Pizza Cheese Showdown

For quite some time, I've made pizza with at least two kinds of cheeses: mozzarella and Parmesan.  I've done this for years ... a couple decades, actually.  So, I thought it was about time to examine my old habit.  Time to find out if it is a good habit or just something I did.

This is one of probably many cheese tests.  After all, there are a lot of different kinds of cheeses.  Some I can immediately rule out.  American cheese comes to mind.  I will not put that on a pizza.  There are many others worth trying ... some I can even get here.  Mozzarella, Parmesan, Romano, Cheddar ... maybe even Jack or Colby.

So many combinations ... so many pizzas to make.

In order to test correctly, I made sure to weigh the cheese.  30g of Parmesan for one pizza.  125g of mozzarella for each pizza.

My normal sauce on the pizza that will have both cheeses.  The two-cheese pizza I made round.  When I did the Oatmeal Showdown, I used food coloring to mark each type.  People found that to be strange, so I decided to use shapes this time.

Putting my sauce on the pizza that will just have mozzarella.  This one is square.

Here's a close up of the two-cheese pizza.

Here's a close-up of the mozzarella-only pizza.

The two pizzas after coming out of the oven.  My oven is working well again.  510F (265C) for 12 minutes to get these results.

Test Results

The Primary Test Team devoured the two pizzas.  As usual, they ate the pizza with all the subtlety of a stampeding herd of mastodons.

With only a couple of exceptions, the pizza with both cheese was preferred.

Conclusions

The result wasn't really a surprise.  While the intial taste of the two pizzas is similar, the Parmesan adds a nice sharpness to the aftertaste.  Something that the mozzarella-only pizza completely lacks.

Corn Syrup Showdown

Well, my hand is finally healing up.  It's still painful, but I'll be alright in the long run. Thank you very much to those who sent their kind wishes.

I was at the store this weekend doing a little shopping.  I want to get back to cooking this week.  In fact, I'm going to go on a Dim Sum kick.  I really love Dim Sum and decided that since there are no restaurants here that serve it, I'll have to make it myself.  Kind of like my whole Pizza Quest.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post: corn syrup.  I had to make some BBQ sauce this weekend.  So, I bought some corn syrup.  The stores were out of Karo brand, so I picked up a couple of brands I'd never tried.  One was bottled in Manila.  The other was actually the dreaded high-fructose corn syrup.

I bought them both because I was in a bind.  I need to find a suitable substitute because I don't want to get stuck buying HFCS again.

Out of curiosity, I taste tested them all.  Karo, Shamrock, and nameless HFCS.

Karo was the brand with which I was most familiar.  My mom used it since dinosaurs roamed the earth.  And, I suspect that her mother used it while the planets were forming out of the galactic chaos.  So, I'll compare the other brands to it.

Shamrock, bottled in Manila, had the same consistency as Karo but not as rich.  That seemed odd as both were labeled "corn syrup".  Being curious these days, I looked at the ingredients.  Karo has vanilla!  I didn't know that.  Oh, those cheaters!

The HFCS was thinner and sweet.  Probably three times as sweet as the other two.  Its flavor was very much like the Shamrock brand corn syrup.  Very neutral, just sweet.  Unless I'm left with no choice, I will not buy this again.  Wouldn't have purchased it this time had I not needed it.

Given that I don't really want vanilla automatically added with corn syrup, I'll probably buy the Shamrock in the future.

Soy Sauce Showdown!

A while back I made some Nor Mai Gai for a friend. He commented that his family found it a bit salty for their taste (my mom had said something along these lines, too ...). So, I looked at the ingredients and noticed that the only real place where I could reduce the salt was in the soy sauce.

So, I set out to find alternative soy sauces to use. I visited all the local stores and only found Kikkoman's, Kikkoman's Light, and Silver Swan.

Now, you may be looking at the picture with this post and saying "but kuya James, where is the Silver Swan soy sauce in that picture?" Let me explain. Silver Swan is a Filipino soy sauce. It's perfect for Filipino dishes. They taste wrong if not made with this sauce. It's also cheap. A gallon is about P100 (US$2.00 right now). Can't beat that price!

"What does it taste like, kuya?" Honestly, it tastes like most other soy sauces. Just a mild difference in strength. If Kikkoman's is Lea Salonga holding your hand, looking into your eyes, and smiling while singing love songs to you with her golden voice ... Silver Swan is like Manny Pacquiao showing you why one of his nicknames is Pambansang Kamao ("National Fist").

