Food! [The thread that started this section]

Man, knowing what french toast can be if done well, what a disappointment...
but then again, I usually end up with one semi-dry slice on my french toast endeavours, because I just underestimate how much moisture a slice will happily soak. I followed a recipe once and just eyeball it all since then, so at least the previous 5 slices turn out great :p
 
Dinner:
Stewed kale, white beans and tomato on parm & ricotta-enriched polenta

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Tonight's dinner:

3-meat breakfast burrito:
- Bacon
- Bourbon BBQ marinated tri-tip
- Pepperoni

Plus egg, cheese, potato tots, and hot sauce.

That definitely satisfied the breakfast burrito craving...

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She offered to make dinner tonight because I'm working on homework. She asked for a suggestion for something easy to make, though. I suggested baked enchiladas because we had leftover cooked chicken.

Tortillas? Store-bought. Chicken? Pre-cooked. Sauce? From a jar. Easy-peasy. A 3-step recipe. 1) Mix the specific measurements of already-prepared ingredients. 2) Assemble in the pan. 3) Bake.

1) First, She ended up spilling half the chicken on the floor because of her insistence to always use the smallest cutting/prep board available, even if what she's working with is actually the exact same size as than the cutting board.
2) She didn't read the recipe closely, and instead of only adding 1/2 cup of the sauce to the chicken and cheese for the filling, with the remainder for the top, she poured the whole jar of sauce into the chicken.
3) Instead of adding 1/2 cup of black beans, she added a whole can, and didn't drain/rinse them.
4) Instead of adding one canned chipotle pepper, she added all of them.
5) After the pan was loaded with the rolled enchiladas, I noticed that there was something sticking out from underneath. It was waxed paper. No, not parchment: non-oven-safe waxed paper.
6) She had the oven set to "BROIL" for the first few minutes. In a glass pan (a no-no). Thankfully we caught it before the pan got damaged, or before the food caught fire from being broiled for 45 minutes. We caught it because we could smell burning.
 
So last night I was on the little community terrace on the back of my apartment and my neighbor offered to buy me something from the kebab shop they were ordering from. I tried the kebab pizza and dude, it was so good.

I know it’s a kick in the face for proper Italian pizza (or Slovenian!), but this was a great mix of Turkish-German-Italian cuisine. Or I was just hungry.
 
I love a good "fusion" pizza. One of my favorites was this marinated korean pork pizza from a place here that closed last year. Had a spicy sweet drizzle, fresh sliced japaneno, and some cilantro and red onion.

There's a place near hear that has Indian-themed pizzas (tandori chicken, tikka masala chicken, curry chicken, aloo gobi, etc) along with the "normal" pizzas. The toppings are great, but the crusts suck.
 
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So last night I was on the little community terrace on the back of my apartment and my neighbor offered to buy me something from the kebab shop they were ordering from. I tried the kebab pizza and dude, it was so good.

I know it’s a kick in the face for proper Italian pizza (or Slovenian!), but this was a great mix of Turkish-German-Italian cuisine. Or I was just hungry.
Lahmacun worth a try too
 
Haven't felt motivated to cook for the last while...so today is the traditional Thanksgiving enchiladas (made with a jarred sauce, grocery store rotisserie chicken, grocery store flour tortillas, pre-shredded cheese, canned green chilies and canned black olives).

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So last night I was on the little community terrace on the back of my apartment and my neighbor offered to buy me something from the kebab shop they were ordering from. I tried the kebab pizza and dude, it was so good.

I know it’s a kick in the face for proper Italian pizza (or Slovenian!), but this was a great mix of Turkish-German-Italian cuisine. Or I was just hungry.
Old post, but damn—I want to try a kebab pizza so much. I just get distracted by the döners I can't get at home every time.
 
Haven't properly "cooked" anything in a while, but last night's dinner was pretty good. Thai(ish) style soup, with chicken thighs, coconut milk, lemongrass, red curry paste, fresh baby corn, carrots, mushrooms, cilantro, ginger, garlic, onion, jalapeno, and lime all served over white rice. Needed some fresh cilantro garnish, and maybe some chili oil on top...

