Hello Comidista: “Is putting spicy oil on pizza filthy?”

Hello, Comidista

is a clinic where anything goes: culinary doubts, gastronomic enigmas, psychological problems, metaphysical questions and dramas of contemporary life.

You just have to send me an email to

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I will respond to your concerns on the first Friday of each month, except holidays, long weekends, serious illness or death.

The Smiling Face: Although I love spicy food, the option of putting spicy oil on pizza seems filthy to me.

Why do pizzerias only offer you spicy oil and not normal oil?

Do you know of any hot sauces/spices that work well with it?

Tabasco doesn't convince me, and neither does crumbled and sprinkled cayenne.

Dear The Smiling Face, I don't see you very smiling, but rather sulking with spicy oil, with pizzerias, with Tabasco, with cayenne and with life in general.

What a sour character, anyone would think you are me.

Calling adding spicy oil to pizza guarrindongada sounds a bit risky, considering that it is a relatively common custom in the country that invented this dish.

“Not everyone gets it, but they do have it in many Italian pizzerias in any area of ​​the country,” explains Max Morbi, from La Balmesina.

“Before it was not very common to wear it,” adds Lolo Lorenzo, from Can Pizza, “but as in everything, habits are changing, and now it is seen more.”

Eric Ayala, from Il Figlio de Emiliano, confirms this growing presence, but points out that in the more traditional pizzerias of Naples it is not usually offered.

“The most common thing there is for the

pizzaiolo

to have chopped

peperoncino

(dried Italian chili), and he adds it to the pizza when he makes it if the customer asks for it.”

Both Morbi and Lorenzo,

Award-winning pizzaiolos

and pure-blooded Italians admit the use of this ingredient in any type of pizza (except those with truffles, because their flavor would be overpowering).

Ayala is more reluctant: “We already put oil on pizzas, so I don't see much sense in adding even more.”

Alternatives to

olio piccante?

“

I would use black pepper or fresh chopped chilli,” says Morbi.

“I really like seedless chillies,” Lorenzo seconds.

“I'm not a big fan of spicy sauces on pizza, I prefer ingredients that already have their own spiciness.”

There you have another idea to avoid oil: the Calabrian nduja, the

piccante

salsciccia

or, in a more Spanish key, the spicy sobrasada or chorizo ​​could serve to raise the heat on the pizza.

La Lasañera: I think I remember that on other occasions in El Comidista you have taught the nice Galician custom of dressing up pig heads for Carnival with wigs, glasses and other jachonda paraphernalia, but the other day walking through Pontevedra I found such nonsense that I was left gasping like sea bass in the sand.

I had seen

cacheiras

.

What I had not seen is a

cacheira

dressed as Super Mario with his hose, his shovel and her hammer.

I found it important, in fact vital, to share this fantasy with you.

Shout out to Abel, who has to have a hard time eating exclusively rice and cans of tuna.

Dear La Lasañera, indeed, a few years ago we dedicated a report to the beautiful facilities with cacheiras of the Entroido, entitled Horror in the (Galician) hypermarket.

Compared to what we published in that piece, this Super Mario seems almost elegant to me, and the little hands peeking out of the sleeves inspire me a lot of tenderness.

Thank you very much for sending us the image, and don't worry about Abel: we have decided to increase his monthly allowance as an intern and, in addition to the rice and tuna, starting in March he will receive a package of almorta flour and a can of La Piara foagras.

Rocío: I bought a cauliflower and I only used a small part and the rest I confessed as is, without cooking or separating.

Now I wanted to have a cauliflower base pizza and I don't know the best way to defrost or prepare it.

Dear Rocío, look, I have told you 100 times not to write to the office drunk or high, but nothing.

Like someone who hears it rain.

I understand that you didn't confess to a cauliflower - although being a drug addict, anyone knows - but that you froze it.

First of all, you have skipped an important step to do it correctly, which consists of blanching it first for a couple of minutes in boiling water, so the cauliflower will come out of the refrigerator softer than when you wake up after pouring it out.

To “have” cauliflower pizza base (if that invention can be called “pizza base) you would need to grind it and turn it into a kind of couscous, and I'm afraid that, with a soft thawed cauliflower, that procedure has some ballots to end up in useless paste.

I would use it more for a cream: here you have the one from Madame du Barry, another with Morbier cheese, and another with yogurt and hazelnuts.

When you wake up after dumping jet.CORDON

Sollastre: In the

recipe for

lohikeitto

(Finnish salmon soup) it tells us that the potatoes are 'cut into cubes'.

