Even fake food is better than fast food Wednesday, Feb 20 2008

Continuing my reflections on food, as promised I went out and bought a prepared pizza crust and cheese since I had a lot of toppings left over from the other day when I attempted to make my own pizza. The results were exponentially better than my horrid crust which is what I expected. What I was surprised by was how much better it ended out than the likes of what’s served at so called “pizza delivery” chain restaurants. I refuse to name names but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. There’s a lot I could say about chain restaurants and fast food but three topics is a bit much.

Back to the prepared crust, I happened to buy a “fresh” variety that I’m assuming was partially pre-baked before being sealed in plastic. You can get different crusts in different states of prepare that have been preserved in varying ways, but I imagine that they’re all pretty comparable. Since it wasn’t raw dough the baking time (to say nothing of the overall preparation time) was less than what I made the other day, really you just need to let it go long enough to get the cheese to your desired state or 10 minutes, whatever is longer. I had to bake my pizza the other day for almost twice that amount of time. All in all, with the time it took to heat up the oven that I spent arranging the pizza it was 20 minutes. Most delivery chain pizzas take at least that long to arrive. I thought that the price for the crust was not great, but if you combine everything it’s not more than the regular price of delivery pizza unless you use premium ingredients. And of course if you use premium ingredients and don’t fuck it up then it tastes exponentially better than delivery pizza and might justify the price.

I must say though that for me pizza is a well below ideal food. Why? Because if you make it so that it tastes good it’s very high in calories, however it’s not especially filling so if you eat enough to feel satisfied you’ve also eaten enough to make yourself FAT. You don’t want to be FAT do you? Well to be fair you could say the same thing about any high fat low volume food, like cutlets and steaks. Although you tend to eat those more along with other things whereas when you get a pizza don’t you just get the pizza? Are you trying to tell me that you really eat a salad before you eat your pizza? Come on? You know you’re just eating other junk along with the pizza unless you’re just stuffing your face on pizza alone.

I may or may not try making my own pizza dough again some other time. Although I doubt that I’ll try kneading it by hand again if I do. By the way I topped my pizza with a cheese blend, and cured meats. I probably would have had to put pure lard on (the crust called for you to oil it so perhaps I did at that) to get a higher fat content.

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Making Pizza is only fun when you do it right Tuesday, Feb 19 2008

Well for the most part it’s most enjoyable to win and if you’re seriously trying hard to do something by yourself it won’t be fun if things don’t go well. Another reason not to live your life alone, sometimes the most amusing situations between people occur in the midst of failures at non-critical tasks. What I mean by that is, two people mashing away at pizza dough that won’t hold together can have some fun but when you screw up in the middle of surgery it’s not likely. But one person mashing away at pizza dough that won’t stick together…

That said my pizza did not go well. Eventually I managed to get something into the oven and because the toppings were all tasty it turned out passable but not presentable. Which is more than I can say for my attempt at risotto.

And so I continue my series on cooking failures with this lesson to impart to you poor children of the world: don’t try to do other things while cooking. Just like not following the instructions for whatever reasons, such as trying to change or add things, this is another mistake that amateur cooks make. For the most part I myself only leave the kitchen or undertake other tasks during more leisurely meals like when stew is in the pot or while a roast is in the oven. My mistake in this case was not observing the yeast for the pizza! Since I had to wait for it I just left and perhaps I was gone too long as well but in any case I did not see what happened with it. And then later when trying to knead the dough and having it be a sticky sloppy mess that wouldn’t do anything that it reminded me of what happened to Kawachi in his match against Kanmuri from the Pantasia Newcomer’s contest/battle/competition (I don’t remember the exact term) in the manga series Yakitate Japan! Which is an amusing series indeed, I recommend it. I’m not sure how correct a lot of its culinary information is though since it is first and foremost a gag manga. In any case unlike Kawachi who was making bread I was able to just keep adding more flour and eventually my mess stuck together. Unfortunately the crust later did not rise while baking at all and tasted terrible but that’s how it goes. Actually I somewhat call into question the recipe because things were so off but since I wasn’t there for the whole thing I don’t know.

In any case my point is that you shouldn’t stay away from things too long when making food. At least come back and check at the supposed halfway point if not every half hour, whichever is less. I realize that there are occasions when you feel obligated to leave the kitchen; kids, pets, the phone, but it is necessary to focus as much as possible. Actually so saying if your food often does not turn out right and you get distracted often while cooking that could be the problem so you should switch to things that need less input (and so did stews and roasts become common).

Well since my pizza went so badly I might attempt it again with a new perspective (or a prepared crust….). Since I’m not a huge fan of that type of food I’m honestly only going to attempt it because I’ve still got a lot of stuff for toppings left.

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