A Lotta Ricotta

Weekends are full of small victories for me. A new recipe tried, a book finished, a hike taken. This weekend included all of those, and a dollop of ricotta! We've been meaning to try the ricotta recipe in our cheesemaking book for awhile because it looked so easy. Bascially you take a gallon of milk, heat it up, add vinegar and salt, let it curdle, then drain the curds. Voila, ricotta!

A whole gallon of milk only makes about 1 1/2 cups of ricotta, but that's about what you'd buy at the store.  The weird thing about ricotta is that it doesn't actually taste like anything but the milk, but it's so delicious when you add it to things.

Suki helping us look for a pot.

The finished product! We cut up a ripe mango and ate it with that. Other ricotta uses are manicotti, of course (Jesse's favorite), mixing it with honey and berries, and then a recipe I just saw in Cooking Light for "Open-faced Sandwich with Ricotta, Arugula, and Fried Egg."

Mmm...

I love knowing that I can do things myself instead of buying expensive things at Whole Foods. And it's such a quick easy afternoon project!

Next up, Mascarpone or Creme Fraiche? Decisions, decisions...

Rice Pudding!

We saw this recipe while browsing the other night, and just had to make it. It looked so tasty, and when we realized we had all the ingredients just laying around, it had to be done.

It's not often that we have milk on hand, actually. Soy milk is the usual thing for cereal, and even for most cooking, so we rarely have milk. But last week I was ambitious enough to think that I would try making ricotta cheese, so we bought a gallon of whole milk. But then a cup was needed for one thing, another half a cup for something else, until there wasn't enough for ricotta anyway, so we might as well just use it all. Thus, rice pudding. She suggests floating a bay leaf in the milk for a little zing, so we tried that--honestly I couldn't taste anything. But I'm a little stuffy-nosed coughy right now, so I might not be so great at detecting the subtle flavors in foods. I did detect the sweet, sticky goodness of the pudding, though, and it was amazing!

Jesse was the one that did most of the work. Sometimes that happens: he does all the cooking, I do a lot of eating, and then I brag about it later. At least I'm good at giving credit where it's due!

The Twisty Side of Life

Jesse, in all his baking fervor, tackled pretzels last week.

 

Or maybe they tackled him... Either way, he managed to twist his way to a delicious browned, firm crust with yeasty goodness inside. Delicious!

 

Here they are before going into the oven, and that was the last picture I got before we gobbled them all up. A little salt on top, a little mustard, and they were perfect (I won't mention the fact that they stuck to the pan horribly because I didn't grease it enough...).

Twisty is a good illustration of how I've been feeling about life lately. Twisty, perhaps a little restless or unsatisfied... who knows how to describe it. But it's amazing how a little unhappines can affect all sorts of things in your life. I've been reading a lot of craft blogs, and trying to sew, which is a great outlet for my creativity drive, but at the end of the day it just leaves me wanting more. Then I look at all the stores on Etsy, all the people creating whole clothing lines on Burda Style, and blogs with successful women behind them who've created careers out of their crafty drives. It leaves me unhappy.

I want so bad to create that for myself, too, but...but, but, but. Always a but. Not enough money, time, talent, direction. There's a lot in my way, most of all the fact that I have no clear vision for what I actually want. I want to earn money doing the things I love to do. I have idea how to do that, or what it is, exactly, that I love to do.

Twisty, twisty. Excuses, excuses. For now, I'll keep working on my skirt.

Homemade Cheese, of the Goat Variety

Yup, you guessed it--we made goat cheese! Our dear friends The Beedles gave us a DIY kit for Christmas, straight from the local shops of Portland:

As you can see, our kit was for Chevre, or goat cheese, and as you can't see, it came with cheesecloth, a cheese thermometer, and the citric acid needed to curdle milk. Then we had everything else!

The hardest part was finding the goats milk, because it's not hanging out everywhere. What's more, you're not supposed to use Ultra-Pasteurized milk because that kills all of the good bacteria. And plain old pasteurized goats milk is hard to find. But we finally scored some at Trader Joe's, and brought it home dreaming of creamy goodness.

