Cheese of the Week No. 10

I've nearly exhausted my favorite cheese selections from the store I work in, so the cheese of the week posts have been necessarily sparse. I did find a good contender in my new neighborhood of Williamsburg (Brooklyn) last week. Bingham Hill Cheese Company in Colorado makes a great selection of artisinal cheeses with fantastic raw milk. I tried one and I have to tell you, it smells downright aweful, but like so many aweful smelling cheeses, it's a wonder to behold in the mouth.

Harvest Moon: Raw cow's milk, USA. This is a stinky washed rind cheese of creamy, but not spreadable, consistency, able to compete with some of the beefiest competetition from France. It beats any of the pasteurized versions of Pont L'Eveque or Livarot you'll find on these shores, and it is one of the tastiest American cheeses I've ever tried. Sweet, salty, musty, earthy, grassy, beefy. It's a knockout.

Breakfast Risotto

What do you do with the leftover rice from Chinese takeout? The next day, it tends to be dried out and pretty bland, and microwaving it only makes it worse. The rice and beans experiment last week left me with a large portion of leftover cooked rice. Not one to waste food, and thrilled that I didn't have to wait 30 minutes to make rice from scratch, I looked around the cupboard for ideas and turned it into:

Breakfast Risotto

1 1/2 c cooked rice (preferably sticky)
about 3/4 c coconut milk
sugar, cinnamon and cayenne to taste

Heat the rice in a saucepan over medium heat with 1/4 cup of the coconut milk. Warm it through and stir until the milk has been absorbed. Add another 1/4 c of milk and stir this into the rice as well. Add the spices, sugar, and final bit of milk and stir until it takes on a nice creamy consistency and is flavored to your liking.

I know, it's not really a risotto, but the leftover sticky rice has enough starch to make a creamy rice pudding in about 5 minutes.

I have a habit lately of putting cinnamon and cayenne pepper into everything I cook. This spicy tropical combo has found its way into quinoa, couscous, curries and most recently (this morning), oatmeal. Try it sometime, and don't forget the sugar: It will give your breakfast a kick in the pants!

Ginger Ale

When's the last time you tasted real ginger in your ginger ale? It's a little easier to do these days with a number of brands bottling the real deal. But the mass market ginger ale is nothing more than corn syrup and artificial flavorings. A little bird told me that a good fake can be made in restaurants by adding a splash of Coke to 7-UP or Sprite. Not in my kitchen!

The ginger ale I made last year involved boiling sliced ginger in a simple syrup for hours to reduce the syrup and concentrate the flavors. Sparkling water was then added to the syrup. It was time intensive and, in the end, too sweet. The bonus was the ginger candy that I made with the ginger slices. Dredged in sugar and baked in a warm oven to dry them out, they came out chewy, spicy and sweet.

Here's a five minute ticket to homemade ginger ale that I whipped up last night.

Quick Ginger Ale

4 inch piece of fresh ginger
2/3 c water
1/2 c sugar
1 liter chilled sparkling water with lime essence (like Poland Spring)

Peel the ginger with a spoon and grate the whole thing on the fine side of a box grater into a saucepan. Use the 2/3 c water to rinse the grater and add this to the pan as well. Add the sugar and heat over a medium flame with stirring just until the sugar dissolves. Pour the mixture over a glass measuring cup through a sieve and squeeze the juices out with a spoon. Discard the remaining pulp or eat it as a sweet and spicy, if high-fiber, snack.

Add 1/4 c of the syrup to a pint glass, top off with sparkling water, and enjoy. Makes about 4.

(In retrospect, I would have added some fresh lime juice to make it a little more sour.)

Why is ginger peeled with a spoon? If you were to go at a piece of ginger with a vegetable peeler, you would find yourself taking off a good bit of ginger pulp along with the skin. The problem is the fibrous structure, and once you dig in, you're committed to following the stringy flesh all the way to the end. A spoon also lets you get into all the nooks and crannies of the ginger.

