Comfort Food

I've been doing flying trapeze as a way to balance martial arts, salsa, and biking since those seem to fatigue my legs a lot.  Except that some of the harder tricks I've started to learn are taking a toll on my body and after doing a killer trapeze-martial arts-salsa-biking-trapeze triple header, my body felt like it was about to fall apart.  All I wanted to do after my last trapeze class was hunker down with a hot plate of comfort food and start reading Anthony Bourdain's new book Medium Raw. 

My fridge was nearly empty as my CSA pickup day is Wednesday and well, it was a Tuesday night.  I briefly contemplated running out to Whole Paycheck for something easy.  A big bunch of beautiful collard greens rediscovered in my veggie drawer, garlic from last week's CSA basket, along with some red chili peppers from my garden inspired Linguine with Spicy Collard Greens and Bacon.  This dish is a rich hearty dish, something that would be more appropriate for a crisp fall day. For me, it was perfect because the air conditioning is on full blast in my apartment keeping it at a cool 68 degrees while my latest batch of home brew ferments (mmmm, London Porter on the way!). Sometimes, its the simple dishes that are the best. For me, simple dishes that allow me to incorporate all of my CSA or farm stand or Farmer's Market goodies are the best. This dish, aside from the linguine, is 100% local and organic.

I browned in my cast iron skillet 1 thick slice of homemade bacon sliced into lardons (google it... I had no idea what the heck a lardon was until I started making my own bacon), 1 thinly sliced shallot, 4 cloves of garlic minced, and 4 red chili peppers minced.  Then I added a bunch of sliced collard greens with the thick stems removed and wilted them down.  Then I added about 8-10 pieces of dried farm stand tomatos and let them slightly rehydrate.  Season with a tiny bit of salt and liberal amounts of pepper.  Add linguine cooked al dente -- I used about 1/3 box of linguine -- and add a drizzle of olive oil and toss while still on medium heat.

The dish was good, not great, because there were 3 things missing from this dish.  While the dried tomatos provided the perfect amount of sweetness and the peppers provided just the right amount of kick to offset the wonderfully bitter collard greens and the fatty bacon, it needed: (1) a tiny bit of acid, maybe a dash of cider vinegar or white wine; (2) toasted pine nuts or walnuts to add some texture; and (3) a little shaving of parmesan instead of the salt to add some depth.  Of course, I knew all of this when I made the dish.  I was just determined not to have to go to the grocery store... sometimes you have to know when to rest and not let the food control you.  Ha.

Garnishes for Summer BBQs

Growing up, my family had a strange tradition of serving sauerkraut at holiday meals.  I'm not sure exactly where it came from, but my mother has always loved sauerkraut.  Its funny, we never ate it as most people do, piled onto a fat juicy brat.  No, it was served in a bowl by itself as a garnish to turkey, stuffing, cranberries, or to eat on its own.  An excess of cabbage in my CSA has led to a series of sauerkraut experiments, due in part by a hankering for brats and threats from a friend of mine who loves sauerkraut.  My friend's mom makes the best venison brats which she traded me for home brew and grassfed beef and they are so good that I am itching to experiment with making my own.  Methinks that homemade Sauerkraut might be the perfect excuse to buy a meat grinder and some casings as my next food project next week, when my first batch will be ready.  [Admission: I had one failed attempt due to the salt water brine not covering my cabbage all the way which I had to throw out]

The most basic sauerkraut is a simple affair, shredded cabbage, kosher salt, filtered water, and bacteria which is already present in the air and on the cabbage leaves.  The salt draws out the water and kills off the spoilage bacteria.  Most recipes I saw called for 3/4 to 2 tsp of kosher salt per pound of prepared cabbage, which I sort of eyeballed and probably ended up using a little more than 2 tsp.

Toss one head of cabbage, shredded, and salt together in a clean bowl to release the juices.  Let it rest 10-15 minutes and then toss again.  Then stuff the cabbage into a sterilized mason jar (you can do this by either boiling the jar and lid for several minutes in water or cheat like me and use the sanitizer I use for beer making).  Then cover the cabbage with a salt water brine, about 1 tsp kosher salt per cup of water.  Cap loosely with a canning lid.  Then let it sit between 65°F and 72°F for 2-3 weeks.  I keep my apartment at 68°F for beer fermentation so it was a lucky coincidence.

