Handy Tools: Pizza Stone & Peel

I realized that, in making some of my recipes, I use tools that a lot of people might not know about: what they are, how they work, is it really worth the investment.

Here's a post explaining the tools I used in the recipe for Pull-apart Flatbread: the pizza stone and the pizza peel.

Pizza Stone
The pizza stone is a fantastic device for baking pizzas and breads.  It is made out of earthenware or ceramic and, much like a good piece of cookware will do on top of the stove, a pizza stone evenly distributes heat inside the oven.  By absorbing excess moisture, it also helps give a crispiness to bread and pizza crust that a normal baking sheet simply cannot accomplish.

Bottom line:  A pizza stone turns your regular oven into a brick oven.

Pizza Peel
A pizza peel can best be described like a giant spatula.  You've probably seen one, if you've ever watched somebody make pizza.  Essentially, it is used for putting pizza/bread/etc into a brick oven, or removing the delicious little morsel after cooking.

Bottom line:  A pizza peel makes working with pizza on a pizza stone much easier.

Recommendations

So, if you are wondering whether or not you need/want a pizza stone, think about the following questions:

1)  What do you want to cook?  If you already bake your own bread, or make a lot of pizza at home (Pizza stones work great for frozen pizzas, too! It's not just for made-from-scratch.), then I would honestly consider a pizza stone.  It's something you know you already enjoy doing, and you will get a lot of use out of this tool.  If you are only thinking about baking bread or making pizza, start out with just a baking sheet.  Wait to see if you even enjoy cooking those things.  If you don't enjoy it, you won't use the pizza stone enough to make the investment really worth it.

2)  Can you afford a pizza stone?  A complete pizza stone kit can run anywhere from $30 and up.  You can also find pizza stones to fit something as small as a toaster oven to as large as 14" x 16" x .5".  Base the decision on your own budget and how much you think you will use this.  If you are a bread-baking fiend, then I'd probably save up for a really good pizza stone (just like you'd save up for a tool for any other hobby - knitting needles, really nice yarn, a good sewing machine, a camera).  If you will only use it sparingly, going whole-hog won't really help you all that much.  Get a smaller stone, and save the "extra" money for something else you will use much more often in the kitchen.

3)  Is a pizza stone easy to care for?  Absolutely.  As far as kitchen tools go, pizza stones are one of the easiest things to have around.  Pizza stones are porous - one of the reasons they make breads and pizza crusts so crispy.  This means that the only thing you should use to wash it is pure, clear water - absolutely no detergent!  The stone will soak up detergent like there's no tomorrow, and you will ruin the stone.  For cleaning, just use a brush or detergent-free scrub pad to get off any bits that are stuck and rinse with water.  Pizza stones (much like cast iron) develop a seasoning and hardness after repeated use - increasing the quality of the stone.  Unlike cast iron, you do not need to "re-season" a pizza stone.  Instead, a pizza stone can just be left in the oven permanently (Except for oven self-cleaning cycles! Remember to remove it during those times!).  Whenever the oven is being used, just put the baking sheet or pan on top of the stone, and the stone will develop further.  Remember, a pizza stone will crack if exposed to extreme heat changes, so make sure you put it into a cold oven first - then preheat the oven.  Let the pizza stone completely cool in the oven before removing and rinsing.  These are pretty universal ways to care for a pizza stone.  Always refer to the instruction and care manual when you get one.

So, what do you all think?  Are you considering getting a pizza stone?  Do you already have one and want to share your thoughts and suggestions?  Feel free to leave comments!

Pull-apart Flatbread

Some of the best recipes come from making something out of seemingly random things you find in your fridge.  Be creative, and use what you have in your own fridge to make this a unique and budget-friendly dish!

Pull-apart Flatbread

Prep Time: <10 minutes

Cooking Time: 8-10 minutes

Yield: approx. 10 pieces

The above parameters may vary depending upon the brand of biscuits you use.