Would snapping them instead of cutting them add anything to the dish?

Dear Sollastre, for those who don't know, cracking or cracking the potatoes means cutting them into pieces by inserting the knife a little and turning it to break them, so that the cut is not clean.

This technique is traditionally used so that the tuber releases more starch and thickens the cooking liquid, giving it a more flavorful texture.

In the case of

lohikeitto

, said liquid already has a thickener - cream -, so I don't know if it is strictly necessary, but if you want an even thicker broth, the hulling will help you achieve it.

The lohikeitto without clicking. Mònica Escudero

Juan Antonio: I live in Guam, a paradise island in the tropical Pacific, with my husband.

We are vegetarians and getting cooked legumes here is a problem, because they are very expensive.

Given the calico, I buy the dried legumes and cook them.

I'm trying to make homemade preserves, to cook more and save cooking time, since I don't have a pressure cooker!

I recycle glass jam jars (it's the largest size you find here) and I boil them for about 30 minutes before using them.

I fill them well to the top with the cooked legumes with the broth and I turn them over and let them cool.

However, the temperature here never drops below 25 degrees and the jars end up bursting in what I assume was an orgy of bacteria.

How could I preserve legumes without having to fill my tiny refrigerator with jars?

Dear Juan Antonio, I see that you are the typical sissy housewife supported by her husband who lives on a paradise island, and I hate you for it while envy oozes from every pore of my body.

With those temperatures, if you don't sterilize the jars AFTER putting the legumes in, it's normal for them to burst, you brainless.

To prepare safe preserves, with which you do not risk the worst enemy of homemade botulism -botulism-, you need to take the following steps.

First of all, you must maintain maximum hygienic conditions throughout the cooking process, cleaning all surfaces well beforehand and using kitchen paper to dry instead of cloths.

Once the chickpeas are ready, wash the jars and lids in boiling water for 15 minutes.

First bad news: the boats have to be new (you buy them online, if you have the money to spend time on a tropical island you will surely have enough money for this).

Then, fill the jars to the top, making sure there are no bubbles left.

You close them, put them in a pressure cooker (second bad news: you have to buy it too) and fill it with water that reaches about four centimeters below the lid.

You close the pot, put it on the heat and leave it for about 20 minutes until steam starts to come out.

Turn off the heat and let the pot cool, between 20 and 60 minutes.

Finally you take out the jars, turn them upside down and let them cool completely.

Juan Antonio and his husband, at the American base in Guam.

Julio: Without being a particularly digitally clumsy person, for some time now I have not found the recipe search engine on the web that was so helpful to take advantage of that ingredient in the refrigerator that you were too lazy to use or to recover a recipe that half you remembered

I know of more people with the same concern, torment and disturbance.

What happen?

Are we clumsy and don't know it?

Do you make us suffer for pure pleasure?

Do you accept digital oblivion out of modesty of old recipes?

Tell us, who puts their leg on us so we don't raise our heads?

Who?

Dear Julio, thank you for being the 3,854th person who writes to us asking about the search engine.

I would love to tell you that it was all a plot to drive you crazy by installing and removing the search engine, but its removal was due to technical reasons that, honestly, escape me.

The important thing is that it is already operational, although I note that it only appears on the cover of El Comidista.

Now you can run and look for old recipes with horrible photos that have become old.

Marti: Culinary catastrophes.

When you do what you can...

Or as a friend says: The important thing is to participate 🙃 pic.twitter.com/VACKVfynVb

— Rosa Dominguez Gomez (@rosadg_) February 24, 2024

Dear Marti, thank you so much for letting us know about this masterpiece of

food sculpting art,

in which a funny little cute mouse transforms into a sinister rabbit that has been addicted to fentanyl.

“We did it for our son Leo and his friend Lucia, at the house of some friends in a small town in Castellón,” explains the author, journalist Rosa Domínguez Gómez.

“We were playing kitchen games, and each one of us had to prepare a dish.

The orange is from our tree, naveline type and delicious, but I think it is not appropriate for this type of artistic intervention.”

Giappo: I love cooking with time, music and a glass or 200 of wine, but I have two small children and one doesn't always have that luxury.

Well, what the hell, I never can anymore.

I like to make fried tomato at home, because I see that the ones in jars carry sugar by the bucketload.

Not having time to sauté the vegetables for three hours over very low heat, I put them in the expresso at full capacity, brown them, add a ton of water and close the lid.

I poach them, with the lid closed, I open and add the crushed tomato and cook with the lid open for another while.

