Technique: Cooking Surfaces for Pizza (Part 6)

Most of the cooking surfaces for pizza have been around for a while. There are a multitude of variations on pizza stones of different thicknesses and different materials. The Emile Henry stone, however, has some interesting features.

First, unlike most of the pizza stones, the Emile Henry stone is glazed. The point of using stone or ceramic instead of metal is that the stone absorbs moisture from the dough, resulting in a crisper crust. So, glazing sounds like a bad idea, right?

According to packaging description, the glaze is "micro-crazed" which sounds a lot like my mental health some days, but it actually means that the glaze has teeny cracks. I'll take their word for it, since my electron microscope is in the wash. Another benefit of the glaze is that grease and sauce aren't absorbed by the stone, so it's easier to clean. And it's dishwasher safe, if you're so inclined.

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Twisted Catalina Dressing

My father-in-law never puts salad dressing on his salads, so you could have knocked me over with a feather when he was talking about a restaurant that he and my mother-in-law had been to, and he said he liked the dressing.

I was a little puzzled why he ordered a salad with dressing, but I was even more baffled that he found one that he liked.

When my in-laws took my husband and I to that restaurant for my birthday, I had my chance to sample the dressing. And then it made sense.

This was an Asian restaurant, and there weren't any dressing choices and no mention of salads on the menu. You placed your order and small salads automatically came to the table with the dressing already on them.

So the first time my in-laws went there, my father-in-law was faced with a pre-dressed salad, and he's not the type to send something back. So he ate it, Even more surprising, he liked it.

I was really curious what sort of dressing he'd like, since he never, ever ever EVER ate salad dressing at my house, his own, or in other restaurants. He once said that he used to eat dressings, but he suddenly decided he didn't like them any more.

I expected the dressing to be something really unusual. I mean, if it was a standard dressing, then why wasn't he eating it at home? I was ready for exotic flavors, and what I got was ... okay a little bit different in the flavor combination. But perfectly recognizable.

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Chicken Cacciatore Throwdown

Right now, I'm reading Bobby Flay's Throwdown. What, you don't read cookbooks? You cook from them?

Well, that's interesting...

First, let me admit that I'm a fan of Throwdown on the Food Network. While there's not a whole lot of technique, cooking instruction or exact measurements on the show, you get a pretty good idea of what the two competitors are putting into their dishes, and you get to see what the differences are when they're done. And you get comments from the judges.

Bobby Flay usually goes off on some strange tangent and adds non-traditional things to traditional dishes, while the competitors stick to what made them special in the first place. And Bobby usually loses because the local judges can't get around his odd riffs on their favorite foods.

I like traditional foods, but I also love messing around with recipes. There's a place for both.

And this cookbook gives you both.

After browsing through the book a dozen times, I couldn't figure out which recipe I wanted to make. For every recipe, I was waffling back and forth. I like this on Bobby's recipe, and I like that on the competitor's recipe. I don't like this ingredient in Bobby's recipe, but I wish the competitor had that item that Bobby used.

Or I'd like one whole recipe, but realize that some ingredient isn't readily available where I live. That's no fun. And with my luck, the difficult ingredient usually played a significant role. Not a big deal if I'm planning on cooking dinner, but a little more annoying if I'm cooking something so I could review it.

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