One thing all 4 of us always plan on making when we’re home – pizza. We’ve learned a long time ago that nothing beats a homemade pizza (once we passed the early years of ketchupy sauces and overbaked cheese). We used to make minced beef and sausage pizzas all the time, especially since we couldn’t buy those (not halaal generally) but we lean towards veggie pizzas at home – it tastes better and allows you to really taste the sauce, cheese and crust. We’ve also experimented with lots of cheese-less pizzas (Dad is one of those unfathomable beings who does not like melted/cooked cheese. Seriously. ???), topping them with pesto/soy cheese combos (definitely no gooey there!) or just sauce and toppings, with varied success (and much frustration). At some point, Dad helpfully realised he didn’t hate pizza, in face he liked veggie pizzas, as long as it wasn’t too cheesy. Sigh. Now THAT we could work with.

I was home for Eid ul Adha (fortunately, it was celebrated on the 20th, which was a holiday in Guyana, so I went home from then to Boxing Day) and the house was filled with the 4 of us, parents, 1 sister-in-law, 2 newborns and a toddler. Joy So, the sorrel  was already being enjoyed, with more being bought and cleaned (since the brother was actually home during December, when it’s in season). Lasagna, lamb, turkey were all being planned and some executed. We knew we had to make pizza. And with my brother being a recent convert to the Alton Brown methodologies, we knew it was time to make pizza the Good Eats way. Lilandra had always wanted to try this, which involved making the pizza dough, letting it rise for 24 hours in the refrigerator, then baking it quickly at high heat. The problem with that in previous times, was the pre-planning element. You needed to know 24 hours in advance you wanted to make pizza, and not ketch a vaps at 4 pm and want to make pizza for dinner. Plus, pizza is always a production when you’re making for at least 6 people, half of whom need to have leftover pizza the next day for breakfast, even for lunch if possible. For once, we planned.

Letting a yeast dough rise overnight in the fridge is not a concept created by Alton Brown. There are numerous bakers and breadmakers who have talked and written about  the virtues of taking it slow with yeast and dough, citing vastly superior results for crust and texture. While I have done quite a bit of reading in the past couple weeks on bread and yeast and treatment of dough, starting with Dan Lepard’s posts on The Guardian’s Word of Mouth food site, I am not in a mental position to explain any of it – there’s a reason I begged to drop Chemistry in Form 4! My forays into the baking world have been few and far-between and while I intend to work on that, because nothing beats having fresh bread, this post isn’t going to do that Trinifood has declared her resolution to work on becoming a better baker for 2008 and she might share some more informed knowledge along the way. In the meantime, if you are not already a baker and want to know more, I suggest you start with this post from Mr Lepard. It’s really a question and answer segment, but he gives great tips, information and links.

But back to the pizza. Since it wasn’t an Alton Brown innovation, we did look at other recipes from reputable sources. But in the end, we decided that if we really wanted to accept Alton Brown’s wisdom, we needed to follow his recipe and then move forward from there. This is the recipe as taken from the Food Network website, complete with update:

Now, of course, we don’t have a pizza peel, nor do we have a baking stone. Sigh. We thought about trying to buy at least the clay tile, but we were a bit busy. So, we didn’t completely follow his wisdom, but we did our best. If you haven’t seen the episode Flat is Beautiful, have a look at the transcript on the Good Eats Fan Page.

Findings:

The dough needed more flour in order to handle it properly, both before and after refrigeration. It might be my inexperience with handling a wetter looser dough, or that it’s really humid this time of year in the tropics.

I really need to practise the art of stretching out pizza dough… I think I actually WATCHED this episode, so I kinda knew vaguely, what movements I was supposed to do, but I couldn’t mimic them in practice. Hence 2 oval pizzas and one almost round one.

At 500 degrees, these bake QUICKLY. You better have an assembly line of ingredients and sauce and cheese to maximise the hot oven. At some point we were only managing one pizza at a time in the big oven. Not good for energy usage. We were somewhat hampered by the fact that the toddler wandered downstairs with her bear and needed to be kept busy and away from knives and graters. She got a ball of dough to make roti with and seemed happy enough, but you HAVE TO WATCH children in the kitchen, especially intensely curious-about-cooking ones who insist they need to see inside pots and ovens, even though they know about HOT and danger. Sigh.

