I had a similar idea in college to make a super study aid by replacing the water in my drip coffee machine with diet coke. Not tenable.
That reminds me of a long-ago attempt at creamed spinach. I had some cooked spinach and a can of cream of mushroom soup (which I no longer consider a foodstuff, but I digress). I liked both of those things and figured if I blended them together they would still be good, but no. The substance I created both looked and tasted as if it had come out of Shrek’s ass.
bolding mine
Now that’s the kind of vivid description I’d to see in more restaurant reviews! Good old ogre diarrhea, mm mm. My niece called some ugly-looking casserole I made “troll barf”. We called it that evermore.
I got a tremendous enjoyment out of the “tyrannosaurus fart” in the OP as well. Perhaps we missed our calling as food critics. 
The potential for post/username combo jokes here is gold.
My only somewhat failed attempts recently have been with homemade pizza dough. Getting it from where I’ve rolled it out to the cast iron pizza pan is an exercise in frustration. I would just form it with my hands into the pan itself, except that I preheat the pan and don’t want to a) burn the shit out of myself or b) have the pan cool down excessively. Tried flour, cornmeal, etc., but still end up with something that looks malformed like The Blob from the old 50’s movie.
Try using something like this. Otherwise, if you’re trying to get a fully dressed pizza into that hot pan, that’s nigh impossible as far as I can tell (unless you’re making a small enough pizza that you can handle with your hands.) Get your dough to shape, pick it up, throw it into the hot pan (and flatten out, shape as necessary), and quickly dress your pizza. That’s how I would do it before I got that cast iron pizza pan/stone thingy.
Have you tried a peel? If you can slide a raw pizza onto a stone with a peel it shouldn’t be that much harder to slide it into a pan with a little practice.
Oh man, I just remembered my foray into hard candy making. I had a set of lovely cast iron lollipop molds in christmas shapes. My first attempt turned out pretty nicely. I didn’t break the lollipops while unmolding and didn’t burn myself (much) with the sugar mixture. My 2nd batch however did not go so well. A stray sugar grain must have gotten into the pot because the whole mass of liquid candy suddenly crystallized - bam! a saucepan full of sweet concrete. I had to soak it a good while to get it all out. Undaunted I tried it a third time. Turned out a fine looking batch of lollipops. Wrapped them all up in little cellophane bags closed with ribbons intending to give them away to family and friends later. But when I went to get them the next day I found a pile of nicely wrapped, sticky, shapeless blobs on sticks. Too humid I guess.
That was many years ago though. I still have those molds… maybe I should give it another whirl. What could go wrong?
Making Chicken Korma, and swapping out half the chicken for vegetables to make it healthier. I was running around doing several things at once, but I had started off by chopping and steaming the vegetables. The plan was to defrost the chicken fillet once the veg was nearly done (should only take a couple of minutes in the microwave), and then slice and cook it, chuck in the spices, ginger/cashew paste mix, and the sauce, and add the veg right at the end.
The veg gets to the point where I turn off the stove element so I can leave them to finish cooking over the residual heat in the steamer… Only as I touch the button on the stove, the whole panel goes blank, and in the other room I hear the UPS start beeping. Power failure, and purely coincidental in timing. Wait a few minutes to see if it will come back on, but no dice. Panic stations. Need to get the kids fed and into bed by 7:30, and the power company is saying the power won’t be restored until 9pm. I ended up feeding them breakfast cereal - hooray for them loving the novelty of having breakfast for dinner! Get them fed, teeth brushed, into their pjs and bed, and literally one minute later the power comes back on.
But my other half is due to start his evening shift like right now so there’s no time to defrost the chicken fillet. Dinner just needs to be cooked asap so he can get to his conference call. Vegetable Korma it is. Except… I never moved the vegetables off the steamer, and in the time they’ve been sitting there, they’ve overcooked. When I stir them into the sauce, they dissolve into mush. I end up dishing up a plate of basmati rice and vegetable korma paste… Oh, and the plain natural yoghurt I was convinced that I had in the fridge? All gone. I topped it with a bit of sour cream but that wasn’t a good substitute. The other half ploughed through it but I took two mouthfuls and opted for breakfast for dinner too.
We had a do-over that weekend because that was supposed to have been the other half’s birthday dinner.
Marinated a pork tenderloin in cream of onion soup with spices for two days and then cooked it. Came out dry and tough.
That’s the same cast iron pan that I have. I also have a peel, which is hopeless if the dough is at all sticky, regardless of cornmeal on the peel. I’d pretty much decided to do as you suggested; quickly get it in the pan and roll it out with a pizza roller, then top it. You know, I can make terribly complicated dishes without a hiccup, but pizza kicks my ass. It’s really annoying. :mad:
When making fudge for the first time, there is a difference between evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk. The former makes fudge. The latter makes greasy chocolaty asphalt.
Hmm…I dunno. Maybe try a lower hydration dough? (I use 70% hydration.) I use a peel and I generally hand stretch instead of roll, but I have rolled it a few times. I just use flour (no corn meal) to keep from sticking, and you do occasionally have to give the peel a jiggle to make sure nothing sticks as you’re building your pizza. If you do see a sticking point, get at it with some flour and give the peel a jiggle.
Oh, and option B for you can also be to roll it out on parchment paper, top it, and then put it parchment and all on top of the heated cast iron. That’s easy peasy and works fine, as well. The parchment is easily removable once cooked. I sometimes cook pizza very briefly on the oven floor using this method (maybe 60 seconds) before moving it up on an oven rack to finish.
I used parchment the last time around, and it worked better than other methods. Perhaps that’s the way to go; beats throwing the whole mess at the garbage bin.
Yeah, I use it sometimes when baking bread, too, and I have not noticed it interfering with browning or anything else. So far as I can tell, the results are nearly identical to not using parchment.
I always use parchment for baking cookies and biscuits: works great and no cleanup.
I make grape pies every fall. For the past few years I’ve been getting different varietals from local vinyards, but always native American Labrusca grapes. This year I got a big bag of a diofferent non-labrusca grape, but it was similar enough that I thought I could use it.
I was wrong. I couldn’t peel them the way I peeled concord grapes, and I ended up sort of shredding them. Then getting the seeds out had to be done differently. I eventuallty found a way, but then the balance I use in my pie filing was off. It looked great, but when I cut it, it had a texture like gummy bears, rather than like a pie.
It took me two more tries to get it right, but I finally did. Then I made a regular Concord Grape Pie. It was infinitely easier, and tasted better.
I found out tonight that Jacque Pepin debones quail better than I do.