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Kait over at Kait’s Plate had this sugestion concerning my gravy woes:

I used to make gravy with cornstarch, but when I’d heat up the leftovers it ended up looking like gravy jelly. Not appetizing. Gravy is not supposed to hold its shape like that. Now I make it with a roux instead and it heats up better.

Pointless misspelling of common names asside, she has a point. A roux, for those of you who don’t know, is a mixture of flour and fat. You usually melt some butter in a pan and vigorously beat in a few tablespoons of flour, or if you’re making gravy you can just use the fat in the pan of what you’re cooking.

The nice thing about making a roux before you add the liquid to make the gravy is that you can control how “thick” the gravy is. The more you cook the roux the darker it gets(and the stronger the flavor). The darker the roux the less thickening power it has.

So if I took the exact same gravy recipe I was using, poured about 3 tablespoons of the fat into another pan and then slowly whisked in 3 tablespoons of flower, I’d have a roux. If I let that roux cook until it starts to get dark it will make a more fluid gravy when I add it back to the first pan which will reheat better the next day.

Good looking out Kait. And good looking too

photo credit: .JonB

I was cruising through Cooking With Amy and I came across her assessment of the reemergence of healthy, natural frozen yogurt. She’s pretty much spot on.

I’ve been to Pinkberry here in LA and while it’s OK, I can tell you right now it’s not a desert. Not in the western sense. We think of a desert as something sweet you eat at the end of a meal. Kind of a reward for choking down all that meat. Go Me. Pinkberry, however, is very much an Asian version of a desert. That is, something kind of bitter that cleanses your pallet of the over spiced food you just consumed so you don’t taste pickled cabbage and dried fish for the rest of the night.

photo credit: psychofish

This is confusing to anyone alive in America during the 80s. We consumed a frozen yogurt so treacly it gave you diabetes if you looked at it. That’s because American marketing execs figured out that we love the label ‘Fat Free’ but not the taste that comes with it. So in order to make it feel like desert to Americans they compensated with a half gallon of corn syrup.

Remember all those middle aged women saying “I can’t believe it’s actually good for me” while scarfing down TCBY and watching the scale spin ever upward. That’s why.

So the new frozen yogurt is really the old frozen yogurt before we Americanized it. That’s why you can only get it in places that are trendy(SF) or full of Asians(LA). Middle America just isn’t all that interested in paying $3 to stop tasting dinner.

And then I come to find out via BoingBoing that this new ‘natural frozen yogurt’ isn’t all that natural at all.

The ingredients list for Original Pinkberry has 23 items. Skim milk and nonfat yogurt are listed first, then three kinds of sugar: sucrose, fructose and dextrose. Fructose and maltodextrin, another ingredient, are both laboratory-produced ingredients extracted from corn syrup.

So it’s overpriced, not a desert and not what most people(those without lab coats) would consider natural. When can I get my franchise?

Under normal circumstances I consider eating a large pizza all by myself an accomplishment.

There’s that point, usually when you have 3 slices to go, that it starts mocking you. “What’s a matter fatty? Eyes bigger than your stomach?”

This begets the decision. I’m full at this point, very full. It’s an odd feeling to look at food and not want to stuff it into my gullet but that’s where I’m at. It’s uncomfortable and I’m not used to it and I don’t like it. Not one bit.

On the other hand, there are only 3 pieces left. What good is that to me? If I put them in the fridge, they’ll be the first thing I eat in the morning. But that won’t be enough, I know it won’t. It never is. But I can’t very well make a full breakfast of bacon(sweet, sweet bacon), eggs and toast and just pile it on top of these 3 lonely slices. I mean that, I’ve tried.

So ultimately I take the challenge and set to work eating the pizza I have no interest eating. It’s not easy, but it is rewarding. It’s satisfying to know that once again, I’ve beaten an inanimate stack of protein, fat and simple carbohydrates. Job well done.

But then last night I had Papa Johns Pizza, and it was a different kind of challenge. Getting even the first bite of that slimy, charred yet undercooked(how did they even do that?) flattened stool sample was an exercise in will equal to withstanding water boarding. Greater, nobody charges you to get water boarded.

Papa Johns Pizza Really Sucks

The crust(I ordered a thin crust) was doughy. DOUGHY! It was like when you pull some bread out of the freezer and it’s covered with ice crystals and you microwave it, that goop that happens where the bread touches the plate. That was the support system for Papa Johns pizza. Seriously.

The cheese wasn’t even melted. Papa Johns gave me a bunch of flaccid, oily strands floating on top of dough goop. It wasn’t so much a pizza as a food-like wetland.

And yet Papa Johns Pizza managed to burn and dry out the toppings. Amazing. It’s like they sent the toppings through the oven a couple of times on their own, then threw them on top of raw dough and cheese counting on the residual heat to cook them.

Keep in mind, I’m not a picky guy. You don’t get to be the Fat Bastard by turning your nose up at food. And 9 times out of 10 when I want pizza I go the Little Caesars route(no pizza snobbery there). But Papa Johns Pizza was absolutely inedible.

And what did they charge me for this atrocity? $18.31! I guess Papa Johns Pizza charges extra for thin crust on the assumption you should be happy they’re giving you less. They have a point.

I know what I should do. I should look around for one of the local pizza places instead of messing with the chains, but I was just too lazy. The chains are usually better about price, but if I want quality I should have known better than to get Papa Johns Pizza.

So, how did you find your favorite pizza place? Did you have to follow around a bunch of fat Italian guys for a few days until they lead you there, or was it just sitting in the yellow pages, waiting?