We got our new stove months ago, and I *still* haven't figured out the right timing and burner/burner setting to get rice done properly. I had the old stove dialed in, but this one's got me flummoxed.
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Just got my first dutch oven today!

6qt, round, enameled cast iron, good to 500°F and with an oven-proof lid.

$37 from Bed Bath and Beyond with my extra 5% off coupon, in the Le Crusett rip-off red. 😅 I'm sure the enamel is thin and chip prone, but I can replace it 9 times for the same price as the big-name brands. Ha!

I want to make bread in it first, but once that's out of the way, what's the first meal I should make in it?
 
Goddamn it. I was so excited to start the bread dough tonight, to have with dinner tomorrow....got all of the ingredients out, put the flour and salt in the bowl, and (luckilly) thought, "Hmm...this is the last yeast from that package...i wonder how much longer it has in its useful life?". Expired 8/1/2021.

I tried proofing a bit in some luke warm water for 10 minutes to see if it was still good....nothing. Yeast is dead.

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Expired 8/1/2021.
Haha, oops!
No idea where it comes from, but while I see food YouTube (all Americans) always use dry active yeast, over here we much more commonly use the refrigerated fresh yeast brick (usually sold at 9ct for the 42g one-inch-cube - the equivalent to two 8g packets of active dry yeast). It’s not that dry yeast isn’t available or anything, it is, but somehow the fresh stuff is just more common 🤷‍♂️ also with that you’re usually talking best by within two weeks or so… usable another 2-4 weeks after that, but it usually clearly indicates end of usability by delivering a nice green coat of mold 🤣
 
Haha, oops!
No idea where it comes from, but while I see food YouTube (all Americans) always use dry active yeast, over here we much more commonly use the refrigerated fresh yeast brick (usually sold at 9ct for the 42g one-inch-cube - the equivalent to two 8g packets of active dry yeast). It’s not that dry yeast isn’t available or anything, it is, but somehow the fresh stuff is just more common 🤷‍♂️ also with that you’re usually talking best by within two weeks or so… usable another 2-4 weeks after that, but it usually clearly indicates end of usability by delivering a nice green coat of mold 🤣
Fascinating! I dont know that I've ever seen "fresh" yeast. I can say for certain that we did not sell it at the grocery store at worked that in the nineties.

I remember purchasing this stuff in mid 2020, shocked to see it after being out of stock for a few months from the start of the pandemic.
 
Fascinating! I dont know that I've ever seen "fresh" yeast.
To be fair I don’t even know what the feeding block containing the yeast is made of. It feels like very dry and crumbly putty or clay and has a slightly unappetizing grey beige color…
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Wait somehow I feel a deja vu about this topic… I sort of remember the argument that since dry yeast is much more easy to handle logistically, it’s better suited to a large country like the US. While here in Germany the distances are comparatively small and logistics more centralized, making it viable to transport tiny amounts of cooled goods that are basically worth nothing in between all the rest of the perishable goods. Something like that. I dunno.
 
Wait somehow I feel a deja vu about this topic… I sort of remember the argument that since dry yeast is much more easy to handle logistically, it’s better suited to a large country like the US. While here in Germany the distances are comparatively small and logistics more centralized, making it viable to transport tiny amounts of cooled goods that are basically worth nothing in between all the rest of the perishable goods. Something like that. I dunno.

It could be as simple as that. According to Google, a drive from Kiel to München, about the entire length of the country, is about 3/4 the distance a drive up down the length of California, alone...and that California drive is the absolute shorted route, going through no real cities until you've been driving for 400km...and it's Sacramento, so...yeah. 😅


Today's lunch: Maple Gochujang Wings. A slight bit over-cooked on the glaze (it's less over-cooked in person than it looks in this photo). I forgot I was out of soy sauce and had to use potsticker sauce which already had sugar, but I had already started mixing the garlic powder, maple syrup, and honey, so I went with it...it was extra sweet, and extra-likely to burn. But, very tasty!



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