Daily Archives: February 22, 2009

Homemade Pizzas

Not made by us… but our friend Dan. He made his own dough and put on lots of yummy toppings. He mentioned he made pizza dough using Mario Batali’s recipe, I think this one, and also his own beer dough. It was thin crust and very crispy.

This is unagi pizza, yes, that’s eel. As Dan says, highly experimental, but actually not half bad, it was a bit too spicy though.

He also made his own wheat pasta. It was a little dense but had good flavor.

Again, men in the kitchen while the ladies enjoy a glass a wine… a good way to spend an evening.

Mochi & Misu

We’re watching you…

The kitties are so funny, when I come home from work and sit at the kitchen table at my computer, they’ll come up close to me and plop down right next to my chair, attention hungry maybe? Not sure but very cute.

Almost Famous Soft Pretzels

So I’m starting to really like Food Network Magazine, they have fun recipes and it’s so easy just to flip open the page and start cooking rather than having to go online, search for the recipe, and print it out. I decided to try out the “Almost Famous Soft Pretzels” recipe. It’s my first time making any sort of bread with yeast.

It ended up not being too difficult. I had to let it rise for about an hour and it almost took up the space of the whole bowl.

Then you “punch” it to let out all the air… it actually made a “pheewww” sound as it deflated…

It’s pretty hard to shape pretzels though. The dough is very sticky and stretchy. This is when I miss my granite countertop. With tile countertop, I’m afraid the grout will be dirty so don’t want to roll out anything directly on top. Plus I don’t have a big enough cutting board 🙁 Oh well…

But they still turned out pretty nice… the outside was nice and brown and crisp, the inside soft and chewy. The sauce a bit too sweet and be sure not to use too much cider vinegar or else it’ll be watered down. Also I didn’t use the butter in the recipe at the end, the pretzels don’t need it.