The Ziggurat of Doom

Jones Soda prove again that they really will make a drink of anything with their D&D Limited Edition sodas. On just the name and colors, my vote would be for “Bigby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer”.

Topping HBO’s Tru Blood for best blood themed cash-in is the Blood Energy Potion in an IV looking package.

And finally the the social network for whiskey drinkers, or the site I wish I knew about BEFORE I went to Scotland.

Ramen! Right here in Cleveland.
Yes, the real stuff, no hot-pot involved.
Not as good as the noodle place in Boston, but still worth checking out.
Shinano Japanese Restaurant

We must all go there. For great justice.

Beer Consumption in Major Countries in 2004
Before you click through, try to guess who’s #1 in consumption per capita.

Slice: A List of Regional Pizza Styles Now I’m hungry.

How to Make a Deep-Fried Cheese-Stuffed Burger From Bacon - A Hamburger Today on Yahoo! Food Insert ZOMG here.

So one of the anime blogs I read sometimes is Riuva (nsfw), because the guy who runs it is pretty cool. He used to post a lot of stuff about anime figurines. Now he is studying to become Azuma Kazuma a food scientist. The result? Entries about the science of cooking steak interposed with random anime girl pictures.

I went to Starbucks the other day, even though I hate their coffee. My car was in the shop, and they had free wi-fi. Their cunning plan to lure people who originally had no plans of buying anything worked. I ended up buying one of these things, a travel mug with a coffee press built into it.

It’s apparently not a new idea, but it’s new to me, and I think it’s brilliant. I usually only drink about one travel mug worth of coffee at a time anyway, and it’s less work than brewing a pot in a drip machine, which I somehow still manage to have trouble with.

To review, here’s a recipe for beer bread. Here’s a recipe for bread that short cuts all the complicated stuff by putting it on the shelf for half a day. I’ve been putting off posting the recipe for general bread dough. Without seeing those simpler recipes, there is a possibility your mind could break in a very Lovecraftian fashion. That, or this one is longer, and I was just putting it off.

This is the dough I use for most bread ‘projects’. I’ve successfully made breadsticks, dinner rolls, sandwich bread, raisin bread’s close cousin Craisin bread, pizza crust, and the Ohio Valley delicacy pepperoni bread. I’ve synthesized this from a number of different sources, from the Joy of Cooking, to my mom, to some serious trial and error, so there’s no link.

This is enough for 2 loaves of sandwich bread, a dozen pepperoni rolls, or two-dozen dinner rolls. You could make half as much, but the hard part is the kneading, and it’s not any easier to knead half as much.
UPDATED: Pics at the bottom.
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Bread-a-thon rolls on. This recipe makes a very good, very crusty loaf of Italian bread. It’s shocking, really. Bread is supposed to be hard to make. You’re supposed to cover your kitchen in flour. It should require you to get up at the crack of dawn to get a loaf made for dinner. At least, that is what I’d been lead to believe.

Turns out, that’s not the case at all. I’m not taking credit for this recipe, because i follow someone else’s almost verbatim. I grifted it from the NYT, and there’s even a youtube video showing you how it’s done. I can tell you it works. It doesn’t take any more work than what you see in the video. The end result looks as good as what you see, too.

I noticed a few things when I make this. The first time I made it, I thought I had really screwed it up. When I turned out the dough to fold it a few times, it was a glob, not dough like in the video. Folding it didn’t make creases, just reshaped the mound. I thought I screwed it up, but decided to keep going anyway. Turns out, it worked fine. Don’t worry if it looks too thin, just keep going.

Second thing is, I think the temperature they used in the video was far too high. The first time I made it, the bread was stuck in the crock pot. I figured I’d just let it cool and shrink a little, and it would pop out. Nope. It was burned too the bottom. I eventually pried it out with a metal spoon, but the bottom of the bread was all black. I make it at 425F now, and it works fine. The bread comes right out.

Lastly, and this is just personal preference, I only cook the bread with the cover on for 15 minutes and lengthen the uncovered time accordingly. I like a crust, but not a real hard one that you have to work to chew through. Steam creates crust, so logically the longer you have the lid on, the more crust there will be.

So, there you have it. Less than 15 minutes worth of work and 20 cents worth of ingredients, and you have a loaf of bread that’ll stand up to anything from a bakery. Tomorrow, I’ll post the directions for some traditional bread dough. This is the stuff that takes all day to make, covers your kitchen in flour, and takes a little bit of work, but man, the end results are worth it.

Not much food wise lately here on ZoD. This isn’t because I haven’t been making anything new and exciting, it’s because I’ve been making stuff that’s old and exciting. Bread, specifically. The stuff that forced us into 80 hour work weeks, subjugated our women, and gave us toast. I now know how to bake bread. It’s pretty cool. I’ve got three good recipes, so I’ll post them in order from easiest to hardest.