Not exactly the subtle soy sauce that I want for most of the recipes I cook. So, I'll skip it.

Fortunately, I was told about a Chinese store that had a brand I'd never used: White Horse. I went down to the mercado and managed to find the store. This isn't always so easy as not all stores well marked and street numbers seem to be a luxury still not enjoyed here.

First, a price comparison. Kikkoman's is P111 per liter. White Horse is P100 per liter. Kikkoman's Light is P275 per liter (wow!). Obviously, I want to avoid the Kikkoman's Light if possible.

Most importantly, the taste comparison. I used the Kikkoman's as the base. All my life I've seen Kikkoman's in Asian restaurants. It's flavor is so familiar. I'm pretty sure that my blood is part soy sauce ... most likely Kikkoman's.

I compared the Kikkoman's to the Kikkoman's Light. The Kikkoman's Light is definitely less salty than the regular Kikkoman's. But, the Light has this bitter aftertaste.

Then, I tried the White Horse and compared it to the Kikkoman's. Less salt taste but still smooth. No aftertaste.

Conclusion

White Horse is definitely the way to go. It's the least expensive, least amount of sodium, and still manages to have a smooth taste. Unless I'm making Filipino food, I'm going to use White Horse in the future (once I've used up my stash of Kikkoman's ... don't want to waste it).

I'm really glad that I did this test I should do this with other ingredients that I've simply taken for granted over the years.

Char Siu Showdown!

I want to be able to make good Dim Sum.  Really good, if possible.  I miss it.  And, I'm sure folks around here would like it.  I know my sous chef (pictured to the right) does!

For a while now, I've used a char siu (Chinese BBQ) sauce from a jar I buy at the store.  While it is somewhat OK, it's not great.  It doesn't taste authentic.

And, of course, I want to make the char siu pork from scratch.  Just like everything else.

So, I started snagging recipes from the web.  When I was done, I had eight different recipes I was going to try.  This was going to be a big cooking session.  I felt it was worth it to ensure that I found the right recipe, quickly.

While I was preparing to do the cooking, I noticed that four of the eight recipes were the same.  Just different multiples of ingredients.  So, I cut my list in half.  I adjusted each recipe to produce approximately the same amount of marinade.

With recipes in hand, I set out to test!  Mixing the marinades was easy .. just a little tedious as I didn't want to get things wrong.  I was very careful in ensuring that everything went into the correct bowls.  Four bowls of dark red yummy liquid ...

 

I used pork tenderloin for the meat. I know this isn't exactly authentic. But, it's readily available here. Other cuts, not so much. I like reliability.

  

For each recipe, I poured the marinade into a zip-lock bag ... followed by a few cuts of the pork tenderloin.  I put all the bags, in a stew pot for the color safety of the rest of my fridge's goodies, in my chest fridge over night.

  

Mmm, look at those hunks of meat on the rack ready to go into the oven!  Oh, I can taste it already!

  

  

While cooking, I had an idea.  All of the recipes called for pure roasting and basting.  No other methods.  While I'm sure that's the way that they do it in restaurants, I wanted to try something else.

So, I took one piece of pork from Recipe G and created Recipe H.  I cooked it in its own marinade for 30 minutes.  Then, took it out and roasted it for 15 minutes.

  

Recipe H looked pretty good coming out.  I had high hopes for it.

  

Here's all the cooked pork, lined up, labeled and ready to test.

 

Test Results

Recipes G and H won.  These were both from the chair siu recipe from Tigers & Strawberries by Barbara Fisher.

Interestingly, the recipe that used garlic was a big hit with many of the Filipinos.  It was sweeter than the others.  I think that's the main reason.

Conclusions

Now onto step 2: test cooking methods.  I'm looking at roasting, baking it in its marinade then roasting, and smoking.

I'll let you know ...

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies ... Oatmeal Showdown!

The oats that I like to use here are the imported Quaker Oats. They are P111 per 510g package. This turns out to be about P1.58 per cookie. So, I wondered a bit about using them. Kind of expensive.

So, when I saw some oats imported from Australia here at just over half that price, I took interest.

I guess the overall question is: why am I using imported oats? Well, I wrote about it here. It's easy to see the difference in quality.

The Australian oats weren't quite as nice as the American oats. But, at a mere P60 per 500g package, I was willing to try them out.

So, we had a showdown! In the green, weighing in at 500g, oats from the Land of Oz! And, in the red, weighing slightly more at 510, old-fashioned Quaker export-only oats from the United States!


