Left to fend for myself for dinner tonight and for whatever reason I decided I felt like pizza, even though it was already after 6pm when I found out.Chicken, bacon, and garlic pizza. Pretty good. Here's a couple more shots to give you the full experience.


Update: There have been some complaints that I didn't actually post the instructions for making this. I didn't because I am lazy, and since I'm still lazy I'll just direct you to where I got the dough recipe here. Follow this, top as you want, cook as it instructs, and then there's pizza.

Same as before, but this time Casey tracked down some food grade lye on the internet. It makes a huge difference.

Unfortunately, I've only got the one left to take pictures of since the others have all been eaten already.

So beef ribs are the main protein for this week. To start it off I thought I'd braise some of them. First, I marinated them for about 15 hours in:
-Soy sauce
-Ginger
-Rice Vinegar
-Sesame oil
-Honey
-Garlic
-Onion
-Orange juice
-Red Pepper flakes

When I was ready to cook I got a skillet going super hot with vegetable oil, dumped the rack in and heavily browned it on both sides, removed it then added some chopped onion, and green beans, browning those. I put the ribs in a deep roasting pan, covered them with the veggies, then dumped in all of the remaining marinade, a can of beef broth, and about 1/2 cup of white wine, which was all I had left. Covered it in foil, popped it in the oven at 200 degrees, and let it go for a little over 5 hours. When they came out they were moist, and tender, and full of flavor. We ate them with a side of macaroni and cheese as we are wont to do. BOOM!

Check these out.

Dough:
1 package (2 1/2 teaspoon) active dry yeast or 2 teaspoons instant yeast
3/4 cup water
3 1/2 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons powdered milk
4 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs
6 tablespoons butter, softened

Filling:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins

Glaze:
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Mix all the dry ingredients except for the yeast.
2. Add the yeast, water, and eggs and mix until combined.
3. Mix or knead in the softened butter, until it forms a smooth, satiny dough. It will be sticky.
4. Place it in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until double in volume. This will be roughly 1 to 1.5 hours.
5. Once it's doubled, punch the dough down, cover it back up, and stick it in the fridge overnight.
6. The next day divide the dough into two halves. Working quickly while it's still cold, roll each half out into a roughly 8" x 10" rectangle. Brush this with an egg wash made from whisking together one whole egg and 1 tablespoon of milk, then spread the filling out over it.
7. Roll the sheet up into a log, then slice into 8 discs. Place each disc on a greased baking sheet and press it flat with your hand, like this:

8. Repeat with the other half of the dough, then brush them all with more of the egg wash. Leave them to rise for 45 minutes to an hour, or until they're "puffy".
9. Preheat the oven to 385º.
10. Bake the rolls for 15-17 minutes, until golden brown. Immediately brush with the glaze once when they come out of the oven.

Once they cool the final product should look something like this:

11. Eat them, which looks something like this:

So this time I made pretzels. I actually made a batch last night, but I didn't get any photos. Mostly traditional, though those two in the foreground are sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar instead of salt.

2-3 cups flour, depending on how well it absorbs everything
1 tablespoon malt powder OR brown sugar (I used sugar because I don't have any malt powder)
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm milk

1. Mix it all together until it forms a dough that starts to pull away from the bowl.
2. Knead it on a floured surface for 5-10 minutes until you have a smooth dough ball.
3. I've been putting it back in a greased bowl and letting it rise for an hour at this point but there's some debate as to how necessary that is.
4. Punch the dough down if you let it rise, then divide it into around six pieces.
5. Roll those pieces into long, thin ropes.
6. Shape them how you want. Mine were supposed to be traditional pretzel shaped but some of them separated a little during the boiling.
7. Boil them briefly in a mixture of water and baking soda. Traditionally they're boiled in water and food grade lye but I'm using baking soda as a more convenient (though less effective) substitute. I'm still playing with boiling time and the exact amount of baking soda, but somewhere around 4 tablespoons of baking soda and a minute or so of boiling will get you pretzels like mine.

8. Place the pretzels on a greased or lined baking sheet, liberally season, then bake in the oven at 425º for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
9. Cool and eat.

I got the recipe from BBQ University off the TV. I don't have any pictures, but we had this at the last UFC event when we smoked some ribs and had burgers and beans. You remember it, you do.

4 yellow onions
package of Italian sausage or bratwurst
4 oz Monterrey Pepper Jack (or a smoked cheese) cubed


First peel the onions and cut a large deep plug out of the top (non-rooted) end of the onion.

Save the plugs and dice into little bits. Saute them in one sausage until all soft and the sausage brown.

Set each onion on a small ring of aluminium foil to help it stand. I'm not sure if cutting the bottoms off would work as they might leak the center yummy stuff out while cooking.

Dump the cheese into the sausage and onions and stir. Quickly add the mix into the cores of the onions and top off with a tab of butter.

Put them in the smoker for 2 to 3 hours, or longer. When they can be squeezed like toilet paper, they are done.

The rest of the sausage in the packed can be added about 40 mins to and hour after the onions go in. So these cook for about 2 hours or so.

We had pretty low heat at first so it might have taken longer for us this time. I was informed that they would do better if the plugs were cut deeper, and I agreed. Also the sausages were killer stuffed into a bread roll with some sweet BBQ sauce. So there.