Ginger Kick

About a year ago I was coming off of a monthlong obsession with ginger. It all started with the Indian cooking classes and continued with ginger ale, fermented ginger beer, ginger candy, and ginger in just about everything I cooked. Well, I feel it coming on again, and I owe it to this adaptation of a recipe from Indian Home Cooking. (I reduced the sugar in the original recipe from 2 cups to 1/2 c. Start there and work your way up if you like it sweeter.)

Ginger Lemonade

1 c freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice, or key lime juice
2 inch piece of ginger
4 c cold water
1/2 c sugar, or more to taste

It takes three lemons and two limes to get about a cup of juice. A bottle of key lime juice works well, too. Peel the ginger with a spoon and chop it in a blender or food processor with a splash of water to make a fine puree. (You can also grate it by hand, saving all of the juice.) Squeeze the ginger mash through a sieve into a two quart pitcher. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir well and taste for sugar. A little more ginger never hurt anybody, either.

Look for more ginger features in coming weeks.

Staples

Throughout the Latin American world, two foods make up a majority of meals: rice and beans. I've eaten them together dozens of times in restaurants, in burritos, even in some soups, but I never, not once, ever made a dish of rice and beans from scratch. It would have been too easy to use boil in bag instant rice and a can of beans, so I went for dried beans and regular white rice in a bag.

I learned two important lessons last night. One, the rice should not be cooked in the sticky Asian style. Two, the beans should be cooked with the seasonings, not boiled separately. I know this because I ended up with insipid beans on a lovely bed of starchy, sticky Goya rice. The next time I cook rice and beans, it will go a little something like this:

Rice and Beans

1 1/2 c black or pinto beans, soaked in cold water for about 6 hours and drained
1 1/2 c white rice
a large cauldron of boiling salted water with 1 T olive oil
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion, coursely diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

Add the rice to the boiling water and cook until tender, about ten minutes. Drain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook to soften a little. Add the pepper and toss around until it softens as well. Toss in the garlic and cook another minute until the garlic is nice and fragrant. Add the drained beans and enough water to cover about halfway. Simmer and stir occasionally until the beans are tender, about 20 minutes, and check the seasoning. Spoon the beans over the rice in a bowl. Serves 4.

The Strawberry Challenge

Has it really been a month since my last post? Unbelievable. I should be put in blog jail, but let's see if I can make it up to you.

The challenge this week comes from Melissa, the future Mrs. Dangermike. Strawberries are the name of the game, and this is how we played it.

Fresh Tropical Fruit Salad with (what else) Quinoa

2 c quinoa
3 3/4 c water
3 small chicken bouillon cubes
1/4 c white wine vinegar
2 T sugar
a few dashes of cinnamon
a dash of cayenne
a dash of turmeric

Toast the quinoa in a big pot over medium high heat for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed and the quinoa is transluscent. Give it a stir and set it in the refrigerator to chill completely.

Chop and add any variety of fruit that you want, but try to get a nice sweet-sour mixture going. I used the following, all coursely diced:

6 large ripe strawberries
1 ripe plantain
1 ripe avocado
10 kumquats (thinly sliced, seeds removed)
1 nopalito (prickly pear cactus), trimmed of spines and blanched 3 minutes
1/2 c sundried tomatoes
1/2 c chopped cilantro

Toss it all together and enjoy. Serves 4.

Dessert combined two challenges into one: rose water and strawberries. I kept it really simple and made a...











Strawberry Rose Gelatin Mold

7 sheets gelatin (or enough powdered for 2 c water)
1 c boiling water
1/2 c sugar
1 c cold water
1/3 c rose water
10 strawberries, thinly sliced

Dissolve the gelatin in the boiling water in a bowl. Add the sugar and stir until it dissolves. Add the cold water and rose water. Butter up a suitably sized mold, add the strawberries, and pour in the gelatin mixture. Chill until set, unmold, and behold the splendour.










photos courtesy DangerMike