What's For Dinner #65 - the Brand New New Year's Edition - January 2021

Looks delicious! Happy to read you found that tahini dressing tasty. I drizzled it on roasted carrots earlier today. I think it would make a nice dip for crispy, roasted cauliflower too.

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Thanks. That dressing will definitely be a regular in my fridge. I’m thinking of using it when I make my next batch of baba ganoush.

Great idea!

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oh no! i guess that’s understandable, but why oh why did he want to apprentice as a butcher? My BF will eat medium rare that’s on the rare side if we’re sharing a steak, but it’s not his preference. But, mine doesn’t like seafood. So, we all have our crosses to bear… :smiley:

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Is there a recipe you could share?

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CHINESE is our new Cuisine of the Quarter! CHINESE - Cuisine of the Quarter, Winter 2021 (Jan-Mar)

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Mushu chicken. It looked better than it tasted :(. I’m sure I overcrowded the pan. It had 1/2 head of cabbage plus a bunch of other stuff and was very unwieldy. So it went from total crunch to total sog before the amount was manageable. My bad. Trying to save time by not doing 2 batches.

Question for you all. I’m afraid I’m using my rolling pin incorrectly. When I was rolling out the pancakes (very thinly), the outside edges keep curling up. Is there a way to increase the circumference of a circle of dough as you roll it bigger and thinner without the edges curling up? It creates a lot of wrinkles in the middle part of the dough, because now there is more middle but the perimeter refuses to enlarge to accommodate that. Anyway, just a curiosity as I try to improve my techniques.

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The technique shown to me to prevent curling when I was learning tortillas and naan is to turn the dough with one hand as you roll the dough from center point out. Manually turning the dough works well when you are working in rounds (pizza too).

Huh. Ok. Did anyone say why this would work? Yesterday, I was flopping the dough over and over, and turning it rather than turning myself, in order to try for circles. But it still mad-curled at the edges.

You might also have experienced that because of the gluten development in the dough. A 30 minute rest may have helped, if it hadn’t already been done @Sasha.

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60 min rest

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I agree the dough needs short rests, not one long rest.
I go 10-15 mins if the dough resists to much. Very little if at all xtra flour while rolling. Better to lightly oil your fingers. But regarding the clockwise turning not flipping, the idea is to refine the shape and the edge to an even thickness before heating. Curling can occur from uneven rolling.

Other factors
Cold dough
Old flour resulting in a disappointing dough
Make sure the lightly oiled pan is hot.

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Thanks for the help with troubleshooting. When I have more time, I’ll have to google it up. Fwiw, this was a hot water dough - mix flour, salt, hot water - which was kneaded in the mixer for 8 min, then rested for 60 min, then was partitioned into balls. The recipe (kind of odd), had me place an oiled ball on top of a nonoiled one, smoosh them together, and roll them out as one, flip flopping from side to side. The idea I guess is to get more dough so that it would roll into a bigger circle. You cook them stuck together, then peel them apart (which worked 5 out of 6 times last night). The pan was hot, the pan was lightly oiled, the dough was rested and warm…

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Thanks! I’ll try that one next time. Here is the one I used (just the pancake portion):

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I was taught tortillas nearly the same way. Just a slight ingred chg. Btw, your meal sounds really worth trying myself. Thxs for the inspiration.

Actually, I just read through the recipe link you sent, and the method is nearly identical. The only difference is that I was supposed to entirely oil a single little disk, and then put it on top of a second unoiled disk. Whereas they have you oil one side of each disk, and then clamp those together. That may help with separating, but not with my curling issue. Back to square one.

Oil does help the dough from drying out and ripping.

It looks great… and that gravy! :yum:

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Sure, but both recipes have you oil the disks. Yours in the middle, where the rolling pin doesn’t touch. Mine in the middle and on one outside edge. Anyway, I don’t mean to pester you Rooster. It could be a practice makes perfect situation, or I just need to do a little google research on how to avoid the curl.