The fermentation process producing bubbling as well as air bubbles, so I repacked the cabbage down to force out the air bubbles every couple of days.  I also skimmed off white spots and film from the top (all of which are harmless and expected).  Once the 2-3 weeks are up, transfer to the fridge and start eating!

The mason jar on the left is the basic recipe.  The mason jar on the right has 1 tsp mustard seeds and 1 tsp caraway seeds added.  It looks and smells like saukerkraut.  Once again, I've managed to make something that requires lots of patience that I don't have!

Why Arms Full of Scratches Makes Me Happy

My arms look like they went through a battle with a thorny bush.  And that's exactly what they did when we went purple raspberry picking.  All 5 pounds of purple raspberries were worth the war wounds.  I have never been a huge jam fan.  Generally, I don't eat a lot of toast for the sake of toast.  I make a pretty damn fine english muffin from scratch, which I prefer toasted and topped with an egg overeasy, a thick slice of tomato from my CSA, some Dragon's Breath cheese from Keswick Creamery which I buy at the Dupont Circle farmers market, and a big squirt of spicy brown mustard. 

After some thought and an assessment of the huge load of berries I had, I decided to make a small batch of Purple Raspberry Freezer Jam, which doesn't require you to cook the berries and uses a special freezer pectin made by the king of canning, Ball.  I love this jam.  I now have an existential crisis every morning trying to decide if I want to slather jam on my english muffin or fry up an egg.  I usually compromise by doing an open face egg sandwich and putting gobs of jam on the other half.  I also discovered that this jam is very tasty mixed into greek yogurt, and I bet its also magical slathered on top of a cheesecake.

I had to order this pectin online because I don't own a car and neither of my two local groceries stock it.  It runs about $2-$3 and one packet is enough for 4 cups of mashed fruit.  I love this recipe because its so easy.  Mash up enough fruit to turn into 4 cups.  Add sugar to your desired sweetness.  I only added about 1/2 cup because the berries were at peak ripeness.  Add the packet of freezer pectin.  Stir for 3 minutes as it thickens.  Spoon into small airtight containers, tupperwares, glass, whatever, let sit for 30 minutes and then pop in the freezer.  These stay good for at least a year. 

The beauty of this jam is that the fruit maintains its wonderful fresh flavor.  Traditional jams are often cooked, and packed into jars need to be processed in boiling water, which changes the flavor of the jam.  Raspberries, any kind, are best used raw and still warm from the sun from the raspberry field.  And that is exactly what this jam captures. 

Finally Perfecting the Elusive Flaky Pie Crust

The beginning of July marks the most oppressive hot and sticky part of the year in the DC metropolitan area.  Most people hole up in their air-conditioned houses or head out to the beach or to Harpers Ferry for tubing.  Me?  I went out during the hottest part of the day to pick berries at Larriland Farms about 40 miles outside DC in Maryland.  I love "pick your own" berry farms, mostly because you can eat as much fruit as you want and pick a ton of berries for a fraction of expensive store prices.  A few tips when you head out:

1. Always check the farm's website or call before you go to see what is available.
2. Ask the staff members when you arrive what is good picking.  For example, we started off to the black raspberry patch only to find very scattered picking.  So after picking about half a pint, we asked which raspberries were the least picked over and we were sent off to the purple raspberry field.
3. We were told by the cashier at the purple raspberry field to pick low and inside the bush for best yields.  And low and behold, so long as you didn't care about getting a few scratches, it was the motherload. 
4. Laugh quietly at the obvious newbies trying to cherry pick and who refused to get down on the ground and really dig in.  Their reward for not wanting to get dirty was  five or six berries rolling around in their pails and obvious looks of disappointment.

Anyway, I ended up picking more than FIVE POUNDS of purple raspberries for FIFTEEN BUCKS!  I have several short rants.  Chain grocery stores will never carry purple raspberries.  I don't think I've ever seen Whole Foods carry purple raspberries.  All you see are blackberries and red raspberries, and while they might be organic, they are rarely local and never have that taste of sunshine you get from a fresh picked berry.  The fact of the matter is that berries are fragile.  They don't travel well.  They don't stand up to heat.  You will never get anything as pretty as a fresh picked berry in the grocery store.  In addition to that, berry picking is a fairly time consuming process.  A tiny half pint container costs $4.  Do the math. 