This recipe makes about 3 medium sized, thin crust pizzas (not paper thin) – those are the 3 pictured on this page. We needed to supplement with a pizza dough from the Naparima Girls High School cookbook.

The crust was wonderful. Wonderful. A crust that has actual flavour, without adding anything to it. Who knew? Who knew that slow rise would result in flavour? I was just hoping for texture. Texture was great too – chewy, but crispy on the exposed parts. But the overall taste was just so good - you can see why there’s no need to overload a pizza with toppings or sauce. Making the 2nd Naps dough was good in retrospect for comparitive purposes, as while it was a decent crust, it had no taste to it apart from the toppings.

I have no pictures of cross-sections of the pizza for you to see the crust and the little holes and the texture. With 7 adults and 1 toddler, when we sat down to eat, by the time we looked around, there was no more Good Eats pizza left!

We made 1 plain cheese pizza – bottled Barilla sauce, with a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar cheeses – and 2 veggie with onions, tomatoes, pineapple and mushrooms. The plain cheese in my opinion, especially with an arabiatta sauce, was the very best.

As for Alton Brown, his not-quite-guru status (we tend to lean away from the notion) has been maintained in our household. We’ve done the burger, the chewy and the thin chocolate chip cookie, and the brining of the turkey (more about that later), Lilandra’s tried the french toast…which leads to the obvious question – which fundamental recipe do we need to try next?

Who’s Your Celebrity Chef Match?

My Result: Emeril Lagasse

Bam! When it comes to whipping up something in the kitchen, you’re rarely afraid to kick it up a notch. That’s why your celebrity chef match is Emeril Lagasse, the king of notch-kicking. While some may be a little intimidated by cooking and recipes, you tend to have fun in the kitchen (and in life), throwing caution (and sometimes even recipes) to the wind. After all, it’s only food.

To you, the most important thing is to have a good time, which is why you probably enjoy sharing your culinary enthusiasm with friends and family. When you do entertain, you have a knack for throwing a little heart into everything you prepare — and there’s no better ingredient in the world.

Take this test>

I don’t have anything against Emeril really, in fact, I have used his recipes and think he makes excellent food. I just can’t watch him. At all. I don’t get why people think he’s a great TV chef. He always seems flat on the screen and doesn’t draw me in at all. Even when I am interested in the food. Maybe it’s a personality thing. Maybe I haven’t seen the right shows (cannot stand the Live one). But the description of my cooking-style and approach to food seem reasonably accurate. I guess I am a notch-kicker-upper. I just didn’t know it.

BAM!

And for more Celebrity Chef miscellany this Tuesday morning, read Anthony Bourdain’s rundown on the Food Network chefs from earlier in the year: NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT… (guest blogging on Michael Ruhlman’s blog). So funny. And I am glad he likes Alton Brown. Because I like both ABs. One day I want to post on these TV chefs, although it won’t be nearly as interesting. Sample Bourdain on Sandra Lee:

“Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained”

Just my way of sharing the joy.

(wait for it…)

BAM!!

The plan was to blog, ever so briefly about my vacation, or even try to clear some of the backlog of posts I have started. But, you know the enthusiasm comes for the most recent activity. In this case, that’s the making of the Good Eats burger, courtesy my favourite person on the Food Network – Alton Brown. If you have never seen his show, he’s someone who’s interested in the “why” as well as the “how” of cooking. If there’s a rule, he’ll tell you why you should (or should not) follow it. If he says use some special tool or machine, you can be sure he’ll explain how to choose the best (and most economical one). And he’s funny.* With props. Good Eats is said to be the cooking show for engineers. I am not an engineer, but I too am interested in the how and why rather than just the recipe. I like to have some freedom in the kitchen, so if I know how things like yeast and eggs work and react to other ingredients it will help me know how to vary a given recipe. And he uses diagrams and models. All in 30 minutes.

Onto the burger. My brother, who is an engineer by training (although not practice) also appreciates the value of Alton Brown. And while he’s been home on holiday, he won’t complain if we switch to Good Eats. And a few nights ago we happened to be watching the episode entitled “The Daily Grind” which is all about ground meat – the selection of the meat, the grinding at home and the recipes – Burger of the Gods and the Good Eats Meatloaf. Watching him create these burgers, my brother was seized by a sudden, immediate and all-consuming goal (this happens to him a lot) – making that burger EXACTLY the way Alton did. And he insisted it had to be done as soon as possible – we had to scout for meat and grind at home and make those burgers before I returned to Guyana. And the rest of us concurred. A chance to try for the real thing.

