Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

When you get a craving, a deep in your bones, gnawing in your gut yearning, for pizza, you quickly realize the edge of town is not the place to find yourself living. I did see the Domino�s Pizza guy here at the apt complex a couple of weeks ago, but he was wheeling around the corner before I could react and tackle him for a card with the phone number. No luck for Ya-ta. More�s the pity. (How I could end up in a city of 12 million people and still be in a rural area with birds and squirrels and a couple of miles from any pizza restaurant is beyond me.)

All week, I�ve been wanting a pizza. �a big, thick, chewy pizza, with piles of meat, loads of veggies and enough cheese to make your heart stop in its tracks. Especially piles of chewy, gooey, stringy mozzarella cheese with a hint of Parmesan, all bubbly and golden. There is a pizza place that sticks ads on our doors, but the word is out that they put corn on their pizza. Now, I�m a proud Iowa boy, from the land where the tall corn grows, but there are two places in this world where corn simply does not belong. It does not belong in bed and it does not belong on pizza; it�s an abomination, an offense against the natural order of the universe. So the question all week has been: to have or have not a pizza with corn. And every day my yearning has been growing, but my aversion to corn on a pizza has not weakened.

So what to do?

Mama Ya-ta didn�t raise an incompetent bumbler, a helpless male. She said, �When ya gotta have a pizza and the pizza delivery man is not delivering quality pizza, ya gotta roll up your sleeves and make your own, Ya-ta. There is pride and dignity in being able to satisfy your own needs, boy. There is more to that, but you can talk to your dad about that.�

Well, I put two chicken bosoms in a pan to boil, but found out later that one would have been enough.

While the chicken was cooking, I put a tablespoon of sugar and 2 teaspoons of yeast in a � cup of hot water and let it set while I measured out 1 � cups of flour and a teaspoon of salt in a big round bowl. I added a tablespoon of oil to the water before mixing it in the flour/salt mixture. I turned on the oven at 375 degrees F to warm up while I mixed and kneaded the dough and spread it out in a 12� pizza pan, spreading it all nice and a little bumpy to hold puddles of sauce and up the sides a little bit so the sauce wouldn't drip down and burn on the pan. Popped it in the oven for 15 minutes or so, till it was golden brown and crispy. This time, maybe the oven was too hot�I got a kind of giant pita pocket, but I didn�t let that bother me. (No reason this wouldn�t work in a toaster oven, btw.)

While this was baking, I put 4 tablespoons of peanut butter, 4 tablespoons of hot water, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 � tablespoons of brown sugar, a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice and some garlic chili sauce and cayenne in a bowl and stirred. What I got was a thickish brown peanut sauce. Tasted it and put in some more cayenne.

I also chopped up a small onion, shredded the chicken, took the jar of pickled chili peppers from Thailand out of the refrigerator along with the bean sprouts and green onions.

When the oven timer went off, I took the golden brown crust out of the oven, spread some of the peanut sauce over it, put on the toppings and then poured more of the peanut sauce over all of it. Then for the crowning glory, I put a whole pile of mozzarella cheese on top and sprinkled that with some Parmesan and crushed peanuts and popped all of it back in the oven for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees F, till the cheese was all bubbly and starting to turn brown. I�m sure the people up on the top floor could smell it. 

I took it out and put a bit of shredded carrot on top of it all, just for some added color, took a bottle of soju to the living room, put Hemingway�s �To Have and Have Not� in the DVD player (Bogey and Bacall directed by Howard Hawks, in a script by Faulkner) and put my lips together and blew on the hot pizza before eating, while watching a classic movie.

[inthewild]

whats an oven?

[butlerian]

[Ya-ta Boy]

It's a modern cooking contraption that rubes, hicks and hayseeds don't know much about. They can come close with a toaster oven, though.

[rothkowitz]

You substituted corn for carrot.Same same

[Ya-ta Boy]

Actually, I substituted carrots for corn. Not same, same. WHO has had too much soju?

[rothkowitz]

Bah!

Just got the words mixed up.Anyway-it's your pizza man,but I can't imagine carrot on a pizza.Doesn't seem sacrilicious at all.

I don't drink soju.Too sweet.

And bean sprouts?!

[Trumpcard]

i went to the best mom n pop chicken joint near me, named Boor (think it's a chain). Ordered yum yum chicken (양념) then accidentally ordered a box of their crispy chicken, when i really wanted one pice, called up my buddy, grabbed a big bottle of OB and went to his place. He had a nice cold bulgogi pizza laid out on the kitchen bench, and sacreligious corn, meat and lots of cheese. Beer, chicken, pizza, and now onto the aloe and soju mix while watching AFN - life is good!

[Ya-ta Boy]

[The Bobster]

[Sine qua non]

[yingwenlaoshi]

So, in short, you have an oven and you made a pizza.

Why would you even think about ordering?

[kotakji]

You avoided the corn yet put a load of satay sauce on your pizza?! Talk about an abomination to mankind.

[kimchi_pizza]

[Ya-ta Boy]