Okay, this weekend got a little excessive...some produce from farmers stands also happened to accidentally fall into the car.  My favorite farm stand is on Lee Highway out near Warrenton, VA just down the street from the Wegman's... they always have a great variety and the owner is always ready with samples.  He also chills samples of his melons and has a very nice Latino guy on hand to serve you whatever you'd like to try.

So what do you do with all this fruit other than make preserves, can in a simple syrup, freeze or dry them?  I make a nearly perfect Pecan Peach Galette to take to the 4th of July BBQ at Boy's friend's house.  This recipe is adapted from an Alice Waters recipe, and not nearly as pretty.  A galette is basically a fancy way of saying that its a free form pie that doesn't require a pie tin.  I like to think of my lack of fancy crimping on the edges as rustic.

I have always been scared of doing my own pie crusts.  Mostly because I was used to mediocre pie crusts and who wants a mediocre pie crust?  I had never really tasted epically delicious pie crusts before.  My mom made her own crusts, and they were okay, but not epically delicious.  I ended up preferring crushed nut pie crusts, or graham cracker pie crusts to the standard pastry over the years.  But I was determined to at least give it a go, the right way.  And guess what?  When you add lots of butter, keep the pastry at the right temperature, and don't overmix, you get a perfect flaky buttery epically delicious pie crust!

The hardest part about making crust is keeping everything cold and avoid overworking the dough.  Basically, you don't want the butter to melt and you don't want to develop the gluten in the flour.  I mixed about 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1/2 tsp sugar, and 1/8 tsp salt in a tupperware container, shook it up, then stuck it in the freezer.  In a separate tupperware, I stuck 6 TBSP butter cut into 1/2 inch pieces, and then put that into the freezer for about 30 minutes.

Then I plopped it all into a shallow bowl, tossed lightly, and then cut the butter as finely as I could, covering all the tiny butter bits with flour.  I know I could have used a blender for this job, but I was exhausted from having climbed a mountain earlier and I was at Boy's house, and didn't know where the blender was.  He was blissfully sleeping and so I figured I could do it old school with two sharp knives.  It was supposed to resemble coarse cornmeal, but mine was decidedly lumpier for lack of patience.  I stuck the shallow bowl back in the freezer while I made some ice water.  Then I slowly dribbled about 4 TBSP ice cold water into the dough and used a spatula to pull it all together.  I ended up having to use extra water, and then figured out that I had added just a bit too much.
 
So I patted it into a disc, stuck it in the fridge, and made sure that I over floured my surface to account for the extra water.  After about 30 minutes, I took the dough out, threw some extra flour on top, and then rolled it out to about 1/8" thick.  I then rolled the dough up on my rolling pin, and laid it out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and stuck it back in the fridge for 30 minutes. 
 
Onto preparing your oven... rack placement was a bit of an issue for me.  I was told putting the galette in the bottom third of the oven would yield the best result, but I ended up kinda freaking out because the bottom seemed to be cooking too fast, so I ended up having to move my galette to the top rack and then finish it off with the broiler.  When I do this again, I might do the same thing, have one low and one high rack and then switch the galette in the middle.  Because the bottom should cook well and quickly in the beginning to avoid the icky squishy pie crust bottom.  Long story short, have a low rack and a high rack and then preheat your oven to 400.
 
Pie assembly is the easiest part.  The secret to non-soggy crust is to have some sort of delicious absorptive matter between the crust and the fruit to act as a buffer while the crust cooks.  This time, I used about 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans mixed with 1 TBSP sugar, and 2 TBSP flour with about 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg.  Then I layered sliced peaches from the farm stand, topped with another sprinkling of sugar and some chopped nuts, and then carefully pulled the crust sides up over the fruit.  You just need to get enough of the crust over the fruit so it will keep it shape.  Now, a pretty Alice Waters galette would probably be beautifully crimped with uneven edges pinched off.  I am not Alice Waters.  I like rustic homestyle baking and think that crimping off uneven edges wastes perfectly good crust.  To finish it off before baking, brush some melted butter and sprinkle additional sugar on the crust.
 