Ingredients:

- One can of country-style biscuits 

- Olive Oil

- Sliced Ham

- Sundried Tomatoes packed in Oil

- Minced Garlic

- Italian Seasoning

- Sour Cream

- Corn Meal (optional)

Directions: 

1)  Preheat your oven according to the directions on the biscuit package. 

2)  Set out a baking sheet, aluminum foil, or pizza peel on which to assemble the flatbread.  If you have a pizza stone, use the peel only for transfer.  This is not a bread that should be placed directly on the oven grates, as the pieces will fall through.  Bake only on a "solid" surface.

3) Sprinkle corn meal on the surface of the baking sheet/aluminum foil/pizza peel.

4) Open the can of biscuits, and remove the first piece.  Flatten the biscuit between your palms until an even 1/8"-1/4" thick.  Place it onto the sheet/foil/peel.  Repeat this with all of the biscuits, tiling them together, and pinching the dough to form the "flatbread."

5)  Drizzle the bread with olive oil, then break the sliced ham up into smaller pieces.  Toss the ham, sundried tomatoes, minced garlic, and italian seasoning over the surface - evenly distributing the ingredients as much as possible.

6)  Transfer the flatbread to the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes (or according to the directions for the biscuits you are using).  Any ingredients you top the flatbread with should be able to be eaten with only the cooking time required for the bread.  If the ingredients need more cooking first - cook it separately beforehand, then toss on the flatbread to maintain the warmth.  Be careful to not overcook those ingredients!

7)  When the dough is cooked to a nice golden brown, remove the flatbread from the oven.

8)  Cool slightly before serving with a dollop of sour cream for dipping.

 

This is great for lunch, as a side dish for dinner, an appetizer, or something nice to bring to a potluck-style party, as it's easy to serve.  Try different toppings or dipping sauces based on what you have in your fridge.  

Comment to share your own variations.  I'd love to hear how you make yours!

The Freezer is Your Friend

So, you've spent valuable time, effort, and money making a good meal.  The amount of food you've made is too much for just you for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow.  Let's face it, even the most diehard foodie can grow weary of eating the exact same meal several days in a row.  So, what do you do to save that food?

Freeze it.

Walk down the freezer aisle in the grocery store and look at all of the frozen meals populating the freezers.  How do you think they did it?  Premade food, put in a microwaveable container, and frozen.  Sound like something you can do?  Of course!

I've done this with a lot of things:  Eggplant Parmesan, Baked Ziti, Crabcakes, Pancakes, Soup...you can try it with just about anything.  Just portion the leftovers into individual portions, and freeze them separately to make your own "frozen meals."  Then, the next time you're running out the door with no time to make lunch, just grab a meal out of the freezer and go!

Quick Tips:

1. Soup:  I suggest using a plastic freezer bag for individual portions of soup.  It makes it much easier to remove the soup for reheating.
2. Pancakes:  When you make pancakes from a mix, make the whole batch of 23 or so 4" pancakes.  Let them cool, then pack them into a freezer bag and freeze them.  To reheat, pop one out, wrap it in a paper towel, and microwave until warmed (timing will vary depending on your microwave, mine takes about 45 seconds).
3. Bread:  Saving bread or biscuits is just the same as saving pancakes - just pop them in the freezer and either microwave or toast to reheat.
4. Vegetables:  Frozen veggies is almost a no-brainer.  If you have veggies that you might not use in time, freeze them!
5. Meat:  If you want to freeze chicken pieces, ground beef, or any other kind of meat, just make sure you separate the meat into amounts that you will use in one serving.  If you don't, you'll have to wrestle with frozen chicken or steak stuck together until it thaws a little.   
6. Butter:  Buy or make your own butter in larger quantities, and throw most of it into the freezer until you need it.
7. Buy some frozen foods in bulk.  This will save you time (chopping veggies) and money (fresh veggies can be quite expensive in the off season), while opening up new options for quick and delicious meals if you haven't had time to go to the grocery store.

