Pink Salmon on cedar plank

Simple and yammy thing to do on grill while pizza oven is heating up...

Pizza to the Moon!!!

From Slashdot:


"It may be more PR stunt than a viable expansion plan, but the Japanese arm of Domino's Pizza is making plans for a lunar store. Construction firm Maeda Corp has drawn-up the plans for the dome shaped restaurant and figures it will take 70 tons of materials and pizza-making equipment. Even with the cost cutting measure or using mineral deposits on the moon to make the concrete, Domino's estimates the costs at Y1.67 trillion ($21.7 billion). In 2001 rival chain Pizza Hut made a delivery to the International Space Station, but Domino's hopes to become the preferred pizza of space with the moon store plan."


Yes!!!!

How to make hachapuri - Gergian pizza/calzone

How to calculate a volume of your pizza ?!

Books about pizza oven: with warranty ! :)

Here is a book about building your own pizza oven.

It gives your a warranty :)

Click Here!

How to cook a pouched egg in microwave (without, hopefully, blowing it)

Pouched eggs are yammy, but a bit tricky to make. Egg and microwave oven does not mix : this is a well known. But there are a trick from molecular gastronomy: just add water and PUNCH HOLE IN EGG YOLK (this is very important, otherwise egg will still EXPLODE!). It did not blow for me with just 2 holes made with skewer and took 1 min 30 seconds to cook.

It may still be DANGEROUS! I personally do not trust microwave oven.



This is a finished product. It tasted good with pesto sauce!

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Yeah, right, but does it include PIZZA?!

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking [Hardcover] is HUGE

I would like to get it.

Post in Wired looked amazing.

But there are some foods, that are classical. Example: pizza. I am not sure it can be done better with modernist tools. :) Pizza oven is high tech enough and when you switch from wood to gas, you loose. You gain in speed and convinces, but taste is not as good.

What do you think?

How to make a REAL Humus salad/spread ... but not that quick

OK, so if you have time and want to be genune, you need to start in advance.

Get a dry hummus beans. You can find these beans (as any other beans) for really cheap.

Wash and soak for several hours.

Cook with a lot of water till you can eat/ smash.

Be careful: when you boil beans they can foam up.

Once it done and all is cooled down to nice warm, you just do as described in my previous post about fake humus, but use a real beans.

http://pizzaovenproject.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-make-fake-humus-really-quick.html

You can use some of that humus water if your humus is too dry (scoop some when you add beans to blender: of course, only this one will do! 

:))

If your humus is too dry , just scoop some more water and add to blender.

This one can be really tasty and so much cheaper than humus you can find in store :)

Dress as you like and enjoy with warm pitta bread!

Bon Appetite!

How to make a fake Humus really quick!

OK, so when humus from store just does not cut (too much of this sour chemicals they dump in it or what not) a quick humus come to the rescue.

All you need is stock up on a Garbanzo Beans from Costco and have it in your pantry :)

Prepared humus is not suppose to store long, even in refrigerator and if it does survive, there is indication that it is not alive (and dangerous!) or plane not very tasty.

Here are a secret Ingredients:

1) Canned Garbanzo Beans (Humus beans!)

2) Lemon juice (fresh or from bottle)

3) Olive oil (use organic virgin first cold press if you can)

4) Garlic

5) Sea salt

6) ... and hard to get Tahini paste (stock up on this one too!)

You open the can, discard juice and use your power blender. Making humus is hard and my life was too, till I got this wonderful machine. I can not recommend it HIGH ENOUGH. It is THAT good!




Now, for one can of beans you need about two table spoons of tahini or more if you like, it may be salted so you do not need to add much salt. Add garlic (if you like) and other ingredients per you taste: experiment till you find proportions you love best: after all this is just a salad. Just try not to put too much salt, garlic or lemon juice :)

The end result should look like this: dress it with olive oil, paprika, petrozilia or pine nuts or even some humus beans and lemon juice: what every you like and scoop it with a fresh pitta bread!

It can be dome really quick in 10-15 minutes for a dinner.

Enjoy, bon appetite!

How to cook pizza rolls (joke)

Have no idea what it is, but it is funny :-)

Pizza oven first run 2011 video

First pizza of 2011 season

Yeah!

Oven was so wet but with 5 rounds of dry wood we managed to bake a test run!

Creame cheese Rugalah with rubbery Jam are done!

Rugalah pizza

This is how you turn pizza to rugalah :-)

Rugalah with yeast dough

This is a more traditional version: you make a yeast dough : flour, yeast, eggs, milk , sugar and do as below :-)

How to make Rugalah?

Rugalah is traditional Jewish curason-like pastry made from cookie dough: flour, butter and in our case : cream cheese! After you made a butter dough, you need to chill it in refrigerator and roll pizza out of balls.

You cover pizza with chocolate spread or just jam as bellow and cut it with pizza cutter :-)

You roll pizza slices starting from fat end :-) and end up with some thing that looks like bellow.

Now bake till ready: 375F for 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Weather is getting better, pizza party is soon!

Spring is rolling up, get ready!

Backyard cleaning is in process, I need dry wood and hopefully, we will have a wonderful party soon.

As usual, do reservations if you want to come (16 April or 24 April - when weather will allow it) :)

Dutch oven bread

It is super easy: mix yeast, some salt and flour with warm water. Make it like a heavy pancake butter. Cover with wet towel and let it work for 12-24 hours. Heat oven to 500F and put your Dutch oven in. Season it with oil. Form a bread while you do it: use some non stick surface or extra flour. Put some oil. Let it rise a bit: do not work the dough: it should be a very wet kind. Flip it in to oven, close lid. After 15 minutes open lid and reduce temperature to 350F. Bake for 20 more minutes or till ready. Enjoy :-)

Taratoria Piano in Nara

Located in the center, in arcade near Lake exit. Try it. Pizaola trained in Italy and he use all the right ingredients, he also nice, smily dude. Place looks cool, and oven shaped like a piano ;-). But he seems to put too much cheese last time we been there and his pie still lack some thing (soul? If it exist, or may be salt? - go figure) how sad it is, it was still less than our expectations even so we love eat there and kids love pizza, I wish pizaola master the last step and bake his technically excellent pizza with more soul. I will be happy to have him on our next pizza party: our technique is not as polished, but I think we manage to do it on a good sunny day :-) anyway, real pizzerias are rare in Japan, so please try and be your own judge. May be it will go better with wine and music they have some times ;-)

Best pizza in Japan

You will be surprised, but the best I eat so far was from Hakone backery: train station cafe. The do not even advertise as pizzeria, but they have brick oven (gas) and made a delicious pizza. Tomatto souse is fantastic and there are Italian behind, but pie was made by Japanese dude. If you happened to travel to or from Hakone(not anytime soon so) try it!

Picking fresh mushrooms for pizza

Good shrooms make a hell od a difference. These from Microsoft campus, I would not use, despite a very cool look :-)

My coffee cup v2.0

This is my year 2011 take on espresso cup design. It is similar to V1.0 I made a while ago (cups were productized by Japanese artisan Muzutane-san). The difference is 3D. No secret is that 2011 is a year of 3D, so I made coffee beans 3D, not just painted, but made from clay. It is much cooler this way.

Healthy Mexican food?!

You betcha! Beans is what you have to eat between pizza party weekends. This is a secret from 4 hours body book :-)

Is pizza a healthy food?

Of course, per this illustration anyway :-)