 

Bake for about 45 - 50 minutes.  Keep an eye on it.  My peach juice kinda exploded all over and drooled down, so I ended up mopping it up so it wouldn't burn on the pan.  Remove immediately from pan onto a rack to cool.  This was so pretty and Boy and I were so tired, that we contemplated skipping the 4th of July BBQ and just eating the galette at his place with a couple of beers.  We exercised an extraordinary amount of restraint, but then demolished half the thing at the BBQ. 

Date Night With Myself

After biking 185 miles along the C&O canal towpath with camping gear strapped to my bike, a couple good friends, and a slightly bunk knee, I decided I needed a date night with me, my kitchen, and a good movie.  I was still starving from the aftermath of burning 2000 - 3000 calories a day on top of whatever my body burns naturally, but since I had been gone for almost 4 days, my fridge was pretty empty with the exception of the half dozen or so different pickles in various stages of fermentation.  I had already frozen/dehydrated/pickled most of my CSA items.  Hrm.  What I did have were some freshly dug baby red potatoes, a red onion from my CSA, some eggs, and some leftover milk that had not gone bad yet.  Although this screamed breakfast, it did not bode well for my date night with myself.  That is, until I remembered a potato tart that I had drooled over from Smitten Kitchen's blog.  I guess I can't call whatever it is I made a tart because I didn't use a tart crust... so I'll call it my Blue-Brie Potato Custard.

And so I headed off to Whole Foods to grab some blue cheese and a bottle of a light bodied pinot noir with a cherry finish.  The most important thing is to open the bottle of pinot noir and pour a glass.  Then take a couple sips before beginning this dish.

This dish is easy comfort food...  potatoes au gratin dialed up a couple notches into "fancy" food.  In fact, its easy enough that you can drink a glass of wine or two while you make it and it will still be delicious and nearly idiot proof.

I took about 4 baby red potatoes, cut them in half and then sliced about 1/8" thin.  These were laid out in an overlapping circular pattern and fanned out in a jumbo muffin tin sprayed with olive oil.  Then whisk together about 3/4 cup milk or cream with 1 or 2 egg yolks.  I used 2 yolks for additional richness as the milk I had was only 2%.  Add a pinch of salt, cracked pepper, a pinch of thyme and basil, and pour over the potatoes until they are almost covered.  Then top with little chunks of blue-brie (basically a very soft blue cheese), walnuts, and slivered red onion.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes until the potatoes are done.  Let cool before serving. 

Oh Bacon, How I Love Thee!

One of the joys of the Farmers Market is that I get to actually talk to the farmers.  Many of them find me amusing because I get so excited about food... about their food.  The guy from Cedarbrook Organic Farm near Harper's Ferry, West Virginia who has a stand at the Dupont Farmers Market is one of my favorite.  Although he has a diversified organic farm, he specializes in raising organic free range pigs which he sells at the Farmers Market.  He also gets just about as excited about his meat as I do.  He always asks me what my plans are for each cut of meat I buy.  So when I told him I've always wanted to make my own bacon, he not-so-casually mentioned that he also sold pork belly.  While I managed to resist the temptation that week, I knew I was simply postponing the inevitable... it took me just one more week to break down and buy a 3.5 slab of pork belly.  This is not a big surprise because anyone who has spent any sort of time with me knows that I love bacon. 

And so, I made my venture into Hickory Smoked Maple Bacon, and it was a delicious success despite a few missteps along the way.  The limp thin slices which line store bought packages pale in the shadow of this thick cut slab bacon.  To be perfectly honest, this even beats the fancy bacon Whole Foods stocks at their meat counter.  The hardest part, smoking the bacon, is time consuming but well worth the effort when doing a large batch.  I have enough bacon to last me and Boy at least four to six months for minutes a day during the curing process and one three hour stint to smoke the thing. 

There are basically two main steps in making bacon:  (1) cure the pork belly in some combination of salt and flavorings and (2) smoke the pork belly. 