Getting Started: Spices

Spices are what make cooking fun.  They also are a good way to jazz up ordinary ingredients without too much investment.  The only problem with spices when you are first starting out is that they are expensive.  Luckily, once you have a particular spice, it will usually last awhile.  It's that first purchase, though, that really hits your wallet.  Here are my suggestions for how to build your spice cabinet:

1) Start with the spices you grew up with.  The key to cooking on a budget is to cook with what you already have in your fridge/pantry.  You will be able to do this a lot easier and faster - and with fewer heartbreaking mistakes - if you blend spices that you're familiar with. 

Take this personal story as an example: I grew up with a lot of Italian food, so I can blend the standard Italian spices into a flavorful meal usually just by eyeballing it.  I did not grow up, however, with various spicy powders.  So one day, I made a meal that called for chili powder.  Well, I didn't have chili powder, but I did have cayenne pepper.  Not being used to spicy foods, I didn't realize that cayenne pepper is a lot hotter than chili powder.  Also not being used to spicy foods, I decided to follow the recipe...which meant I did a 1 to 1 substitution of cayenne pepper for the chili powder.  Those of you who are familiar with these spices are probably giggling in foresight.  Well, the dish was a lot hotter than I would have liked, and I didn't enjoy the many meals the recipe provided as much as I should have - especially knowing that the reason was that I messed up.  Take away message: If you have limited spices available, your meals are safer with spices you are familiar with until you learn how to use new ones.

2) Try new spices with a recipe.  Despite the fact that I blatantly messed up a recipe, the safest way to get used to new spices is with a recipe.  I don't even want to think about how that meal would have turned out if I had eyeballed the cayenne pepper...  So, when you want to try a new flavor, find a simple recipe that calls for one or two new spices.  Pay close attention to the amount of spice that is being added in comparison to the other ingredients, so that you learn how to use these spices.  This use of a new recipe will also allow you to add spices incrementally, slowly building your spice cabinet.  Before you know it, you'll have a whole world of flavors at your fingertips!

3) Make your own spice blends.  If a spice blend you want is something simple, or something you are very familiar with, just blend it yourself!  Perfect example: Cinnamon Sugar.  Please, for the love of food, don't buy the fancy little dispenser of cinnamon sugar.  Just mix it yourself - it's only two ingredients.  You can save so much money by mixing your own combinations because companies charge more to do that work for you.

4) Buy the spices you use most often in bulk.  Buying spices in bulk usually ends up saving a lot of money in the long run, so if there are certain spices you use very frequently, buy it in larger quantities.  The savings will add up over time!

Now - go get that spice cabinet started!

Most Used Cookware #1: 12" Skillet

The true workhorse of my kitchen - the 12" skillet.  I use this skillet for just about every meal I make.  There are too many things that this darling piece of cookware is capable of doing to even begin listing them.  Just trust me when I say that deciding which piece was the #1 most used piece of cookware in my kitchen was a snap.  The most difficult decision I had was deciding whether or not to include a cover for it in the title (I decided not to...but I'll say now that having a cover will greatly extend the usefulness of this skillet...and a helper handle, just because it makes life easier when handling a 12" skillet full of sauteed vegetables that need to be poured into another pot).

Why do I use this skillet for every meal instead of a smaller one?, you might ask.  The answer is one word: leftovers.  One of the keys to eating on a budget is cooking more than you can eat in one meal.  This way, you have leftovers to bring to work/school/wherever for lunch the next day without even having to lift a finger in the morning.  This drastically reduces the opportunity to make excuses about being late for work, or not having anything to make for lunch, and really, will eating out for lunch the third time this week really break your budget?  Yes, yes it will, if you keep adding it up.  Using the 12" Skillet helps me to minimize the occurrence of this cycle of next-day-lunch laziness, and my wallet thanks me repeatedly for it.

