Blog Archives
Spices 101: What is Cumin?
Cumin is an awesome spice. Cumin is by far my favorite spice. The best way I can describe it, is that it smells like an armpit and makes everything taste like a taco.
I know that sounds kinda weird but trust me, cumin is really useful. It complements other flavors really well in spice blends and despite its funky smell, it’s never overbearing when you use it in cooking. I love throwing it into everything from curries to dry rubs to breading. It’s exotic enough to be interesting, but not something you have to pay top-dollar for.
Cumin
Origin: Mediterranean / India
Appearance: Greyish-tan powder OR long, tan seeds with lines
Scent: B.O., Peppery
Taste: Warm, earthy
Foods: Indian cuisine, Latino cuisine
Rareness: Average
Spices 101: What is Turmeric?
I’m really interested in spices and seasonings. Afterall 90% of the time they’re responsible for making a dish taste like what it does. If variety is the spice of life, then spices are the spice of food. Or something. That’s why I’ve started this column to introduce exotic and interesting spices to readers unfamiliar with them. I can’t help but remember the first time I saw a bottle of cumin and asked my mother “Mom, what’s ‘cummin’?” Many years later I’d like to think I have a pretty impressive knowledge of all the different spices out there, so now it’s time to share that knowledge.
Turmeric
Origin: India
Appearance: Fine yellow powder
Scent: Earthy, woody
Taste: Mild, mustard–like
Foods: Indian cuisine, Asian cuisine, curries
Rareness: Average
Pizza Lab #8: Chinese Food Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
It’s one of the more unfortunate stereotypes in modern society that pizza is a fast food. The notion of fast food brings to mind images of maniacal corporations and mostly-plastic hamburgers which have about the same nutritional value on your body as a swift kick in the balls. Technically, fast food used to literally mean “fast” food; it was food prepared quickly, presented in a cheap, efficient fashion so as to be eaten on the run. While not all fast food is necessarily terrible and disgusting, the fast food everyone has come to know and love (and hate) is a bit of an anomaly in our civilization in how bad it is for you, and how gross it secretly is. Despite that, not all quickly-prepared food has to be awful. This brings me back to my original point, that pizza is often unfairly lumped into the same category as trashgarbage like the McRib or the Krispykreme Burger, just because it is technically a “fast food”. We all know pizza is serious business. There’s other foods that are considered fast foods, despite not really deserving the name. Our Americanized version of Chinese food is another perennial favorite of cheap slackers who don’t want to dine in, to have this dubious genre. But… what if… the two were combined into one thing?! Would time stop because of the deliciousness?! Would everyone stop eating every other source of food?!
Nah, it’s basically just a pizza crust with Sesame Chicken on it.
Chinese Food Pizza
Erik S. So looking back at our paperwork, here’s some of the comments: “Nothing special. Was too much work for just okay results. Gained nothing by being put on dough.” Those aren’t particularly positive…
Meg A. If i recall it started out okay, but then got meh as we went along.
Erik S. Yeah i think it began promising but didn’t pay off.
Meg A. Yeah…
Erik S. Hmm… what was the inspiration for this pizza anyway? Did we have anything more profound than just “pizza and chinese food are both delicious”?
Meg A. I think I originally thought of sweet and sour chicken pizza just because I’d been craving sweet and sour chicken, but we didn’t think that’d work. But we still wanted to try a chinese food pizza.
Erik S. Ah yeah, because of the flavor of sweet and sour. Though admittedly, the wannabe sesame chicken sauce I made wasn’t too compatible either. We should’ve just made sweet and sour. At least we could’ve satisfied your craving…




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