Curing is remarkably easy.  I used about 1/4 cup of kosher salt, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and 1/4 cup of maple syrup for my cure.   I rubbed this all over a 3 pound piece of pork belly (skin on) and then stashed the pork belly in a big tupperware container.   I actually had cut off about 1/2 pound of the little end of the belly to cure with just salt to make lardons.   I didn't know it was called lardons until this bacon making journey, but these are little strips of bacon browned to add flavor to other savory dishes.  I figured the maple would not necessarily taste great say, in a pasta dish.  Over the next 5 to 7 days, the meat cures in the fridge.  I flipped the meat over about once a day or once every other day, dumping out the fluid which the salt has drawn out and sprinkling a pinch of salt if a lot of fluid had been removed.  Each day, the meat gets firmer and firmer as the salt draws out the moisture.

Once the belly is cured, rinse the belly really well under cold water.  In order to avoid super salty bacon, I actually soaked mine in cold water for about 20 minutes and then patted dry.   The big question was how to smoke this thing in my urban apartment, which is actually a basement apartment in a 3 unit townhouse.  I'm lucky enough at least have a yard and a stoop to work with.  Now, you can bake this for 3 hours at 200 degrees in an oven to finish off the pork (or until the internal temperature is 150 degrees), but you won't get the lovely flavor that smoking imparts.  And while I had dreams of rigging up Alton Brown's homemade smoker, it proved to be cheaper and easier to buy a cheap $30 grill.  My initial rigging was to pile the charcoal on one side and put dry hickory chips in tin foil and puncture holes in the top to let the smoke come through.  The bacon should be laid skin side down on the side where there is no coals so it gets indirect heat from the smoke.  Unfortunately, the tin foil method did not work so well.  Mostly because my charcoal wasn't lit properly and didn't produce enough heat to make the wood smoke.

And so I ended up just dumping a mixture of hickory chips I had soaked in water and dry hickory chips directly on the charcoal and my bacon was enveloped in a beautiful cloud of smoke.  I covered the grill keeping the bottom vents open, and the top vents half open and turned to the opposite side of the grill the coals were so the smoke would draw up over the belly.  The tiny little snafoo was that since I had woken up at 5 am to smoke this away from the heat of the day, I was tired and my coals hadn't burned off all the lighter fluid yet, so I had a few minutes of lighter fluid smoke mixed in with the hickory smoke. Oops.  I stuck a thermometer inside the lid through the top vent to ensure it stayed at a happy 180 - 200 degrees.  The hardest part of this step is that you need to monitor your chips, coal, and temperature for about 3 hours.  Next time, I'll do it with a friend and a couple beers.

Once the bacon is done, stick it in the fridge so it can cool down and its easier to slice.  Next time I might actually stick it in the freezer for about 30 minutes after it is cool because I still had some difficulties cutting the bacon.  Cut the skin off as close to the skin as possible to keep all the luscious fat on the slab. Not that it was really bad, I ended up with some really thick bacon, but it would have been nice to keep the slices just a tiny bit thinner.  All said and done, the lighter fluid taste is barely noticeable given the magicness of the bacon itself.  Next time I'll take better care to make sure I wait for my coal to be perfectly ready. 

I presliced my entire slab and sealed each thick piece separately in some press n' seal, and then rolled the whole bit up for easy storage.  That way I can just cut one piece out at a time as I use it without having to expose the other pieces.

Farm Stand Addiction

I cannot pass up farm stands.  This is a plain fact that Boy has readily accepted and in fact, has become similarly obsessed.  Some of the first tomatoes of summer are here already from seedlings nutured in greenhouses to allow for earlier production, and finished outside in the warm sun of early summer.  We stopped by a small but friendly farm stand on the way back from skydiving this past weekend and were greeted with a latino guy enthusiastically stuffing samples into our hands, from cantaloupe to tomatoes to cherries.  The tomatoes were perfectly ripe with that deep rich red color all the way through the tomato and were so juicy and delicious, you could eat them like an apple.  Tomatoes like these are impossible to find at the grocery store, where the pale pink mush they pretend to call tomatoes prevail.  Even the redder so-called vine ripened tomatoes will never rival the farm stand tomato.  So of course, I ended up buying 6.5 pounds of tomatoes (along with 2 quarts of beans and 3 pints of cherries).   

I know Sun-Dried Tomatoes are "so 1990s", but I love them, I don't care what anyone else says.  I have dreams of pastas tossed with sun-dried tomatoes, crispy homemade bacon, and spring greens / spring peas / spring anything.  I cut these into 1/4" slices, and then in half down the middle since the tomatoes were huuuuuge.  It took about 18 hours to dry because these guys were so damn juicy. 

