High dudgeon is the state I’m in after the news of the last week, but more on that tomorrow. For now, the good stuff—enjoy it while we can, I guess.
First off, just to work off the title here, let me recommend the anime series Delicious in Dungeon, based on a 2014 manga, which is now airing on Netflix. We watched it on an impulse and it’s quite hilarious—a sort of mashup of a D&D adventure with a cooking show. It manages to be better than both of those things in an odd kind of way—it actually has some interesting things to say about the ecology (or lack thereof) of your bog-standard dungeon in the game but it also does some pretty fun thinking about how common cooking techniques might be applied to fantasy organisms, as well as the moral problem of when a monster is too close to being a sapient creature to make eating it seem appropriate. It’s more than a one-note joke, at least so far—there’s enough going on in a given episode to keep us going. I suspect that if you have absolutely no knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons, however, it’s not going to do much for you, cooking notwithstanding.
I don’t know that I’ve ever bought anything based on an ad served to me on a social media platform. Well, there was one time I bought a shirt from a Facebook ad and it arrived five sizes too small, stained, and with a different design and color, which pretty well guaranteed that I wouldn’t do that again. But every now and again, something that isn’t quite intended to sell me on something does so. I’ve been toying with getting an Ooni portable pizza oven for a while, in part based on a sibling’s enthusiastic recommendation. Reading the NYT’s coverage of great pizza restaurants across the country pushed me over the edge. So I got an Ooni and used it yesterday, with more pizza coming today.
So far I’d say this much: it works well and it is indeed highly portable—you could easily take it along for a beach or camping trip.
On the other hand, it takes a fair amount of stuff to go along with it. I got one that can switch between wood and propane—I think a pure wood-using one might bollix you up if you went camping, because you generally are not supposed to take wood along and it might be hard to get dried fuel wood chopped finely enough at your destination.
You have to have a peel (and it has to fit the oven, so in this case, no wider than 12”). My sibling recommended two peels and he’s right about that—so you can get a 2nd pizza in while the first one comes out. Given that it only takes 90-120 seconds or so to cook them, you could definitely just keep hammering them out for a hungry group of people, provided you had enough dough and a place to roll it out. (There’s always the twirl-on-your-hand technique, which I’m not bad at.) You also have to be able to rotate the pizza about 45 seconds in, or it will just burn in the back and be underdone in the front.
I started with your basic marinara pizza, three of them. I broke the dough a bit on the second one and that was kind of a mess to get off. (I used matzoh meal on the peel to make the dough stick less; grits would probably work even better.) It helped that it was a great afternoon to just sit out back and read. Speaking of products I’ve gotten sold on, by the way, to my great surprise it seems like the Thermacell mosquito repeller actually works, though I will keep checking to see if my former colleague Colin Purrington’s heroic testing of mosquito control devices ever gets around to the Thermacell.
I am facing some skepticism for tonight’s less orthodox pizzas. In reading the NYT article, I saw a couple of cool ideas: one with a Thai green curry base, another with refried beans as a base. I’m going to try the Thai one with a bit of crab and paneer on it and the beans one with a bit of salsa, chicken and monty jack. The trick with the beans one will be keeping the base from being too much or too heavy, I think—I may use the salsa to thin it out some. I think I’m also going to do a more conventional one with very thin-sliced potatoes and prosciutto on a pesto base. But this may end up being one of those nights where I have to tell everybody to go get a Plan B leftover out of the fridge. There is at least a bit of hanger steak from some toasts I made over the weekend, though I preferred the one with anchovies and tomatoes best.
I’ve been eyeing one of these ovens, too! (16” model, less portable) I’d love to talk to you about how you like it as you use it more.
Looks great! And now I’m hungry for pizza.