Perhaps some backstory. See, while T&T has halal burgers available at the $5 burger stands and frozen patties in the supermarket, those are thin, low-meat affairs that- while tasty with the mountain of toppings – aren’t really a meaty delight. Burgers, as an American sandwich, and named in terms of the weight and described as meaty and juicy … we didn’t know those. When you can’t eat a lot of meat outside, there are some things (like real steaks) that you never really get to try. Mom made burgers for us at home that were thicker, and meatier, but how would we know what the real thing is? I am pretty sure they’re not loaded with green seasonings and breadcrumbs I had one “real” burger a few months ago at the Hilton Trinidad (which, like the Crowne Plaza Trinidad has a wide variety of imported halal meats and can offer steaks, burgers, lamb etc that I can actually eat). It was great. And I am not a red meat (or indeed a big burger) person.

So, back to Alton Brown. While the Food Network has his recipes from the shows, the recipes aren’t the whole story. They work, but for the full experience you need to see the show, or read the transcript, where you’ll access all his tips and warnings. Home grinding by the way, is essential to avoid possibility of hideously deathly disease and infection (or at least somewhat uncomfortable gastro-intestinal problems), when you cook your burgers to his recommended MEDIUM RARE. He’ll tell you how to cook burgers and steaks etc to medium rare and medium well done, but tells you “why bother” with well done.

Which is why food hygiene is important.

RECIPE

Burger of the Gods (Recipe by Alton Brown)

Ingredients:

* 8 ounces chuck, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes [try smaller cubes]
* 8 ounces sirloin, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

[Yes, just salt."That's all. No herbs. No chopped onions. No garlic. No soup mix. No mysteries. Just salt. Why? Well because it actually seasons the meat. Makes it taste beefier as opposed to herby or shalloty or garlicy or anything like that. Any other flavors that want to hitch a ride can wait to ride on the bun."]

Method:

1. In separate batches, pulse the chuck and the sirloin in a food processor 10 times. [Use small batches. You may need to do this more times depending on your processor capabilities]

2. Combine the chuck, sirloin, and kosher salt in a large bowl. Form the meat into 5-ounce patties.

3. Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes. ["And to figure out if the pan is ready, just kind of drop a little water right into the middle. Now if it sizzles up like that and quickly evaporates, you're in the zone. Good to go."]

4. Place the hamburger patties in the pan. For medium-rare burgers, cook the patties for 4 minutes on each side. For medium burgers, cook the patties for 5 minutes on each side. Flip the burgers only once during cooking. ["Burger Rule #1: No Patty Smashing!"]

And to serve? From Alton: “Now before you pour on the usual condiments do me a favor. Just try this just one time, okay? Toasted bun, right? Little mayonnaise. Or a lot of mayonnaise depending on how you feel about mayonnaise. Little black pepper. Fresh ground. Right in the middle. Okay. Now that is going to form the base of a sauce that will be completed by the juices from a well rested hamburger patty, cooked medium-rare of course. Top that off with the other part of the toasted bun.”

The verdict? The burger was moist and really flavourful. Really. A couple may have been well done. But mostly we managed the medium rare to medium well. I am a burger minimalist myself so that topping with just mayo and black pepper is ideal for me. I don’t usually do much else. Maybe some cheese next time. I have to admit that burgers this thick aren’t always my thing. So maybe next time, despite AB’s warnings, I’ll go for something a bit thinner. My sister thought it would be excellent with some cheese in the centre. My father loved the flavour but said he would have preferred it just with fries (no bread). I thought it might have had that fresh beefy taste, with just the (sea) salt in it, but no. It was just good and meaty. And juicy.

Now, as for choosing the meat to grind. We’re not sure how many of the halal butchers serve up their meat as labeled by AB and the regular supermarkets (chuck, sirloin etc). And we were in a rush so we had to work with what we could find. We bought stewing beef and beef steak. The composition of the meat looked about right. Glad we watched the show! Next time also? Trim more of the chewy white bits off the meat that don’t really eat well in a burger.

All these pics are in a Flickr Set.

* Ok Ok. Sometimes it’s a bit overboard and campy and in the first few episodes of season 1 it seems somewhat forced, but he gets his point across. Even if I do like my meat well done sometimes….