alt.eats.columbus ... go.there.now

The coincidence was a bit eerie.

Last night, on our way to La Casita on Bethel (a great place we've visited a couple times) something piqued our curiosity. Mrs. DavesBeer spyed a Thai and Korean restaurant and at least one other embedded in a strip mall (across from KMart). Our curiosity was piqued, but we continued to our more familiar place (plus we were meeting friends). The proverbial "holes in the wall" too often don't often pop up on a Google local search, and, if they did, "reviews" would be unreliable (no offense to the suckiness of Yelp, but it sucks).

Dinner was great, then to Denise's for a quick dessert for the kiddies and Jim appears as if from a 4th dimension. Triggered by this presence, I have an immediate flashback to alt.eats.columbus (a clever usenet reference). He, Bethia and a few others (I intend to get to know) are covering the less frequented of the more interesting culinary finds throughout the city. This group will educate us with quality evaluations of what will be the best finds in the city and help small family businesses gain the reputation they deserve.

I think this one's a hit. Good luck to them.

Links (I find embedding them clunky):
alt.eats.columbus ~ La Casita (killer kidney beans) ~ Jim ~ Bethia

Hooray!

The Pizza Grand Prix at Wild Goose Creative was a blast. My thanks to WGC for hosting, Jim Ellison and Columbus Underground for the event's creation and the judges whom I did NOT pay off:
Ms. Woolf - Hungry Woolf .com
Mr. Aufdencamp – Mama Mimi’s Take ‘N Bake Pizza
Mr. Kopecky – Columbus Pierogi King
Mrs. Yerkes – from Bono Pizza

And thanks to my wife and kid for tolerating my lunacy during the Firedome development and my preparation for this most excellent event and all the cheese mishaps.

Me, cooking pizza in the alley behind Wild Goose

The loot.

Frankie and I went through the goodies this morning, awesome.

Comments anyone?

-- Jim Lahey and Rick Flaste: My Bread, The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method.
I think Lahey was the first to be videotaped with Bittman on this no knead stuff. I'm in B&N now and wondering if this is worthwhile. The books got back-cover endorsements from Bourdain, Bittman, Batali and Steingarten - is it possible he paid them ALL off to get their praise? Chime in and let me know if you've used this.

ps In the interest of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link. If you click and buy, I make big bucks kiddies. About 4% of the price. I use these all over the webercam and come end of the quarter, I'm rolling in nickels, about $3 and change each and every 3 months. Heh, heh, heh.

One pie, coming up.

Been a little preoccupied this week with the upcoming Pizza Grand Prix. As you can see, my trunk kept receiving bags of lump and briquettes as I contemplated - and tested for - the perfect fuel. I'm not sure if I'm running lump or briquettes in the Firedome yet. Maybe it'll be a secret mixture.

My hardware choice is locked down; my version 2 flopped wicked bad, but a slightly modified 1st model is certainly adequate. I'm now hunting down ingredients. Today I scored my tomatoes. Do you know how hard it is to find a label like that? They're nice and will make up a key part of my topping. The other ingredients are on my scavenger hunt for the next couple days. It's not going to be anything groundbreaking. A simple pie celebrating the beauty of a handful of ingredients. The contest part will be fun, but the truth is I make pizzas for anyone who likes them, myself included. My big challenge Sunday will be a bit more orderliness to my mise while prepping and serving a handful of pizzas (not doing quite so many this time). My last run was sloppy.

Stop by, my girls will be cheering me on (even if my pizza isn't quite as good as the one at Chuck E. Cheese).

18 Minute (or less) Matzo

Over the past few days, I've been thinking of this cracker. I made something like this before, but these are better. Kind of like traditional matzo, except they're grained up and there's no Rabbi in the recipe:

Steel cut oats, 50 g, ground fine in a burr grinder
Flax seed, 1T
water, 100 g
unbleached white flour, 100 g
salt, 3 g
vegetable oil, 1T
sugar, 1t

Mix ingredients, divide in 60 g lumps, roll out into 8" discs, place discs on super thin sheet (I use a grilling vegetable topper), score surface with pizza cutter before placing in oven, bake at 450°F until some burned bits appear (ca. 10 minutes), cool, crack and eat.

epic. failure.

Last night I used a modification of my firedome project.  I swapped the kettle's lower hemisphere for one that had an 8" hole cut out of the bottom.  The idea was to increase air flow, hence combustion, and get the temps inside the dome to about 1,000°F.  That gaping hole, compared to the normal venting, apparently screwed things up.  I did get a dome temp of about 950 for an hour or so, but when I tossed on a pizza, the bottom charred in about 2 minutes while the top was undercooked.  Oh, and Dave the Brilliant changed another variable while he was at it.  I used lump charcoal.  2 Variables changed and char formation.  What to do?  The Pizza Grand Prix is nearing (March 14th at WildGooseCreative(.com, come by and I'll autograph your kettle) and I'm busy as hell with the 9-to-5.  I'm backing off to the normal lower hemisphere, using lump and will probably have time for one more test run.  