This first one is beer bread. It’s quick and easy, won’t dirty too many dishes, and tastes like delicious beer. If that has hasn’t sold you, nothing will.
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My new grandmother that I got in a package deal with my wife has a really, really sweet tooth. She gave my wife a lot of old dessert recipes straight out of the fifties. A lot of them are really dated, really good, and usually involve jello. This one is kind of the exception. It’s really good, but doesn’t involve jello and isn’t dated. It’s cake frosting, and it’s not like anything you’ve ever had out of a can or from a bakery. It’s light, fluffy, and creamy without being overly sweet and sticky.

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp AP Flour
• 1 Cup Milk (More fat = better tasting)
• .5 Cup Shortening
• .5 Cup Butter
• 1.25 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla

Directions

1. Whisk together milk and flour and gently heat to a light simmer, stirring constantly. The flour will start to thicken just before boiling, and you don’t want to scorch your milk or the flavor will be off. Remove from heat to cool fully.
2. No seriously, it’ll take like 30 minutes to cool.
3. Cream the butter and shortening with a mixer until they lighten in color. Add sugar and vanilla and beat until dissolved (about 5 minutes).
4. Add milk mixture and beat on high for at least five minutes to whip air into it.
5. OPTIONAL: Stash it in the fridge overnight, bring up to room temperature, and beat until soft. This gives all the flavors time to mingle and improves the texture for reasons I’m not entirely clear about.
6. This will be enough to give a 9×13 cake a very generous frosting. It is very light though, so it won’t stick well to the sides of a cake. Best to leave the cake in the baking dish and just frost the top.
7. See that milk in the ingredients list? Yeah. Stow the left overs and frosted cake in the fridge.

Notes

• Vanilla can be replaced with any flavored oil like peppermint extract, or with dark rum.
• Don’t frost the cake till it’s fully cooled. This is almost always true, but especially with this frosting.

I really like ‘Authentic Italian’ cuisine. It’s usually very light, quick, healthy and diverse. This… is not one of those recipes. This is very much an ‘Italian American’ dish, what with its cheese and tomato sauce and all that. Just like Mom used to make. Assuming you don’t put it directly over pasta, it’s also fairly low in carbs, if you’re worried about that. As an Italian American who does the low carb thing when school isn’t a lot of work and when I can cook every day, I can tell you there’s not a lot of recipes that can make this claim.
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If you’ve never heard of molecular gastronomy, it’s basically the idea of applying sound science to the art of cooking. Khymos is a great blog on the subject. See their Perfect steak with DIY “sous vide” cooking for an example.

Warning: Pun Ahead!
I really eat this kind of stuff up.

Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea: Valentine’s Day Carnival of the Recipes. And yes, I’m in this one.

I’m a caffeine addict. Have been since I worked in retail and measured my day in glasses of Coke and Dr. Pepper. My preferred caffeine delivery system has been cold and quick ever since then. My wife has been bugging me to try to move to coffee in the morning, because for one, it’s cheaper, and two, you don’t have to keep running to the store to get more.

Fair enough.

The problem is that if I had the energy to make a pot of coffee in the morning, I wouldn’t need the caffeine. It dawned on me that iced coffee can sit in the fridge, ready for my zombie like morning clawing. I made some last night, and it turned out just about right.

I like my coffee moderately sweet and light, so feel free to adjust the lactose and sweetness to suite your own needs

1. Brew 12 cups of coffee, using twice the recommended amount of coffee grounds.
2. While it’s going, pour 4 cups of milk, the equivalent of 1.25 cup sugar, and 3 shots (6 oz) of hazelnut or mint syrup into a not glass pitcher. I use Splenda. Use what you like.
3. When the coffee is done brewing, add to pitcher.
4. Stir and cool in the fridge over night.

A cup of this stuff is about as strong as a cup and a half of hot coffee. It’s nowhere near as smooth and milky as a Frappuchino from Starbucks, but those are too smooth and milky for me. This still tastes like coffee. The cold temperature and extra milk help offset the extra bite from using very dark coffee.

So, you probably know that most food you can get at Chinese restaurants in the US isn’t particularly authentic, as in it’s not stuff you’d find if you actually went to a restaurant in China. General Tso’s Chicken is a prime example of this, and I found an interesting article about how it came into existence. Good stuff.

Bonus: A recipe for making it.

A Night at uWink sounds pretty ok to me.

Mens Cookery Club » Chapati, Chiapatta, Chiapata

Ingrediants

* 1 D-cup of Whole meal flour
* 1 D-cup of chick pea flour
* Olive Oil
* Salt
* 1/2 a mug of warm water
* butter

“D-cup” are your standard fair bra sizes, but before you grab your better halfs bra from the wardrobe, you may want to put your hands together to form a bowl and fill that up instead.

Best. Ingredients list. Ever.

It’s always been my favorite emotional response. Now, it’s also my favorite pie: Schadenfreude.

I stand vindicated.

Suck it, herbavores.