removed at the end, but I substituted a bit of celery salt instead.

I brought it to a boil and then reduced it to low, covered it, and let it simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  One thing I noticed was that it was not the brilliant red I usually associate with tomato sauce.  It was kind of orange, but the romas had looked fairly pale (although I grabbed the reddest I could find) so I didn't think too much of it.

After two hours I put in the tomato paste and set it to simmer for another 2 hours.  It cooked down fairly well, although it sort of ended up looking like a stew more than a sauce.  Once it was done, I let it cool and tossed it in the food processor to puree it smooth.

So here's the first part of the possible fail.  I'm not sure I like how it came out at all.  It doesn't taste disgusting, but it's not what I was hoping for, either.  It's kind of bland, and the flavors that are in it don't taste right.  I believe my problem is the tomatoes, which is of course the majority of the sauce.  It's the middle of winter, and the tomatoes are clearly from hothouses and from storage, so they don't have the flavor of summer tomatoes at all.  Honestly, canned sauce is probably better than what I made.

So, I'm not really sure what to do.  My plan was for pizza, and maybe this sauce will be just fine, but I was hoping for so much more.

Now we come to the second possible fail; my oven.  It has been slowly dying for a very long time.  It's temperatures are so far off I have to use a separate thermometer to check when it gets to the right one.  Half the burners don't work.  But today the oven decided to stop working.  I was still able to make the sauce just fine, but I obviously can't make a pizza until I get a new stove.  We'll go shopping tomorrow, but we'll have to wait for a new one to get delivered and such before I can do any baking.

I may try the sauce on pasta.  If so, I'll report back, but I don't have high hopes.

I'll definitely try again in the summer with good tomatoes, or possibly try one of the recipes that use canned tomatoes so I can still get on with a pizza.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Week 7: Working My Tamales Off

For those who may have wondered why I posted about purchasing lard and what purpose I intended with it, ponder no farther, for it was to make TAMALES!  I've always wondered how to create those little corny pockets of meaty goodness, and what better time than Week 7 to try my hand at them.  How much work could they possibly be?

It turns out the answer is "A LOT."   Now, they weren't "corned beef" difficult, or anything, but there's a lot of assembly line work as well as two cooking process and ingredient preparation.  On the plus side, you can make a ton of them and freeze them or bring them to a party, or what have you.

I had no idea how they were actually made other than that you wrapped them in corn husks at some point in the process. My first step, as always, was the research.  Google turned up a lot of recipes and I browsed them quickly for general information, such as the fact that you steam them!  I also quickly found that Alton Brown has made them, and looked up his recipe.  It looked pretty good, except for a few small things.

First, it is for a large number of tamales (4-5 dozen.)  That's not really a big problem, as I can just halve it.

Second, it's for HOT tamales.  I have no problem with that, but as I've said here before, my wife isn't big on spices.  So I'll have to adjust it.

Last, his is for shredded beef tamales.  In general, I don't like shredded beef.  There is something about the texture I don't care for.  I wanted to make ground beef tamales.

I looked around for ground beef tamale recipes and picked up some good tips, but in general they didn't have good spice profiles.  I really liked all the various spices in Alton's recipe; smoked paprika, garlic powder, cumin. Most of the ones I found on the web didn't go much beyond chili powder.  I also liked Alton's masa recipe.

In the end I went with a Frankenstein creation; mostly Alton's recipe, but with a lot of my own ideas.  I used Alton's masa recipe and his spice list, but with ground beef, which required a lot of different cooking methods.

Here's what my recipe looks like:


  • 1 tbs chili powder
  • 1 tbs kosher salt
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed
  • 1 pounds hamburger
  • 2 tbs vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
For the wrappers:
  • 2 dozen dried corn husks
For the cornmeal dough:
  • 1 pounds masa, approximately 3 cups
  • 1 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
  • 4 ounces lard, approximately 1/2 cup
  • 2 cups beef broth


Shopping was fun.  There are a number of good Mexican groceries in my area.  I stopped at the one in Pike Place first and bought the husks, masa (limed cornmeal,) and the lard (the glorious lard!) I have never worked with any of these as ingredients before so I was pretty excited; especially for the lard.  There's something naughty about using such a fattening ingredient in these modern "healthy eating" times.  I felt the same way about all the butter and cream in the butter chicken, and now I was buying LARD! I also picked up the smoked paprika and the cumin seeds from Market Spice.

