Weekend in Review

First, the Adventures in Dairy roundup. Remember the yogurt with rennet? That was just a dumb idea, forget about it. You can't make cheese from something that's already basically cheese.

The feta that was so happily pickling away is, in fact, a pleasantly salty feta cream. My tin can cheese press didn't have enough pressure to squeeze all that whey out, so the cheese came out more like cream cheese. It'll probably be good on toasted bread with olives or tomato.

In other news, I created the million dollar dumpling. Imagine, if you will, a bite sized potato dumpling filled with homemade hot gravy. I'll post a recipe when I can include pictures.

If you should find yourself anywhere near Columbus, go to Jeni's Fresh Ice Creams. There is a genius at work there. Seriously, goat cheese with cherry conserve? That's just brilliant.

Guacamole!

It's one of my favorite foods, but I will never buy guacamole from a store. They try to make up for lack of freshness by adding questionable seasonings, sour cream and preservatives. It's crap.

I always use ripe Hass avocadoes (the black wrinkled ones). They're creamier and less watery than the smooth green ones. When they're perfectly ripe you should just be able to leave a dent with your fingers without much effort. If they're still hard, you can ripen them at home on the window sill. If they're mush, don't even bother.

Nearly every tomato I've bought from supermarkets in the past several years has been mealy, and they ruin everything they touch. Try to find a reliable source of good tomatoes, and you'll be so happy you did. Better yet, grow your own in a window box or garden, and then send me some.

Here are two versions of the good stuff. I like to keep it simple; some, like my Mama, prefer a few more layers of flavor. Mix and match, invent your own, just don't buy that tub of slime from the grocer.

Carsen's Guacamole

2 large, ripe Hass avocadoes
2 medium tomatoes
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
juice of half a lime
salt to taste

Cut through the avocadoes lengthwise down to the pit, and slice all the way around. Twist the two halfs apart, tap the edge of your knife into the pit, and twist to remove. Slash through the flesh, but not the rind, a few times across and down, and scoop out the chunks with a spoon into a bowl.

Cut the tomatoes crosswise and squeeze out the seeds. Dice them roughly and add to the bowl. Add the minced garlic and lime juice. Use a potato masher or fork to coursely chop and mix the ingredients. Taste with whatever chips you'll be serving with the guacamole, and salt to taste. Enjoy!

Mama's Guacamole

Add these to the above.

1/2 c finely chopped red onion
handful of chopped cilantro
dash of Worcesterchire sauce
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
a couple dashes of hot sauce

Adventures in Dairy, Part 2

Needing something to put the last of my homemade butter on, I whipped up some scones. Start to finish they take maybe 25 minutes.

2 c flour
1/3 c sugar
2 t baking powder
1/8 t salt
1/3 c shortening
1 egg, beaten
1/2 c milk
1 t vanilla
splash of milk for brushing on top

Preheat oven to 375. Whisk dry ingredients together in a bowl. Cut shortening into mixture with whisk until the flour is grainy and not too lumpy. Add the liquids and combine to form a dough. It will be a little sticky. Pat it into a circle about 3/4" thick on a cutting board. Cut into eight wedges and transfer to a baking sheet. Brush tops with milk, sprinkle with a little sugar, and bake for 15 minutes. Serve with butter, jam and tea. Makes 8 scones.

While they were baking I plunked a lovin' spoonful of Swiss plum preserves into a cup of plain yogurt. Try it. I dare you.

My first try at cheesemaking was a rollercoaster of success. I started with a gallon of milk, at one point had 8 pounds of collapsed curds and whey, and ended up with a bowl of cottage cheese, a cup of ricotta, half a gallon of wasted whey, and half a pound of cow's milk feta that right now is happily pickling until Saturday.

The cottage cheese went straight into my belly. No passing Go, no $200, just spoon to mouth.

I tried to coax a bunch of ricotta out of the half gallon of whey, but it wasn't acidified enough, or not heated enough, or I disturbed it too much, who knows. It really looked indecent.

The other ricotta went into a pasta dish whose credit must go to this page. It was delicious, full of raw garlic and cheese. I left out the marjoram and added grape tomatoes, which, according to acclaimed cheese connoisseur Adeline D. Phelps, added "depth of flavor" and "texture." It's true.

I'm trying an experiment with yogurt cheese. I skimmed the cream off of a container of Brown Cow Cream Top yogurt and put it over raspberries. That was pretty amazing, similar to the cream of Gruyere, but with a yogurt tang.

To the remaining yogurt I've added a quarter tablet of rennet dissolved in water, hoping to get some yogurt cheese. More on that later.

Spanish Tortilla de Patatas

So simple, so easy, so good, the Spanish tortilla (nothing to do with tacos) is a cake of potatoes, onion and egg, typically served in wedges as a tapa.

1/3 c olive oil
2 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
2 small onions, halved and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 eggs
salt

Over low heat in a 10 inch skillet, layer the potatoes and onions in the oil. The mixture should come to a slow simmer (some bubbles), but DO NOT fry the potatoes. If anything starts to brown, reduce the heat. After about 10 minutes, add the garlic. Heat through until the potatoes are cooked.

Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl. Scoop out the potatoes and onions with a slotted spoon and stir them into the eggs. Add about 1/2 t salt. Let sit for 10 minutes.

Heat the oil in the skillet on medium-high heat and add the egg potato mixture, spreading quickly. Keep the mixture from sticking to the bottom by shaking the pan or lifting the tortilla witha spatula. When the bottom has browned slightly, slide the mixture onto a plate. Invert another plate on top, flip the tortilla over, and transfer back to the pan to brown the other side.

You can eat it hot, or wait for it to cool to room temperature and cut it into wedges and serve as an appetizer. Great with beer.

Adventures in Dairy

The four pillars of breakfast, as described by noted omeletologist Michael B. Hurwitz, are milk, butter, eggs and cheese. Take any one of these away, and your breakfast is likely to become unbalanced and fall down.

So it would seem that with a dairy cow and an egg hen, breakfast would always have four legs to stand on. But what does it take to make butter and cheese, I wondered.

Butter is pretty easy. Take some cream at around 60 degrees and beat it until you have a whole bunch of butter floating in buttermilk. You can use the buttermilk for biscuits or pancakes. The butter can be used immediately (hard to resist) or washed in cold water and salted to keep in the fridge. And that was yesterday's lunch.

Cheese, on the otherhand, is giving me some problems at the moment. I'm 24 hours into the process, and I've got a whole mess of collapsed curds and whey. I'm trying to drain them, but the curds are so fine that my cloth is clogging up terribly. I gave up on one of the strainers, put the curds in a bowl with a little salt, and I've got some pretty tasty cottage cheese for lunch.

The half gallon or so that wouldn't fit in my strainers I'm trying to salvage by going straight to ricotta with it. I heated it until near boiling, and in a few hours I should have some fine curds coming out of the mess.

The last strainer is looking pretty good, and the whey is dripping slowly, but clearly and cleanly. I might get a couple of ounces of cow's milk feta from it, which is what I aimed for with the whole gallon.

I might have cut the curd too soon, I might not have acidified the milk enough, it might be too cool in my apartment for yogurt to work as a starter. We'll see next time.

To be continued...