h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A chef in Melbourne has create a pizza with 99 cheeses, bejesus!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/australia-food-blog/2014/dec/15/the-cheesiest-pizza-in-the-world-guardian-australia-reviews

*faints*
*makes mental note, "must Try harder" *

Many toppings do not a good pizza make

I always think simple works best... I just use o olive oil, tons of garlic, small diced onion, then the cheeses, then any 'actual toppings', chicken, or whatever etc and... damnit... I have eaten up all the last batch I made, and froze

Simple is definitely best There's always the chance that a combination of several flavours can create something special, but it's not usually the case. When I started making my own baked beans last year (after the cost of Heinz beans went from $1.50 a tin to $2.50 ) I was bamboozled by the phrase "a secret mix of herbs and spices" that gets bandied about by food manufacturers, and started adding all kinds of stuff to my tomato sauce to make something 'special'.

Turns out I didn't need anything more than salt, pepper, a little onion powder, a sprinkle of mace and some thyme. Yum

I have a bottle of beer in my pantry (it's been there for several years now) that's supposed to be brewed with 20 different malts, and there's another one that comes out each Christmas (or rather Hanukkah, because it's made by a Jewish brewery and it's called Jewbilation) also made with multiple varieties of malt. In fact with that one they increase the malts, the hops and the ABV by one each year, so this year I think they're up to 18.

You can't distinguish that many malts and that many hop varieties in a beer. They all get buried beneath each other and lose their character. Give me a single-hop IPA over that any day

Precisely... some combinations work, and some combinations are worth doing, but beyond a certain point... its just gimmick I guess, as much as anything I had to give up on heinz baked beans, not sure if its my sense of taste, or they've changed, but I was finding them both more salty than they used to be, and way more sugary luckily the solution was way way cheaper, a cheap supermarket own brand here... they just tate more... simple and right and clearly haven't got quite the vast amount of extra sugars and salt added Having to try not to put too much in again, togniht, when I make the stew, the same as the winning combination I found, for it last week... kinda by chance diced beef, from my butchers, lots of onion, tons of mushrooms, a potato, large, a tiny* bit of garlic, paprika, a couple stock cubes, and a tin of toamtos and a tin of black beans (yet again I'm not organised enough to have soaked any black beans the night before ) I think* that was all I threw in it last week when I made it... served with rice plain rice Differnt enough tasting from my more usela useual traditional Briths style one, to be a differnt meal... no carrot, no dumplings, and has the black beans and toamtos, and mushrooms, and, hasn't got any leek etc... and, come to think of it, doesn't contain Guinness unliek my more useual beef stews

I rely on Goya canned beans. On special occasions, I use 8 different types of dried beans and spend 2 or 3 hours simmering them.

Pizza is a rare treat.

I don't soak my black beans any more. I read an article in a foodie magazine that tested black beans soaked and unsoaked, and the unsoaked version came out tastier, apparently, and just as edible (ie not hard as bullets).

Whether this works with similar beans, I haven't yet tried, and I can't remember if the article mentioned that, but whenever I put black beans in a stew now I don't soak them.

I always get confused with beans... those you can just cook, those that require overnight soaking, hard boil, then lots of simmering, or those which have the dodgy toxins in... etc... well, they're only like about 80 pence for a big tin from the Asian supermarekt.... and I'm useually too badly organised to know what I want to eat like a day beforehand to do the soaking thing I had to throw out a load of dry beans recently though, they'd just been hanigng about so long, and there really wasn't much of each sort left... I figured they'd be somewhat longer or more tricky to cook properly, so I just binned the few that was left... and actually found I had some cupbaord space for once

I think the 99 cheeses is definitely overkill, yep. You couldn't identify the 99 different tastes.

All the cheese you need is mozzarella for texture and stretchiness, and cheddar for extra flavour. And a bit of blue cheese of some kind can be a nice addition, but isn't necessary.

I'm never convinced by the blue cheese on pizza thing.... mind, some of the cheddar I use, probably has a blue hint to it I sometimes use teh Polish Gudar instead of mozarella, most of the mozarella I can get near me, is... just rubbish, and the gudar somewhat gives the same stretchness/texture thingg.... plus its dirt cheap from the POlish supermarket I mainly just ensure its got a mounjtain of mature cheddar on though

"I read an article in a foodie magazine that tested black beans soaked and unsoaked, and the unsoaked version came out tastier"[Gosho the nocturnal sock-washer]

There might be a reason other than taste for soaking beans. I soak beans overnight and then throw away the water they were soaked in. This is done to make them less gassy.

There is a reason other than flavour for soaking dried beans - to rehydrate them.

Yes, that too.

makes them quicker to cook, by soakign them, as they've partially hydrated, and then cook quicker... one can do the same with rice, esp wild rice, to lower cooking times, if one is so minded...

Here's the article http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/soaking-black-beans-faq.html

Ahh... that's black beans, AKA 'turtle beans' (I think), as opposited to black beans, Aka black eyed peas (which are I think the ones I'm using ) always one thing that confuses w me with beans, and lentiles.... all the differnt names, and sometimes the same name, used in certain places, for differnt versions AKA yellow split ... err whatever they are, being either the same as or differnt to channa dal, I vaguely seem to recall... the black beans, AKA turtle (I think that is the name), ones are the really big black beans, I seem to recall... rather than the smaller black beans, aka black eyed peas, which I used... I think* five portions of the stew, now in the freezer, BTW, plus the one I ate last night; not quite sure if I've left one big portion, or two medium portions, in the pan... 7 or 8 portions then, I guess... and, really I can't fit a pan any bigger than the one I used, on my stove... and, actually don't think I've ever seen one that was bigger, being sold (I can get about 1.2 KG of minced beef in it, for doing chilli, without totally overpopulating the pan with it, and the other ingredients, for that quantity of minced/ground beef) if only I had a bigger burner on the stove, and a more massive pan

Black-eyed Peas and black beans look very different. After reading the linked article, I have some suspicions about the advice that was given regarding cooking times. I've never had beans tender enough to eat in less than two hours of cooking, even if they were pre-soaked. I have recipes for 5-bean soup and 8-bean soup. Black beans are among the smallest beans, yet they take *more* time to soften than bigger beans like kidneys and cannellini.

Different names for different beans It took me ages to figure out the haricot beans I need for my baked beans are called navy beans here, and there's also another, very similar kind of white bean, the name of which escapes me now. Black-eyed peas are Texas caviare in Texas (and it's a tradition to have them on New Years Day). Chickpeas are garbanzo beans. There are Bob knows how many different names in the various Indian cookbooks for yellow split peas.

and... then of course there are all teh various beans... which green in nature share, and don't share the same names... can't recall it now... seem to recall mung beans, have about a million differnt names, and I'm still not convinced the one time I wanted them, I actually got the same beans taht the recipie was intending so confusing - all food authors and cooks, of any level, should be forced to just use the botanical name for each bean!