I'm not terribly worried.  I think the massive cutout in the kettle, in hindsight, was just too radical a change.  Pizza in the grill is all about uniformity:  getting the top and bottom to cook at similar rates and who knows what that hole in bottom is doing compared to the relatively closed and vented system of the normal kettle.  The lump will be a fun and relatively conservative tweak that I believe will be constructive.

Dinner that night was interesting.  Half the night's intended menu had undergone near complete combustion leaving only residual ash and char.  I took the other blob of dough and heated the regular oven fast, using convection, and tossed on a legume side and some fresh raw veggies.  We had a meal in about 20 minutes and I had lots to think about.  After the initial shock of disappointment, failures can be pretty instructive.  Wish I hadn't waited so long to give it a test drive.

Smelts, frozen like Walt Disney

I recently realized frozen smelts can only be found in the grocery store during cooler months. I prepped a bunch last night and took what I didn't cook and tossed 'em in the freezer. I'm hoping the breading stays on once I removed them from the freezer. Depicted are my stages of preparation of these little delicate morsels of the sea.

Smelts, thawed and dried.

Floured, egged and encrusted in breadcrumbs, some fried, some frozen.

Vacuum packed and sentenced to the freezer until the next fish fry.

Related on the web ...

The the freaks at Alcor ...

A word from our sponsor

 Cold weather and caged housebound kids can be a challenging combination. This stuff sprinkled on freshly popped popcorn, made the kids squeal with delight. It helped make the stay home days that much more tolerable.

Corn Tortillas a la YouTube

I tried making corn tortillas years ago, failed when I tried to roll them out and gave up. The other day, I bought some more masa harina, watched about 10 vids on YouTube searching for "corn tortillas" and, after a little tinkering, got it. No matter what bullshit hand-waving goes on about a grain behaving differently due to the relative humidity of the season, grain's moisture level doesn't change. I worked on the relative amounts of masa and water to get a nice dough; I found 120 g masa to 180 g water to make a nice dough. The second challenge encountered was rolling them out. This dough cannot be rolled, it can only be squashed. I put the 40 gram balls of dough (after resting) between the sheets of a ziploc plastic bag and squashed it really flat with a cast iron pan. The resulting disc is delicate, but, doesn't stick to the plastic. Cook a few minutes on each side on a wicked hot cast iron pan that's been wiped with a bit of oil. Let resulting tortillas rest (they soften on resting and develop flavor). I took a few and stuffed them with some leftover roasted chicken and a small bit of salsa for a decadent Saturday afternoon snack.

Another Steak Please

My photography sucks, hope you get the picture ...

1.1 lb New York Strip, 1.5" thick.

I bought it because of Mike's recent post of a killer ribeye. That steak burned an image in my memory and I needed a fix.

I rarely get the good cuts right when I grill. Low 'n slow is easy, the nice cuts require some experience. I added salt and pepper, got a smokin' hot kettle ready for direct, on Mike's guidance, 9 minutes (no peeks, no touch) on the first side, 7 minutes on the other, 5 minutes rest (the family was getting hungry) and served up for the 3 of us with roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli.

Food of the gods. Thanks Mike. Wish the image conveyed more accurately how nice it was. Even the dog got some of the fat. She's just as happy as us.

Boil n bake honey wheat bagels

 

That's more like it.

milk, 1/2 C
water, 1/2 C
yeast, instant active, 1 pkg
salt, 1.5 t
honey, 1/4 C
white wheat flour, 1 C
unbleached white, 2 C
handful of rolled oats

Straight dough, overnight in the fridge. Warm up a couple hours, portion into 80 gram pieces, roll into ca. 7" ropes, curl into loops, let rest about 10 minutes, boil in 3 qts water/1/4 C honey for 1 minute, bake at 450°F for about 15 minutes. Yum.

Calories, about 200 each (w/o cream cheese).

One from the kid and Mrs DavesBeer

Wicked cold temps and caged up kids. Could there be a better combination to make one look to Jack Daniels for help?

Frankie had a friend over and Mom made them some cupcakes and let them decorate 'em. Here's an example of Mom's handiwork. A rose atop a delicate little cake. Pretty tasty.

Miserable failure

Starting to host images using Picasweb, still learning.

First attempt at bagels this morning flopped. I used a mix of coarse ground oats, whole wheat and unbleached white. Texture off, flavor was ok, everything else sucked. Back to the drawing board. Blah.

It's almost March, Pizza Grand Prix is just around the corner

I'm training for Wild Goose Creative's Pizza Grand Prix in March, the brainchild of Jim; I'm entering a pizza.

Here's my schedule.

1. Repair my launch pad. I have a mini patio for my Firedome, v 2.0 that needs some fixing. I'm nearly in traction after my work on that today; swinging a pickaxe and everthing. I ache. Got about another day's work and my pad will be finished.

2. Got a new heavy duty, very industrial-looking stand made for my kettle mod. It too needs a few hours work to finish. It's serious-as-shit looking.

3. Finally, some cooking runs:
a. Only hitting a consistent 650-750°F during past runs. In an attempt to get near 1,000°F, I'll be trying a hugely larger air intake from a modified lower kettle.
b. I'll be trying lump instead of briquettes.
c. I need a more thermally resistant cooking surface. Going to 5th Ave to a tile place to find a thicker stone.

Lots of work ahead. Keep you posted on results.