Also on the agenda was buying a new steamer.  I bought one years ago to make rice, but it was pretty cheap and has long needed replacement.  A quick trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond set me up with a nice 8 quart pot with a steamer inset.  I love buying cooking equipment!

Winco supplied me with everything else I needed, as always.  In fact, it turned out that I could have picked up the masa, husks, and lard there as well.  Good to know the next time I need them!

Early this morning I started with the husks.  I filled a mixing bowl with warm water and put the husks in.  I used a wide one, since the husks are pretty big.  I then put another, smaller mixing bowl on top of them with some water in it to hold them down.  You want them submerged if possible so the whole husk re-hydrates.

Then we took our daughter to see Tangled.  She was fascinated and sat through the whole thing.  That's a pretty good accomplishment for a two year old.  I really liked it, as well.  Disney still hasn't lost a step.

When we got back, I started in on the real work.  Since I was switching from shredded to ground beef, I had greatly reduced my cooking time.  Essentially, my plan was to make a kind of taco meat to fill the tamales with, using a modification of Alton's recipe.  If you compare my recipe above with Alton's you'll see that in general I used about a third of what he did.  That's both because I was only cooking half the amount of meat, and also because I wasn't going to be doing such a long cooking process that needed to penetrate a roast.

I started by cooking the onions and garlic in a bit of vegetable oil, just until they softened.  Then I threw in the pound of ground beef and the spices. I cooked it for about 5-10 minutes; until I was sure it was well cooked, but still moist.


While it was cooking, I started on the masa.  I mixed the masa with the salt and baking powder, and then mixed the lard in with my hands.  It works really well, I must say.  Then I poured in the beef broth.  Alton's recipe calls for using the remaining fluid from boiling the beef, but since I wasn't doing that step I used about a cup of beef broth and a cup of water as a replacement.


Some of the recipes online described the finished dough as being similar to thick mashed potatoes, and so that is what I was going for.  It turned out very close.

Now began the mass production part of the recipe.  You have to roll up the tamales one at a time, and each one takes a bit of time.  It was a learning process, and the last ones I made were far superior to the first ones I made.  Hopefully I can pass this knowledge on to you.

I found a site that had pictures of the entire process.  I followed it precisely, but incorrectly at first.  Looking at the pictures it's hard to get a good sense of scale.  As it turns out, the husks are not uniform in size.  I started with one of the larger ones I had and filled to the same proportions as the ones in the pictures.  Also, my impression in general was that tamales were fairly large, say the size of a fat enchilada.  This had created some confusion in my mind when I read all these recipes that promised 6 dozen tamales.  That seemed like a massive amount of food.

It is also fairly difficult to tell from the pictures how thick of a layer of masa to put on the husk.  I had some measurements from Alton's recipe of using about 2 tablespoons, which helped me to hone in on the proper amount eventually.  However, the first few tamales I made ended up being about twice as big as all the rest of them, and they had pretty think "shells."  They cooked up just fine, though.



So my advice from experience here is to follow the suggested amounts.  Use about 2 tablespoons of dough and about a tablespoon of filling.  Spread it pretty thin, too.  It will fluff up a bit during cooking.  You want to make sure that you can wrap the dough all the way around the filling.  The picture above is the first one I made.  I quickly learned as well to push the dough out all the way to the edge on one side.  It makes rolling it up so much easier.  You want to leave a gap at the bottom, though.

It's quite a job to roll up all the tamales.  I only ended up with about 18 in all, and I can't imaging doing 6 dozen.  Luckily I had some help!


The rolled tamales were placed carefully upright in the colander insert for the pot.  There's a smaller steamer insert, but it's pretty short, so I just kept the water level down and used the pasta insert.


In order to make sure they all stayed upright, I ended up using the extra husks I'd already soaked.  I folded them up and filled the space.

I brought the water to a boil and then turned it down.  Every half hour I checked on them and added some water to the pot.  It took about an hour and a half until I decided they looked done.  I removed on and let it cool for 5 minutes before unwrapping it.  The masa was nice and firm, so I declared the batch done!


