Hassouni

Yes. Look at modern Kazakh, Kyrgyz, or Mongolian food. Lots of horse meat, lots of dairy. Before the Turkic expansion, Central Asia was not especially nomadic.

Central Asia was under Persian suzerainty if not direct rule and settlement (and pervasive cultural and linguistic influence) since the time of Cyrus until roughly the Kara-Khanids in the late 10th/early 11th century. It's arguable that the dominant culture, if not language of sedentary Central Asia today is still Persian. All this is to say I suspect the food of all the random Eastern Iranian ethnicities was pretty damn close to what the people there are eating today, maybe with a bit less East Asian influence (I've often said Uzbek food is mostly Persian with a bit of Chinese and Turkic thrown in) - hell look at modern Eastern Iranian Afghans/Pashtuns - their own food is basically "mostly Persian with Indian influences"

Does that matter?

I saw the Le Creuset and Staub sales, variously on W-S, Sur La Table, and also Bon Appetit (or maybe Food 52?), and their sale prices are all pretty much on par with the every day prices on Amazon. Am I missing something?

It's all in Northern pronunciation too, that's really rare outside Vietnam since almost all overseas Vietnamese tend to be from the South. (For what it's worth, having been there quite recently, I much preferred Hanoi to Saigon)

Yeah, I mean safe to eat. I don't want to throw it away if it's edible

So in other words, at this point, it's good forever?

Another thought, and maybe @liuzhou and others who live(d) in China can comment if I'm off the mark: Most Chinese meals are a multi-dish affair, so you'd rarely have a a large enough volume of food in a single dish that you need an ultra high power flamethrower of a stove, because smaller quantities cook just fine under normal conditions. As I said, my bog standard GE stove puts out more than enough heat for a typically-sized stir-fry dish, especially with my junky al. foil modification.

I have a homemade (with aluminium foil) version of this https://www.wokmon.com/ that I slip on my pretty normal GE gas stove. On the largest burner, even the "low" setting is VERY hot, and on high, forget it, the seasoning vaporizes right off and the smoke detector will go off in about 2 seconds. For home cooking, it's more than enough.

Only the word is. Yogurt has been a thing from the Middle East and Caucasus through South Asia long before the Turks showed up...hence the words for yogurt in Arabic, Persian, Georgian, Armenian, and Indic languages being indigenous.

Some corrections for you. Remember demographically and culturally Central Asia was Persian before the Turks showed up in the last 1000 years.

I made up some 72-hour pizza dough a while ago, fully planning on making pizza during lockdown. On the 2nd or 3rd day, my oven broke and needs to be replaced. So here I am now with 12 day old pizza dough...and I just cooked it on my Baking Steel Griddle, stovetop (cooking both sides) and it was fine, I guess. Flavor was certainly VERY developed! How long is it safe to keep dough in the fridge? Can it actually spoil? For reference, it's a 70% hydration dough with bread flour, 3% salt and 0.2% yeast. Thanks!

I actually used a very sharp (5000 grit) Japanese chef's knife rather than a cleaver. I stuck the meat in the freezer for about an hour to make it easy to cut, then started by cutting the meat in half parallel to the board, then into very thin slices, then those thin slices into about 1/4" dice. Then I sort of just lumped it all up and started chopping as if I was mincing garlic or something. All in all it took about 5 minutes, and I really liked how much control I had over the final texture. If I had stopped at a dice it would've worked really well in some applications (maybe burger, maybe not) ETA: my initial steps were a lot finer than in that video, in that I was cutting almost cheestesteak-thin slices on the first pass, and once i had done enough pull and push cuts, I rock-chopped, not just whacking the board. It really helps to have a very sharp knife and very cold meat.

I've been staying put, only going shopping about twice a week

2 (3?) weeks eating eggs, beans, rice, cured meat, potatoes, and other boring foods (not that they're intrinsically boring, but the repetition certainly has been) had me really, seriously craving some fresh meat, especially a burger. So I took matters into my own hands, bandannaed and gloved up, and went to Whole Foods. They didn't have any ground meat that looked suitable, so I got an 11 oz pack of deboned short rib and some brioche buns. When home, I stuck the meat in a freezer for a bit, and went to it with my freshly sharpened gyuto. I have to say, hand-mincing meat is very satisfying and I don't see why I'd ever buy ground meat again. Anyway, I figured I'd use Kenji's double smash burger approach, and made two balls, got some Gruyère sliced thinly, caramelized some onions, and put my Baking Steel Griddle to good use. This may be the best burger I've ever made at home, and hit the spot like a MF.

2 (3?) weeks eating eggs, beans, and other boring foods (that's another thread I guess) had me really, seriously craving some meat, especially a burger. So I took matters into my own hands, bandannaed and gloved up, and went to Whole Foods. They didn't have any ground meat that looked suitable, so I got an 11 oz pack of deboned short rib and some brioche buns. When home, I stuck the meat in a freezer for a bit, and went to it with my freshly sharpened gyuto. I have to say, hand-mincing meat is very satisfying and I don't see why I'd ever buy ground meat again. Anyway, I figured I'd use Kenji's double smash burger approach, and made two balls, got some Gruyère sliced thinly, caramelized some onions, and put my Baking Steel Griddle to good use. This may be the best burger I've ever made at home, and hit the spot like a MF.

going anywhere right now is kind of tricky!

At this point I really wonder if it's the old Maseca...

did a straight 1:1 maseca : hot water today and switched the ziplocks for shopping bag plastic. Getting the plastic off was a bit easier, but still had some breakages, and literally half the tortillas broke on my way from the hand to the griddle. What the hell is going on?? Is my dough too wet?

I made a wetter dough this time, about a 3:4 flour:water mix and it was too wet, i added a bit more masa harina back in so it was cohesive. I still had issues breaking it when peeling the plastic off after pressing. The first plastic sheet I remove comes off with no problem, whether it was on the top or bottom, but the second sheet sticks and ends up tearing the dough. Part of the issue is that the Ziplock freezer bags are very thick and stiff, and have a tendency to crease, which can poke into the dough but it's not just that, because I see plenty of tutorials using exactly that plastic. Could it be the old flour?

Alert, the greatest crackers ever created, "Some Enchanted Cracker" are now back at TJ's (seen here http://exploringtraderjoes.blogspot.com/2014/11/trader-joes-some-enchanted-cracker.html )

Pho, Northern (Ha Noi) style

yeah it doesn't taste rancid at all, still very corn-y

Any thoughts on using old Maseca? And should the "comal" be so hot the seasoning vaporizes off?

Do you add the water all at once or a bit at a time? I started with equal parts water and maseca and it was kind of soupy, but adding just a bit more maseca made it really dry - i'd say in the end it was maybe 50-50