First, we carefully brought the milk to an almost-boil, then added in the citric acid, which curdled it and turned it a weird yellowish green color. But this was a good thing. We kept it at a good simmer until it really got a-curdling, and separated into curds and whey. At this point, I thought, "Little Miss Muffet must have been crazy to eat this stuff." It looked pretty gross.

Then we poured it all into a little baggie made of the cheesecloth and let all the whey drain out, leaving just the beautiful tasty curds: chevre! We mixed dill into part of it, because I have a love affair with dill. Then we let it cool.

And then we ate it! It was delicious! And we had made it all on our own!

Okay. it doesn't look like much, but it's pretty tasty!

So, just to recap, that's sour cream, butter, buttermilk, and chevre we've made in our very own kitchen. I just need to buy a goat, and we'll have a never-ending supply! I suggested it to Jesse, but he didn't go for that. Bummer. Maybe someday. We can have a family of goats, for Suki to make friends with. Our chevre kit makes 10 batches, so we have a ways to go still!

We're on a roll with the dairy items-next up, yogurt?

The Science of Butter

For Hannukah/Christmas/New Years, I got Jesse a cheesemaking book. (Really, it was for me). I've heard that making soft cheeses is really easy, and I've been so excited to try it out. We tried to make sour cream for our latkes awhile ago, and it was a bit of a runny mess. By now, though, it's solidified a little, and actually tastes like sour cream! Better than sour cream! It's amazing!

With that tasty success, it was time for another try, so I attempted butter. The recipe was really easy--take cream, shake until the butterfat separates, wash it, and add salt. While I could have used the food processor, I chose to shake it in a glass jar for 20 minutes, because I figured by the time I made the butter, I will have worked off enough calories to eat it. So I shook and shook. I got a little worried when I opened the jar and just saw whipped cream, but as I kept shaking the fat in the milk began to clump together into a big blob, leaving buttermilk behind. (So really, I made butter AND buttermilk. Two in one!)

You know those experiments in science class where cool things happen with regular ingredients? Like a baking soda and vinegar volcano? It was kind of like that. I was just shaking along, and the next time I peered into the jar there was a blob of butter there! I felt like I needed Bill Nye the Science Guy to explain what I just did. Or the president to give me a medal. Either way.

So, I washed and rinsed the butter a few times, mixed and mashed the salt into it, and then put it in the fridge! And this morning, Jesse and I enjoyed fresh butter on our bagels. And it tasted good....so good.

Happy New Years!

A Celebration of Hannukah

I don't know much about Hannukah.
One year, in Prague, I went to a Hannukah party where we ended up playing "Drinking Dreidel" and having a dance party. I don't think that was a very traditional Hannukah celebration, though.

This year, I decided we should try to pull off a Hannukah celebration, complete with food and dreidels and everything! Jesse used to celebrate Hannukah when he was growing up, so I thought he'd be a pretty good source of information, but it turns out all he remembers is getting an extra 8 days worth of presents. No help there.

But I figured I knew enough to make the food okay, and we'd just kind of wing it from there. Here's how it turned out...

We mixed the traditional potatoes and onions and fried them crispy brown to make latkes. We even made our own applesauce to put on them!! These turned out delicious--I would most definitely make them again. (The sour cream we tried to make is another story...another blog post...)

We made matzo balls and matzo ball soup. This turned out...not so delicious. I didn't season the soup properly, and the matzo balls tasted a bit like wet crackers, so it was just an all around flavorless, lumpy, wet spoonful you got when you ate it. People politely pushed their spoons around while suggesting things I should have used when making it, like salt and spices. I would say "next time" if there would be one, but I'm fairly sure there won't.

We read a Hannukah story, just to get in the mood. More to know why in the world we were trying to spin a dreidel and eat matzo balls. Here you see Andrea doing a fabulous job of reading The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, by Lemony Snicket. I recommend it, and judging by the riveted looks on everyone's faces, they do, too.