The vegetables in the sofrito are poached the same, but my question is if there is any scientific evidence that doing them this way has less flavor in the sofrito, since there is a reason why people will have it there for eight hours confitting.

It tastes similar to me.

Dear Giappo, as much as it bothers me to agree with anyone who writes to this office, I must congratulate you on your technique.

The long candied in oil of onion, garlic and other vegetables in stir-fries seeks to produce the Maillard reaction and the caramelization of said ingredients, so that they become bombs of aroma and flavor.

This process can be accelerated very efficiently in the pressure cooker, because the boiling temperature inside rises to 120 degrees, which favors the aforementioned caramelization.

If you also add a pinch of baking soda, you raise the PH of the sauce, thereby boosting the Maillard reaction.

Both techniques are valid for onion, or for any vegetable rich in sugar, such as pumpkin, sweet potato, parsnip, beet or cauliflower.

We use them in this carrot cream, which is an absolute delight.

03:35

The definitive carrot cream

How to caramelize in a pressure cooker.

Jesús: The cakes from Algarrobo, the town where they apparently originate, are famous in Malaga.

They have some basic and effective ingredients: olive oil, matalauva, flour, sugar and almonds.

Some recipes circulate on the internet, but none manage to match the qualities of the cake from the Ramos bakery (Caleta de Vélez).

“Baker's yeast” usually appears in the ingredients, but no recipe uses it... Could a dough as oily as the one that results from internet recipes ferment?

This often bothers me and keeps me awake at night.

Perhaps you who have a direct line with the Grand Master of sourdough, Iban Yarza, can ask him how to achieve the ultimate in this type of cake, which manages to give you food for 12 hours of high activity, and as you can see, causes unbridled addiction.

Dear Jesus, I love when you ask about other people, because that way I can pass on the doubt to them and not make the slightest effort to resolve it.

From the Olympus baker of him, the Grand Master of the sourdough acknowledges that he did not know the product in question.

“After a quick search I was able to see that they are a kind of large pasta with oil, almonds and matalahúva.

The use of yeast does not surprise me, since I have seen quite a few bakeries make similar products, which often (I don't know if this is the case) fall into the group that I call 'bread dough reworkings'.

That is to say, in the bakery there is bread dough whose priority purpose has been to make the breads of the day, and a part is reserved to knead it again and make sweets.

Many oil and butter cakes come from there, and it is also the origin of the original sobao pasiego (which was made with bread dough) and many other sweets with the name sobado, sobada, sobadilla, etc.

“In Murcia,” Yarza continues unstoppably, “there is the Easter cake, which also has yeast, a lot of oil and almonds.

Without leaving Málaga, I remember seeing something with a similar texture in both Benalauría and Coín, in both cases flat pasta with a rustic texture made with bread dough that is kneaded again with a good amount of olive oil and matalahúva (sometimes cinnamon , almond, lemon and other related issues).

So, without having a recipe, I imagine the thing goes that way.

I'm sorry I don't have a recipe like that up my sleeve, but the idea would be to first make a bread dough that would ferment, and then re-knead it with oil, almonds and so on.”

Ibán Yarza, recorded at his home in Ibiza just after he received another query from Aló Comidista.

Covadonga: In my parents' house, they have always put salt on the eggplants before roasting them to remove the bitterness.

At home I have continued doing this process and nothing strange has ever happened to me...But the other day, I proceed as so many other times and oh, surprise! Suddenly the liquid that usually comes out of the eggplant when adding salt! It is green!

I'm not sure if this is a case for the exorcist, as my dear friend Maite says, eggplants are no longer what they used to be, or if I'm completely uneducated.

Dear Covadonga, since I haven't insulted anyone in this place for a while, Hello, yes, I confirm that you are completely uneducated.

Did you seriously not know that the

poltergeist

in your eggplant is due to compounds that are formed from chlorogenic acid by oxidation and reaction with amino acids?

How little scientific culture.

Of course I knew it, and if you have seen that I asked about the matter in X, you have had hallucinations.

I'll explain it more clearly, in case you're not only uneducated, but also short: eggplant has a substance called chlorogenic acid.

By adding salt, you encourage water and other compounds to come out of the eggplant, and among them there may be amino acids that have reacted with said acid, giving the liquid a greenish color.

Why did this happen to this eggplant, instead of releasing the usual brown eagle?

Because it is possibly a variety rich in chlorogenic acid and poor in polyphenol oxidase, the enzyme responsible for browning.

