Cast Iron Skillet Pizza! Dong Po Pork! Army-base Stew!

Decided to try my hand at homemade pizza for this week's meal plan since the theme is "Italian week". So spaghetti with meatballs, meatloaf, lasagna, and of course, pizza is on the list (and a bunch of salad of course, gotta get those greens in). Just my way of making things in bulk and then coming up with as many different combinations as possible to avoid waste. Yep, that means everything about this pizza, from the sauce, crust, crumbled meatballs, etc. were homemade. Well, except the cheese and bacon I suppose, since I have no way of going about making them...or do I? Hmmm. Okay, don't let me get there. Not trying to start a farm in my backyard.

First attempt: white mushrooms, bell peppers, red onion, roasted garlic cloves, spinach, and crumbled meatball.
Kinda lacking in the sauce and meat department though haha.

I am looooooving the results! It tastes just like restaurant pizza. No kidding. I've made pizza before with a regular baking sheet and never had the same effect. Not that there's anything wrong about the rectangular homemade pizza we've all had, but I've always wondered why the crusts somehow just turn out different. For example, the homemade pizza crusts tend to have a bread-ier and fluffier texture. I always thought the whole pizza stone thing couldn't make THAT big of a difference, but I guess I was wrong. I mean, even so, who'd want to buy a pizza stone JUST for crisp pizza? Aside from getting a headache from deciding how and where to store such an unwieldy block of stone, it's a once in a blue moon kinda kitchen tool. But thank goodness a cheap 14-inch cast iron pan can create an almost similar effect! Huzzaaaah!!

Second attempt: Lesson learned. Doubled the meatballs and sauce. Added bacon bits and distributed toppings more evenly.

The crust on these babies were crunchy on the bottom, fluffy on the sides, and soft in the middle. Mmmm. What's best is you can top it however you like! Cheese all the way to the sides please~ No plain crusts for me!

So two things I've learned from these attempts:

1. A heavy bottom pan/equipment is necessary to form that nice and even crisp bottom crust.
2. Pizzas need to be cooked at really high heat (approx 425 to 550, basically as hot as you can get) to get that nice airy rise in addition to the crunch. 

Other new stuff I've made this week/month include 东坡肉 (or Dong Po Pork) and Budae Jjigae.

I made the pork using a pressure cooker (yes, I'm still obsessed with it) to cut down cooking time from 3+ hours to 1. Even though it was only 1 hour, the fragrance that came from the sauce was torture hahaha, I can't imagine having to wait 3 or more hours. This is definitely going to become a Lee family favorite because the skin was melt-in-your-mouth smooth and the meat so tender you can pull apart with just chopsticks. The sauce was the perfect amount of sweet and savory too. So. freaking. delicious.  Recipe *here*.

I've never seen Budae Jjigae at Korean restaurants, so when I saw it popping up on all my Kuching friends' instafeed I was so curious. I love all things spam, sausage, and kimchi, so when I found out those were some of the main ingredients of this stew I *had* to try it. Besides, spam was on sale! I've never had it at a restaurant, so no claims as to whether or not mine's authentic, but it was also really good! Then again, I might just have spam-sausage-kimchi-spicy-food bias so don't take my word for it, just try it! Ahahaha. Recipe from my favorite Korean YouTube chef Maangchi *here*. Alas, I don't think this will make it onto our family's meal rotations because of the sheer amount of processed meat.

I must say, since deactivating FB and curbing our going out to eat habit, I've been making foods that I never thought I could or bothered trying to perfect. I suppose if I can't go to a restaurant to satisfy my cravings, I'll have to make them as close to restaurant quality as possible at home. I think the extra time I've gained from not browsing FB constantly helped a bunch too.

So far we've only went out for 3 meals this month! 2 of which were fast-food snack runs because we got the junk food craving hahaha. The other was a date night at Crab City (kinda like a Boiling Crab joint) from a Groupon deal.

Yay to more homemade meals. Wonder what's in store for next week's meal plan.