Ingredients

• 450 grams (4 cups) butter, softened
• 840 grams (4 cups) brown sugar
• 380 grams (2 cups) white sugar
• 8 eggs
• 2 tablespoon vanilla
• 840 grams (6 cups) all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 tablespoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 510 grams (about 6 cups) American Quaker oats
• 200 grams (2 cups) raisins
• 500 grams (about 6 cups) Australian oats
  

Procedure

I turned on my currently uncooperative oven (last night, it wouldn't go above 325F, now it will ... whoever heard of a fickle oven?) to 350F (175C).

Using Big Iron, I creamed the butter and sugars together. As usual, I creamed them well. Big Iron's #3 setting moves the mixer blade faster than the eye can focus. I know what you're thinking ... yeah, it is pretty cool!

Then, I mixed the vanilla and eggs in well.

While the eggs were mixing, in a separate bowl, I whisked together all the dry ingredients. This works so well. No more concentrated lumps of baking soda/powder on which to gag. I mixed in the dry ingredients and the raisins. Just enough to incorporate.

Now that I had the base mixture, I used my trusty kitchen scale to split the batch in two. In one half, I mixed in the American Quaker oats along with a half teaspoon of some red food coloring powder. In the other half, I mixed in the Australian oats with some green food coloring powder.


With each, I used my standard ice cream scoop, put 20 to a half-sized baking sheet ... and baked for 10-12 minutes at 350F (175C). About 6 minutes into each batch, I would swap (left-to-right) and rotate (front-to-back) the baking sheets to ensure even cooking.


Let cool completely on a rack ... and let the taste test begin!

Yield: 140 cookies.

Test Results

I tested based both on the looks of the cookies and on the taste. I setup nice plates that had bite-sized pieces to eat plus whole cookies to view.


From all test groups, the overwhelming favorite was "red" ... the imported from America Quaker Oats.

Conclusions

The smaller-sized Aussie flakes didn't hold the cookies together as well. The American cookies were taller and had better texture (to me).

Be willing to pay for good ingredients. They are worth the money.

Barbecue Sauce Showdown

As promised, I made some barbecue sauce to test out the Stubb's liquid smoke products and compare them to Wright's liquid smoke. I made my normal big batch (recipe below) and divided it into three parts. I added the appropriate amount of liquid smoke to each batch and labeled it so only I knew which smoke was where.

To my taste, there's a clear winner among the three. However, I will not announce it here or to anyone else until I get input from my usual guinea pigs ... otherwise known as my friends and family.

I think you can see in the picture that mine is no artisan kitchen. No fancy special-purpose bottles. Just old, washed-out Coke Zero bottles with masking tape labels. I know, Coke Zero is definitely industrial food. I said I wasn't a zealot.

So, onto the recipe for the barbecue sauce. I've used this recipe for a while. However, it has undergone some modification since I got to the Philippines. Here in Tacloban they don't have what we (in the States) call brown sugar. So, I use what they call brown sugar ... which is what we would call turbinado sugar.


Here are the ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 1 cup molasses
• 3 cups light corn syrup
• 2 cups tomato paste
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup liquid smoke
• 2 tbs salt
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbs black pepper
• 1 tbs sweet paprika
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Since I was going to use three different liquid smokes, I left that out at first. What I do is put the water, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices into a large, wide pot and heat them up over a low flame, whisking them together well. If I weren't comparing the liquid smokes, I'd add that ingredient now, too.


Then, I add the molasses. Since the molasses likes to stick to the measuring cup, I dip the cup into the warm liquid to help it dissolve without having to get out a spoon or some kind of scraper. One less thing to clean. I do the same thing with the corn syrup.

Yes, corn syrup. I'm painfully aware that I've ranted about it. I keep meaning to do some tests to create a replacement for it using local cane sugars. I will. Really.


Finally, I turn up the heat a bit to medium and add the tomato paste. I wisk this in thoroughly.

Once everything is melded well, I turn up the flame to medium-high and wisk constantly to reduce the sauce. There's no right amount to reduce. It all depends on taste. I tend to like to reduce quite a ways to produce a thicker sauce. Although, by no means do I go so far as to get down to level of commercial sauces.


When you've reduced it to the thickness desired, take it off the heat. Continue to wisk for a minute or so to prevent burning. Remember, this sauce has a lot of sugars in it. If they burn, it's bad. Very bad.

Once cool, put it into a container and refrigerate. I find this sauce goes very well on beef, pork, chicken, and turkey. Yields about two quarts of sauce.