That, my dear readers, is why the 12" Skillet (with cover!) is the most used piece of cookware in my kitchen.

Most Used Cookware #2: 3Qt Saucepan

Ah, the saucepan.  Think of this as a baby stockpot.  Soups, small batches of pasta, vegetables, making yogurt (yes, that's right)...boiling, sauteing, steaming, baking (if oven safe)....really, the possibilities are endless. You can do anything and everything in this pan that you could do in a stockpot or skillet, except with either less or more space, respectively.  Granted, sauteing will be a little more awkward in a saucepan than in a skillet, but in a pinch (and with smaller portions!), you can make it work.

When trying to decide on which size saucepan I thought was the most useful, it was actually a toss-up between the 3Qt and 2Qt saucepans.  I finally decided to go with the 3Qt as the most used.  The reason being this: If you had to go with two pans of the top four, I would definitely recommend a saucepan as one of the two.  When ultimately deciding on which pieces to get first, I suggest erring on the larger side.  You might be surprised at how much you will really use that extra quart of space...and how annoying it is when milk starts to foam all over your freshly cleaned stove and it's because you used the 2Qt since the 3Qt was being washed...but that's a story for another post.

And the #1 Most Used Piece of Cookware in my kitchen is......(drum roll please)

Most Used Cookware #3: 8" Skillet

The 8" Skillet is perfect for all the smaller things that need to be done on the stove top.  I especially like to use it for a quick breakfast, making this pan the third most used in my kitchen.  This little cutie is the perfect size for cooking eggs of all types, sauteing only a handful of vegetables for one meal, grilled cheese, a burger, cooking a smaller component of a dish that needs to be added to to the larger pot/pan, and the list goes on.

The usefulness of this skillet is that it is just the right size for small dishes where a bigger skillet would just be too cumbersome.  Also, in recipes (or meals) that call for ingredients to be cooked separately from each other, you need a second pan - and usually only one that is smaller.

Bonus: If you get a pan that is oven-safe, use it to bake small side dishes rather than a big baking pan, or to combine cooking techniques like sauteing and roasting.  Just remember to keep a pot holder over the handle once you take it out of the oven.  After enough cooking, you might not think twice about grabbing the handle of a skillet that's sitting on the stove, which can result in serious burns to your hands if that skillet has recently been in the oven!

Most Used Cookware #4: Stockpot

The stockpot is a hugely versatile piece of cookware, especially when cooking large amounts of food.  It is also the 4th most used piece of cookware from my initial 17-piece set. Remember: Cookware sets count lids as a separate piece, so this is actually 2 pieces.

Soups, pasta sauce, boiled potatoes/root veggies, pasta, deep-frying...this baby can do it all.  You can even use it to awkwardly saute in a pinch!  Remember, just because it's a big pot doesn't mean you have to fill it.  What it means is that you have the space available to you.  This comes in especially handy when making large recipes to portion out and freeze (the best way to save money and time while still eating well).

Bonus #1: A lot of good stockpots will also come with a pasta insert - eliminating the extra step of using a colander to drain pasta/potatoes/whatever you've boiled and potentially losing yummy morsels down the sink.

Bonus #2: Fill the bottom of the stockpot with water, but only enough to be a little bit below the pasta insert.  Fill the insert with veggies or fish, turn the heat on, and voila!  You have a steamer!  Multipurpose cookware at it's finest.

Getting Started: Essential Cookware Characteristics

Deciding on cookware is probably the biggest decision you need to make when starting out your kitchen.  Remember what I said about the tools making you either love or loathe cooking?  It's your pots and pans that are the most influential.  The pan you use could make or break your relationship with cooking - no joke.  This is also the point where biting the bullet to spend a little more on a good pan will save you a lot of heartache in the end.

So, to the all-important question: What does NAK suggest?