Result:  Pretty good.  The texture was perfect.  The meat turned out well. There's plenty of flavor here, but they still seem bland to me for some reason; like something's missing.  I added sour cream and hot sauce to mine and that brought them up quite a bit.  I think, though, that something like enchilada sauce would have been just about perfect.  They also would have gone well with a side of something.  Maybe some beans or cheese.  Here's a gratuitous picture of my daughter enjoying hers, though.



I'm glad I did this, of course, but I don't know if I'll do it again any time soon.  It might be good party food, though, and if I can zero in on some other flavors it would be much improved.  If I do it again, I'll make a sauce and try a different meat.

But it's no butter chicken...

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Week 6: Build Me Up, Butter Chicken

As I threatened when I made Chicken Tikka Masala, I decided to try my hand at Butter Chicken.  Fair Warning:  just reading this post may cause you to gain weight.  In fact, just overhearing someone mention it is good for a couple ounces...  My doctor is not going to be pleased.

My research for this dish was very confusing.  It turns out that there are a lot of ways to make butter chicken.  That's somewhat normal for cooking, I guess, but these were very different recipes.  Also, there was some confusion as to what constituted "butter chicken."  Some sites insisted that it and tikka masala were the same thing, for example.  Because of all of this I thought my best plan was to go with a simple version of the dish and then I could use that as a base for experimentation the next time I try it.  I still wanted one that at least claimed to taste like the butter chicken you find at restaurants, since that's the flavor I have so far liked.  I eventually settled on this one.  I mean, if you're going to make butter chicken, you might as do it with an emphasis on "butter," right?

The recipe is fairly simple.  It only calls for two real spices (or spice blends.)  I already had the garam masala from the tikka masala.  I just had to track down the tandoori masala and stop by the grocery, and I was set.  The tandoori masala is a little tricky. The local indian market had many boxes labeled "Tandoori Barbecue Masala" which might be the same thing, but I did find one bottle simply labelled Tandoori Masala.

There's a lot of cooking here, but nothing too complex.  As is my new habit, I did as much of the prep ahead of time as possible.  I diced the onion and fresh garlic, made sure the tomato sauce was open and ready, and defrosted the chicken.  I used about 3 tablespoons of butter in the pan for the onions and garlic and got them going.

While they were cooking I started on the sauce.  Two sticks of butter (minus the 3 tbs for the onions,) one 15oz can of tomato sauce, and 3 cups of whipping cream.  It was just decadent and beautiful to see it all in its fatty glory melting and mixing together.



I didn't use cayenne pepper since I had a bunch of red pepper powder left over from the tikka masala.  I also only put in about 3/4 teaspoon in deference to my wife.  However, the final product had no real bite to it, so I could have gone "full bore" with it and will next time.

I cut up the chicken and tossed it in oil and tandoori masala and put it in the oven to bake for 12 minutes.  I have to admit I was highly dubious about how this was going to turn out.  Normally for a dish like this I would have quickly stir fried them, but I have to admit I was wrong.  The little cubes came out perfect and a nice bright red from the masala.



When I put the chicken in the oven, the onions had just finished.  Caramelized onions smell so good.  And they're so tasty I was hard put to not just eat them right there.  But I kept to it and tossed them in the sauce.  I can't really tell you what the sauce would have tasted like without them, but they did not make it taste onion-y, and I think they added a couple of nice notes of sweetness and a little smoke.

Once the chicken was done, in it went, and I let the whole thing simmer while the rice was cooking.  I got a bit of a late start with the rice, but it didn't upset me too much because more simmering can't be anything but good for a sauce like this.  I made brown basmati rice.  Truth be told I overcooked it a bit trying to get a good dry rice for the dish.  It tasted fine, but was a little crunchy.



How did it turn out?  It's got two sticks of butter and three cups of heavy cream.  It was delicious!

Seriously, though, it was better than I feared it would be.  I intended it as an experiment and a base to build on, but it was really good as is, and not just because it can clog your arteries by smell alone.  My only disappointments were that the masala taste, while evident, was a bit more subtle than I would have liked, and the heat was totally non-existent.  Next time I'll definitely turn up both spices a notch or two.  I'll probably also start to experiment with the butter and heavy cream.  Maybe replace some with yogurt or half and half, and see what that does.  However, it was definitely delicious and I will be working it into the normal food rotation around here very soon.