food

Deep Dish Pizza

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One of my favorite cooking sites, Cooking for Engineers, posted a recipe for deep dish pizza. I love a good Pizza Hut pan pizza, even despite having worked there and seen what goes on behind the scenes. This recipe wasn't exactly a copy, which is fine because it was delicious.

Since I didn't vary much from the original recipe I won't reguritate it here, instead I'll just write up my comments. My dough sure turned out dry. I ended up adding another couple tablespoons of water because the dough wouldn't hold together. I wonder if that was an altitude thing.

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The Curious Cook

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Title: The Curious Cook
Author: Harold McGee
Published: 1990 by North Point Press
ISBN: 0-86547-452-4

I'm all about the science of cooking. I'm a sucker for science in a lot of forms, but cooking is great because you can eat the results. If you like Alton Brown, you'll feel right at home with Harold McGee.

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The Smoked-Foods Cookbook

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Title: The Smoked-Food Cookbook
Author: Lue & Ed Park
Published: 1992 by Stackpole Books
ISBN: 1-985771-00-5

Lately I've been quite infatuated with barbecue. I place the blame squarely on Alton Brown, who has a really great recipe for ribs. He also came up with a wacky idea to build a terra-cotta smoker, which I've decided to implement. That's another blog post (complete with pictures, of course), but in preparation I decided to visit the library.

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Peppers: A Story Of Hot Pursuits

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Title: Peppers: A Story Of Hot Pursuits
Author: Amal Naj
Published: 1992 by Alfred A Knopf, Inc.
ISBN: 0-394-57077-4

Last summer we grew a whole bunch of peppers in our garden. The plan was to make some salsa out of them, and to that end it was a success. We made three batches of salsa and each was delicious. The jalapeños were the best pepper we had. Compared to the poblanos and green peppers, they were more abundant. The habeñeros barely started budding by the time it froze.

With that success under my belt I'm preparing to expand my pepper cultivation next year. I picked up this book hoping to further that goal. It turns out not to be so much about growing peppers like The Great Tomato Book was about tomatoes. But it was an interesting read nonetheless.

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Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen

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Title: Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen
Author: Alton Brown
Published: 2003 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
ISBN: 1-58479-296-5

If you're a fan of Good Eats, you'll dig this book. But be careful. It's not a cookbook, so if that's what you're looking for you'll be disappointed. Instead, it's a book full of what A.B. recommends for your kitchen. Quite a bit of it you could guess at from his show. Some of it is straight out of the show, actually. I guess he can only have so many opinions.

I was quite intrigued by his recommendation for how to get rid of extra hardware. First step is to move everything to a single spot. As you use things, put them away. Eventually you find what you use and what you don't. Well, it's a little more involved (read the book!) but that's the gist. I just can't see myself doing that, though. I did suggest it to my wife, but she was not interested. How could we get ride of the ice cream maker we've only used once in the 6 years we've been married?

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Apples: History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy

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Title: Apples: History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy
Author: Peter Wynne
Published: 1975 by Hawthorn Books
ISBN: 0-8015-0340-X

I've been considering planting a fruit tree somewhere on my property, probably in the front yard. Apples seem like a good choice. For one, they grow pretty well around here. With the cold winters we get, that's a pretty important feature. Plus there's a lot you can do with them. Pies, sauces, cobbles, juices, canning, even baby food. Oh, and I guess you can eat them plain too. So I picked up this book at the library to learn a little about apple trees and see if that's really what I want.

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The Great Tomato Book

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Title: The Great Tomato Book
Author: Gary Ibsen
Published: 1999 by Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 1-58008-048-0

This year was the first that I've had my own garden. If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I would have planted tomatoes, I would have laughed in your face. But my wife has convinced me of their virtues over the years, so we decided to plant 12 tomato plants. The harvest wasn't quite as large as I had expected, so I turned to the library for assistance.

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Tomato and Onion Risotto

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A few weeks ago I went to Jackson, WY to do a router upgrade. It had to be done late at night so I stayed at a hotel. You know what that means: Food TV! We don't have cable, dish, etc. at home (and prefer it that way), but I do miss Food Network some times. That night I saw somebody make risotto. It didn't really look that hard, so I determined to try it after I got home.

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Sausage Cheese Bread

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I was watching Emeril last week (yeah, I know. I promise it's not a normal occurance) and saw a great recipe for a sausage and cheese stuffed bread. Actually, the recipe was pretty poor. I had to make it up as I went along but that was fun too. Of course, that means that you'll have to do the same since I didn't take time to measure everything either.

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Sparking Hotdogs

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Last night I warmed up a hotdog for my 2 year-old son. Normally I warm up the dog first and then cut it into slices but it struck me that I would burn my fingers less if I reversed the process. So that's what I did. The upshot was that the dog started sparking! Yeah, I was pretty amazed too.

Here's the question I sent off to Bar-S, the maker of my otherwise tasty meat:

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