 

In all, there was hanging out, drinking of wine, laughing at jokes, eating of food, and sharing in the wonderful company of my dear friends who showed up to celebrate a holiday none of us knew anything about.

I might not know the details of Hannukah, but I'd call our little makeshift celebration a smashing success. Happy Hannukah, everyone!!

Next up, Kwanzaa???

The Master Cook

In general, I would say I do most of the cooking here. In general. And by that I mean most of the planned dinnertime meals are things I look up recipes for, get ingredients, and try out myself.
This isn't to say Jesse can't cook, because he most definitely can. He does a lot of breakfasts for us, and he has about 3 or 4 dinner recipes that he can whip out from memory. These are all delicious, but I've pointed out to him that the same recipes often get...well...boring. So the other week he whipped out the Master Chef.
Oh, man. Let me dazzle you for a moment...

First off, he made us pizza. And I don't mean he went to the store and got the sauce and crust then put them together--no, he actually MADE the pizza. Everything. He kneaded the dough, mixed the sauce, and lovingly watched the oven to make sure they were doing okay.

(Isn't he cute?)

The final verdict was deliciousness on my part, even if he wasn't as happy with his dough.

Pizza a la individual...Mmm!

After the pizza, he tackled dessert for Thanksgiving, where he made a pie. Not just a regular old pumpkin pie--again, he took out the big guns, and made Poached Pear Tart with Chocolate Ganache. And again, he made it all, down to the pie crust and chocolate ganache. And again, it was pure deliciousness.

Sooo good...

He also did a slow-simmering Green Chili Soup, with real meat! Very impressive.

Since then, he's expressed desires to own a pastry brush for better dusting techniques, a butcher block for better ease of kneading, and several other gadgets that I can only assume will make even yummier foods for me to eat.

The Master Cook has arrived, and I am happy to welcome him to my kitchen.

I'm only a little miffed that he doesn't clean up after himself.

Spices Galore

I like to be organized. This is different from being a perfectionist, or being OCD, because I am neither of those. But I am organized. So when I decided that the time had come to re-organize my spice rack, it was very exciting. We have two different spice racks here, both Jesse's. One is from Costco that comes with all the spices pre-packed, and the other is a fun spinning one we inherited from his grandma. Of the two, probably about half of the bottle had spices we actually used--the other half had things like "Poultry Seasoning" and some sad looking year-old dried parsley.
So I decided it was time for a change, especially because I've often read that you should replace spices every year to keep them fresh. So we threw out all our old, unused, clumpy spices, washed all the jars and peeled off all the labels. Then we took a trip out to our favorite spice-buying store, Limbo.
I love this store. It's a little piece of organic heaven, right next to Trader Joe's. So you go to TJ's to get all your fun things, then you go to Limbo to get your produce and spices. A perfect team. And the spices--oh, my. It's in bulk, which means it's super cheap. I mean cheap. You pay $9 for a jar of whole allspice in a regular grocery store, or you pay $1.35 and use the jar you already have. Deal. And they have everything you might even remotely need, down to dandelion pollen, milkweed, organic catnip, teas, and things I can't even identify. Jars and jars, all the way down the aisle. The possibilities are very exciting.
So I stocked up on basil and paprika and curry and thyme, and brought it all home to our waiting jars, which I lovingly (and quite messily) poured them in while I tried not to sneeze. Then I labeled them all with a nice yellow label, so they are easy to locate.
Now we have one rack of herbs and seeds, and one of spices. Behold:

The herbs.

Close up. Aren't they nice labels? This is where my non-perfectionism came in, because the labels are in no way symmetrical or perfectly placed, and the labels bubble funny because of the rounded jars, but I don't care.

And the spices. I suppose I should point out that I am a slight perfectionist here: if you notice, the color goes from light to dark. The other columns do as well. It just looks better that way! I'm choosy in my OCD.

Now we have a deliciously usable herb and spice system, and I'm quite happy with myself. Now I just need to cook!