All this knowledge was not shared by the food technologists Beatriz Robles and Miguel Ángel Lurueña and the chef José Andrés, I have it as standard.

Azucena: I have a question about your

recipe for apple dumplings

.

What difference would it make to use black cardamom instead of green?

Dear Azucena, even black cardamom has me with these little questions about ingredients that only one in every 500,000 people has in their home.

Black cardamom is stronger and spicier, and has a more camphorous aroma.

I don't think it suits this recipe much, but maybe you can use it in a smaller quantity.

It's all about testing.

Buika, warning Juanjo that he is going to eat all the black cardamom.

Sergio: I am a little Jewish, a little Lebanese, a little Ladino, a little Irish and a little Basque.

More or less like Chinese rice.

But it also turns out that this week I read an advertisement that said: “The best Venezuelan Chinese rice in Madrid.”

What is that being?

Does globalization allow us to stretch it so much?

Are there Chinese rice products cataloged in different parts of the world?

Dear Sergio, you reminded me of Bjork from

La hora chanante,

who was Icelandic, half Lapp, half Eskimo and half Mongolian.

As unusual as it may seem to you, yes, there are Chinese rice products cataloged in different countries around the world, because the Chinese have not stayed put in their country throughout history, but have had the curious habit of emigrating to other places to earn a living.

That is why there is a typical Chinese fried rice from the United States (from which our Tres Delicias rice is derived), Peruvian chaufa rice or Venezuelan Chinese rice.

The latter, inherited from the migrants who arrived in Venezuela in the 19th and 20th centuries, is also a fried rice, but it is distinguished by having ham and the darker color given by the soy sauce.

Björk, a complex character that would make for a lot of footage.Getty (Getty Images)

Ana: When I cook something in one container and then have to transfer it to another, to mix it or to serve at the table, I always have a lot of fun trying to “comb” everything well to use it.

Is it worth spending a lot of time on this or is the amount you can collect negligible?

Dear Ana, this is the same existential question that I ask myself every time I herd.

I suppose the amounts recovered are irrelevant, but profiteering psychopaths like you and I are not willing to throw away even half a milligram of food just like that.

I even scrape with a spatula sometimes, and I leave the container so that there is almost no need to scrub it.

That's how bad I am.

Gerardo: For Brazilian rolls, what temperature and time in an air fryer?

Dear Gerardo, I assume you are referring to the

pao de queijo recipe

that we did with Helena Furtado.

And I also suppose that it is interesting to answer you to give a general guideline on how to adapt oven recipes to the air fryer, which is still a miniature oven.

This thing usually kicks harder and faster than its older brother, so it's a good idea to lower the temperature a bit (10 or 20 degrees less) and reduce the time.

You can always prolong it later, and this way you will avoid unwanted gossip.

In the case of paos de queijo, cook them at 180-190 degrees for 15 minutes.

And from there, you decide if they need a couple more minutes to finish browning.

10:10

'Pão de queijo': an easy recipe for Brazil's most famous cheese roll |

THE FOODIST

Also in your air fryer.

José Luis: I was lucky enough to enjoy in the Madrid of my childhood and early youth some delicious pastries with an evocative name: soconuscos.

Incredibly, they were disappearing.

Can you explain to me, Mikel, why no one misses the soconuscos?

I do not understand.

Carmen: My name is Carmen Aranguren and I am writing to see if you have the recipe for a cake called soconusco.

They were rectangular hazelnut praline cakes with chocolate coating and three hazelnuts on top that they made in Madrid, at the Izquierdo pastry shop or at La Duquesita before it changed ownership.

I attach a photo.

Dear Carmen and José Luis, I don't really know why this sudden furor for soconusco is due, but unfortunately we don't have your recipe.

In any case, they continue to make it at the Luzón pastry shop, information that I have obtained after taking the effort to search on Google for “soconusco Madrid cake.”

By the way, in the Basque Country there is also a typical nougat from Bilbao called sokonusco, with layers of almond praline and cocoa.

Both specialties owe their name to the famous cocoa from Soconusco (Mexico), highly prized for its flavor and smoothness.

Rosa: I have a very normal question.

How could I make calçots at home?

I have an oven and fireplace.

Dear Rosa, I have a very normal answer too.

Here you have a recipe for baked calçots.

And here, another one to prepare them on the grill.

See how easy?

Well, you could have found out this yourself by typing in “calçots” in our search engine and clicking on the magnifying glass.

Oh no, wait, the search engine had disappeared...

03:56

Calçots: what they are, where they come from and how to enjoy them to the fullest

This is how calçots are made and eaten.

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