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Food 101: How to Sauté/Pan-Fry Chicken (And deglazing too!)

Probably one of the biggest things standing in the way of people from learning to cook properly is how intimidating it seems. The culinary world borrows words from dozens of different languages and has its own set of lingo that makes no sense outside of context. As mentioned last time, dredging is usually the industrial process of collecting mud, waste, and trash from the beds of harbors, but in cooking terms it simply means coating meat in flour. It’s easy to see how one could be easily confused and overwhelmed when the neat, new recipe they’ve found calls for them to acquire fancy-ass sounding ingredients like anise extract or turmeric or herbes de provence. It’s enough to make someone immediately yell “What the hell?” and quit while they’re ahead.

"Say 'coriander' one more time! I triple dog dare you!"

“Say ‘coriander’ one more time! I triple dog dare you!”

The same goes with directions too. How do you fold a liquid batter? It’s not paper. And furthermore, “browning” your meat doesn’t mean you want it literally the color brown. Actually, one of my favorite methods of cooking is one of those fancy shmancy terms, sautéing. It sounds SO ritzy, yet it’s probably one of the simplest cooking processes out there, and is a key stepping stone to learning to cook.

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Cheese Review: Goat’s Milk Ricotta

Last week I told of our adventures in Limburger cheese – a cheese that we ordered special from the internet.  This cheese was a much more spur of the moment purchase.  A few weekends ago on our way to the Garlic Festival we visited a local dairy farm.  I mostly just wanted to hang out with the goats, but we also wanted to buy some super fresh cheese.

The cheese is that way guys!

The cheese is that way guys!

It was really nice there because they had a large selection of fresh cheeses made from cow, sheep, and goat milk.  They also had fresh milk, butter, and eggs.  We spent a really long time in front of the refrigerator case trying to decide which cheese to try.  We probably would have bought more if we’d remembered to bring an insulated bag.  But we didn’t want to risk buying a lot of cheese and having it all go bad sitting in the car all day.  Anyway, after a lot of debate we finally decided to buy the goat’s milk ricotta.

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Pizza Lab #9: Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled 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.

I’m a big fan of Autumn, most of my friends know this. I recently went on about this in my pumpkin spice article. Despite this, September always was a bittersweet month, since Summer is still my favorite time of year no matter what. Halloween and pumpkins are nice, but IMO it’s not quite worth the loss of wearing nothing but t-shirts and driving with the windows down. So before the end of Summer, Meg and I wanted to do one last grilled pizza before temperatures dropped back into the 50s and 60s, making grilling your foods inappropriate and silly (unless of course you live in the south where it’s probably state-law to never go more than a month without igniting your barbecue). We grow lots of basil every summer, and thus make a lot of pesto each year. This combined with the fact that our last grilled pizza almost resembled a panino sandwich in texture made us realize we absolutely needed to make some sort of Tuscan pesto chicken panini inspired pizza. And while this was one of the more tame ideas for a Pizza Lab, it ended up being delicious to the point of borderline sexy.

Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled Pizza

Erik S. So this pizza was pretty okay I guess.
Meg A. Just okay?
Erik S. Sorry, that was a typo… So this pizza was OH MY GOD IT WAS SO OH MY GOD.
Meg A. Haha, that’s better. This pizza was indeed pretty magical. But we knew it was gonna be awesome from the beginning.
Erik S. Magical is a good way to describe it. Only pure magic could have produced such euphoria.
Meg A. Yeah, in our heads (and our noses) we had a pretty good inkling it was gonna be a sheer delight. It’s also probably the most decadent pizza we’ve made yet
Erik S. It’s interesting too considering it’s one of the least outlandish ones we’ve made too.
Meg A. True. It’s the most traditional-ish.
Erik S. Hm. Looking back at the photos is taking me back. Oh man… We need to relive that pizza some day. I’m feeling feelings.
Meg A. Do you need a minute? Don’t forget to lock your door…

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Pizza Lab #6: Pretzel 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.

One of my favorite tags here is the crazy crossovers tag. It’s reserved for the delightful results of worlds colliding.. Unsurprisingly, Pizza Lab uses this tag everytime just because that’s really the basic gist of the column, pizza crossovers with other foods. This edition is no different, but to me feels like a true crossover because of the nature of the experiment. Some of the previous labs have been great, but weren’t particularly outlandish with regards to the foods involved. Our Pretzel Pizza in this Pizza Lab saw two classic snack foods combine in a way we didn’t think possible. We changed things up a bit, and it felt pretty special as far as pizza experiments go. The results were certainly worth it (after a ton of work).

Pretzel Pizza

Erik S. So this was our second dessert pizza that we’ve done. It was, what do they call it? A labor of love. Or no, an enormous pain in the asshole. That’s the term I was thinking of.
Meg A. Haha yeah…
Erik S. But my God was it worth it.
Meg A. Indeed. I wish it hadn’t been so much work so we might actually make it again. I was sad when I finished the last piece because I knew more than likely it wouldn’t be made again.
Erik S. Well, never say never… but yeah, let’s never make it again, haha.
Meg A. In fairness, if we always made our own dough this pizza wouldn’t have seemed like that much more work. But we’re lazy, so yeah.
Erik S. Well, if we made our own dough, we also wouldn’t have made it through six Pizza Labs.
Meg A. This is true.
Erik S. There’s a reason we buy our dough from pizzerias.
Meg A. Yes, because we’d rather spend $3 on pre-made dough than 3 hours on making our own.

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Pizza Lab #2: Souvlaki Gyro 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.

So it’s looking like Pizza Lab managed to snag a second edition after all. Considering the effort that went into the original, we weren’t sure if we’d be up to a second one. Nonetheless, the first one received a decent number of views, which goes to show you apparently if you post something pizza-related on the internet, it will receive attention. That, and also come on, it’s friggin pizza. We couldn’t let ourselves be too lazy to make pizza together! Oh but where was I, this edition we made a pizza based on the idea of gyros.

Souvlaki Gyro Pizza

Gyros are a delicious, albeit misnomered, staple of Greek-American cuisine. Meats and vegetables served in a pita wrap and slathered in one of the most ironically delicious sauces on the planet, considering tzatziki’s appearance. Authentic gyro in Greece doesn’t necessarily need to be served in a wrap, since it actually refers to the style of broiling an enormous block of meat on a long, narrow tube-like cooker called a spit (cue penis jokes). The meat, usually lamb or chicken, is shaved off into slices, and basically tastes like something that should gross you out but is somehow delightful. In America, where the gyro pita has become synonymous with Greek restaurants and diners everywhere, we simply refer to anything involving a pita rolled up as a gyro. It’s not technically correct, but who the fuck cares, no one’s capable of arguing when they have a mouthful of sweet, sweet spit-meat (again, penis jokes). Souvlaki on the other hand refers to any meat seasoned with lemon and Greek spices, then skewered and grilled. But whatever, this is getting too in-depth and technical for something that appears side-by-side pictures of video games and half-nude anime girls. You all know what a gyro is.

Erik S. So we actually were talking about this idea for a while right?
Meg A. Yeah. I think the day you had that really crappy gyro the idea of a gyro pizza came up.
Erik S. Oh right, you mean the pile of onions which may or may not have contained traces of chicken and pita.
Meg A. Yes, that.
Erik S. Following this, we began craving gyros like a couple of manic, pregnant, Greek women, only without the excess body hair and fetus.
Meg A. Well… without the fetus at least, haha.
Erik S. Uh… yyyeah.

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