First off, do not - I repeat DO NOT - immediately get one of those sets of cookware that comes with 20 pieces for $50-$100 just because of the price.  Generally, those pots and pans are thin, do not distribute heat well, do not retain heat, and have handles that are weak (not something you want when carrying a pot of boiling water full of spaghetti!).  This is where a little research will go a long way.

Instead of going for the "college cookware" boxed deal, wait until a local department store has a sale on cookware, and get one or two really good pieces.  (Even better if you can get a set of good cookware on sale!)  If you must go with the cheaper cookware at first, only get a couple of pieces to hold you over - you will end up saving money by not double-investing in pieces!

Remember - a good piece of cookware is multipurpose and will last you a lifetime...which definitely pays for itself in the end.

Now, how do you choose what type of cookware to go with?

1. You want something that will heat evenly and retain the heat.  This usually means that you want cookware with either copper or aluminum in the base.  Copper is fantastic - but way too expensive to even think about buying now.  I did not want the aluminum to actually touch my food, so I found a stainless steel set with an encapsulated aluminum base.  
2. Non-stick versus plain:  I wanted to avoid non-stick because of issues with cleaning of the surface, and the potential to scratch it with metal utensils, thereby defeating the whole purpose of non-stick.  Really, in the end, this depends on your personal preference.  
3. A secure handle: You can test this by firmly holding the pot flat on a surface with one hand and trying to push down the handle with the other.  If the handle moves without the pan, then it's not secured well enough.  If the pan gives a little instead of the handle, it's a great hold.

Once you figure out which type of cookware you want, then you can decide which piece(s) to get first.  Next, I'll countdown the top 4 pieces of cookware I use most from my set.

Getting Started: Intro

A good cook should be able to cook with anything.  But let me tell you: NOTHING makes a project more fun than having the right tools, and nothing can deter you more completely than the wrong ones.  The right tools make the job easier, which means less heartache, less frustration, and more of a chance that you'll want to go back and do it again.

When on a budget, getting the right tools - especially when you are starting from scratch - becomes more of a paycheck issue than anything else.  It is still very possible to get good tools, though.  You just have to be prudent in what you buy first, and add on a little at a time as money allows.

Now, I must admit that I've been told by many of my friends that I have the most well-stocked kitchen they've seen in someone my age, and that I own gadgets they didn't even know existed.  Rest assured, that experience will be of use to all of you.  In having a lot of gadgets, I now know which ones are essential, which ones you should save up for, which ones you can do without completely, and which ones would be reeeeeally nice to get for Christmas. 

So, honestly, take the time between now and the next post to start getting into the mindset.  A good tool is worth it's weight in gold - whether that's a pot, a pan, a chef's knife, or one of those baby spoonulas.

Next up:  Cookware!

The Inspiration for "A NAK for Cooking"

I figured I should start this blog off by explaining what inspired me to write it in the first place.  Well, the simple and overarching answer is "food."  I love food, there's no question about that. 

You could probably blame my family for that.  Food was a family affair - from preparation to cooking to eating.  A lot of my fondest memories are set against the backdrop of a boisterous family meal.  The smell of pasta sauce that had been simmering on the stove for hours, my grandmother calling my uncle or dad in for "mashed potato duty," the chatter of my mom and aunt as we helped prepare the meal and set the table...nothing helps cement the love of food into you when food has always been surrounded by love.  It was a love that caught a hold of me and will never let me go. 

My opinion of cooking is that, when done right, the resulting meal is not just food for the body, but also for the soul.  We all know that feeling - when you taste something that's "just the way Mom used to make it."  It transports us to a place and time that makes us go all warm and fuzzy inside.  Feeding the soul is the real joy of cooking.

So, when I started cooking for myself, I couldn't bear the "Ramen every night" diet, but still had to worry about cooking on a tight budget.  Along the way, I've come up with some tips and tricks of my own to remedy the situation.  This blog is meant to share those insights with all of you - especially my friends who love food as much as I do and are in the same budget pickle.


I hope you enjoy this trip into my kitchen...