Friday, July 30, 2010

Day 166- Pizza Dough Twists

I'd like to start off by saying-- I miss my camera. Last night I had *perfect* red dipping sauce in bright white plate. Even I could have pulled off something food-porn-worthy with that to work with. Sadly, I think the board is fried. I'll dig out my tool/toy kit in the next couple days and poke around inside, but I think it's time the camera when to the great electronics recycling depot in the sky.

Back to that tasty red sauce.

I've been lusting after tomato-y flavors for weeks. I just love them, and usually (when not doing crazy budget stuff) have tomato in some form or other just about every day. Yesterday I gave in.

I was just going to get a little jar of tomato sauce. I didn't think I'd *quite* afford the tomato paste. Turned out that I probably could have- I brought 60 cents to the store and tomato sauce was 59 cents. I was worried about tax driving me just over what I had, though, so I stuck with sauce. Which was a pretty good move, actually. The 14 or 15 oz can of tomato sauce (the one the size of a normal can of beans) was on sale. I thought I was going to have to get the tiny half sized one- it's usually about 40 or 50 cents, and it was yesterday, too. But the bigger can was 57 cents.

I snagged it, dashed to the checkout line, and was out of the store in about 5 more minutes, with only one strange comment from the cashier about not being able to "just get one thing" herself. Having exactly enough to get what you planned for at the store and not one other thing is amazingly inspiring, so far as not overspending is concerned, but I don't think she wanted to hear that.

When I got home, I mixed up the pizza dough. I added some extra Ital. seasoning because I knew it wasn't getting topped with pizza stuff- no, this dough was going to be twists. Sometimes the only job of the tasty carb is to be a dip/ topping/ dressing/ frosting delivery system. I tried to make the twists a bit more interesting than that, but at the time my only real plan was a tasty good way to get the sauce in my mouth without using a spoon.

Note- spoon is a great way to get just about anything else into your mouth, just not tomato sauce. Ends up tasting funny, like clowns.

Back on topic. I let the dough rest and got some work done (yay!). When I came back (long before it'd doubled in size, I never wait that long) I sliced the loaf of dough into 10 kinda skinny strips. If my hunk of dough were a playing field, my slices were along the goal/ center lines, not the sidelines. I left the dough on the cutting board, put some (magic) heavy duty, non stick aluminum foil on the baking sheet, and mixed up the topping for the twists. It's just oil, kosher salt, Ital. seasoning, and some garlic. If you have it/ can be bothered, you can add a bunch of shakey cheese (the parm in a can) or chopped fresh (or jarred in oil) garlic. Just stir it up.

The twists are just that- grab a piece of dough and strech/ twist like you're making rope (or those twisty 2 strand braids), and let the whole thing fold in two. Roll the top in your topping (om nom nom) and put it on the baking sheet. When they're all been rolled/ topped, toss them in the over @ 450 for about 18 minutes.

Then it was time to make the sauce. I had waited all day for that. tomato sauce. Yum. I had/ have plenty. It's really nice.

I chopped up the last of the onion I started using this week, and a couple cloves of garlic. they went in the wok with a bunch of oil and salt and cooked on pretty low for 5 or 6 minutes. Dumped in the tomato sauce (which is actually pre-seasoned), a bunch of Italian seasoning, a bit of crushed red pepper, and some onion powder. Mixed it up, let it simmer for about two minutes, and it was time to pull the rolls out of the oven.

It was all organized, it'll never happen that way again.

I ended up using about 1/4 of the total sauce for the whole batch of twists. The rest I can use for something else later. It actually has a pretty unspecific flavor, so I should be able to push it in a different direction if I want to make something, say, southwest-y.

Got the food back to my eating cave, dipped the first twist in the sauce, and nommed.

ZOMG, it was good. I don't know if it was because I really wanted tomato sauce, but it was seriously good. Like the sauce and bread were having a grown-up nekkid party in my mouth, good.

Oh, other food yesterday? I just ate most of the rest of the cookie dough. It actually reminds me a lot of the crumbly topping on a coffee cake, now that I think about it. I really need to cook some beans.

Magic weekend bonus- Hulu has The Pride of the Yankees available. US only, I think, sorry. It's one of my favorite movies, and it doesn't hurt that the real Gehrig was pretty darned hot.

Question for you guys- Does food taste better when you've been thinking about it for a while, or does it disappoint you? I know sometimes I remember something tasting a lot better than it really does.

6 comments:

  1. When I'm thinking about something I really want to eat I kind of put it on a pedestal. All day, I think when I get home I'm going to make this awesome thing and its going to be soooo good. But then I get hyped up and its never as good as I think it will be.
    However, I've surprised myself and made something and not expected it to be great for whatever reason, and then it is.

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  2. Oh, I'm impressed that you like Pride of the Yankees. I love Gary Cooper. Did you ever see Sergeant York? Another great Cooper movie about a WW1 hero. Love that movie too! The red sauce sounds yummy and I miss the pics (esp. of Bear!)

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  3. I don't usually idolize food before eating it...but this week I REALLY was digging on some chocolate. But alas, spending 20$ on one meal really put me behind budget-wise.

    But luckily my advising supervisor for summer orientation bought all of her aides a chocolate gold medal for being so aweesome :D made of actual good chocolate, not hershey's! been nomming all week.

    (in my defense, 20$ was for great ethiopian food for a friend's birthday. and a glass of honey wine. and I meant to get change but was too tipsy to remember :/ merp.)

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  4. oh, and I found a fairly cheap dipping recipe that involves veggies! (if frozen peas are cheap, I forget sometimes.)

    http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/minty-pea-dip/

    would probably be good with less olive oil and sans parm, too.

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  5. Alyse- yeah, that's what i'm always expecting to happen. I don't know why this turned out so good, but it was just, wow!

    Cyndee- In the interests of full disclosure, the yummy Gary Cooper bits are good, but I'm a sucker for baseball movies and (cheesey, 'specially) americana (kinda the same thing sometimes...). So don't think less of me when I say I also really enjoy Field of Dreams, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and 1776 (the musical).

    I don't think I've seen Sgt. York, but war movies kinda blend together in my mind. Grandfathers were more the WW2 movie type, so I probably missed it. I'll let bear know you miss seeing him. Last I heard he was denuding a softball.

    theresa- I'm pretty sure I'd sell my own body parts for good ethiopian food, so don't feel bad. That chocolate sounds super yum. I don't know if you have one near you, but World Market (used to be cost plus) has an amazing selection of imported chocolate, and it's not much more expensive than the hershey's crap at the grocery store. Om nom nom.

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  6. You are making me really want garlic twists. Those pizza twists sound so, so amazing.

    To answer the question: sometimes it makes it taste better, and sometimes I'm incredibly disappointed (evidently I build those things up in my head too much).

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