I took some of the tomatoes and packed them with sliced garlic into a small mason jar with oregano, basil, and olive oil.  The rest I left as-is, for snacking and other yet-to-be-determined plans. 

Pickle and Preserve Invasion... Discovery Ways To Bake Away Veggies

After peering into my refrigerator and seeing piles of spicy garlic asparagus pickles, pickled broccoli and garlic scapes, key lime preserves, ginger radish pickles, mango rum jam, garlic snow pea pickles, and sweet watermelon rind pickles... I knew something had to give.  I don't like to do large batches of pickles, mostly because I love to experiment with flavors.  The amounts of random veggies I get in my CSA also lend themselves to single batches and help me work through a full CSA share.

Although I had initially thought of processing large batches, but I decided against doing that until I have a tried and true recipe.  For example, next year when asparagus is in season, I am going to hunt down a farmer's stand on the Eastern Shore and buy 20 pounds of asparagus (its $2 a pound at the stand, half the price of the Farmers Market and Whole Foods even when it is in season) and do a huge batch of pickled asparagus.  Because I learned this year that pickled asparagus is simply amazing.  And I only have 2 jars left.  Sniffle.  And I'm a cheapskate so I refuse to pay full price at the grocery store. 

Anyway, all my small batches of refrigerator pickles are starting to pile up, and even though I love pickles nearly to a fault, and even though I have a big refrigerator, this is getting ridiculous (oh, and I have grand plans of pickling beets this week, too, so well, *sigh*).

My freezer, on the other hand, is pretty empty.  I don't buy frozen meals, or meat in bulk (although I loved my grass-fed beef share, it was too big and too much and I don't eat it enough... I ended up gifting a lot of it away), or frozen veggies or frozen fruit (that happens in the winter occassionally, although this year I plan to freeze my own).  What goes in the freezer are my homemade items such as chicken stock, leftovers, sofrito, the occassional Farmers Market meat purchase that is waiting for just the right moment (and which came to me frozen... like my massive pork ribs). 

My CSA share is growing week-by-week, and while the first couple of weeks were manageable, even without much help from Boy, the veggie takeover in my fridge is going a little nuts as my garden starts contributing to the veggie jungle.  I woefully looked at big heads of broccoli, 2 big zucchinis, and 2 big yellow zucchinis, along with the massive amount of greens and other veggies.  My first thought was to pickle them, but well, yea.  My second thought was zucchini bread.  Except I am trying to stay away from making too many sweet baked goods (aka the "Extra Pound Lesson Learned From Rhubarb Weeks"). 

After some research, I settled on a redesigned version of Savory Zucchini Muffins that to rid myself of two of my zucchinis.  They aren't pretty, but are a delicious change from the typical zucchini-pretending-to-be-pumpkin-bread type of recipe.  These have a nice kick and the savory flavors blend together perfectly.  The muffin itself is moist and satisfying. 

Saute 3 cloves minced garlic and 1/4 cup chopped oil packed sun-dried tomatoes in about 1 TBSP of the olive oil the sun-dried tomatoes were packed in.  Then dump that into a bowl with with 2 medium zucchinis shredded (I just used a cheese grater, but if you have a food processor, that will go much faster), and 1/3 cup chopped roasted red pepper.  Then I incorporated 1/2 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup greek yogurt, 2 TBSP sugar, 2 eggs, 1 TBSP olive oil, 1/2 tsp hot sauce (I used some Killin' Me Man Sauce I brought back from Panama) and 1/2 cup milk together, and then dumped into the veggie mix and mixed again.  In a separate bowl, I mixed together 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup cornmeal, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper, 1 tsp dried basil, and 1 tsp dried oregano.  Integrate the wet stuff with the dry stuff, slop into a greased muffin tin, sprinkle some grated parmesan on top of each muffin and bake at 375 for 35 minutes. 

Food for Everyday

I found myself with a random night to myself when plans with Boy fell through at the last minute and I had already started too many projects which made it seem worth it to stay in.  Sometimes its not about making fancy food, but rather to stock up on the basics.  Its important to keep the quick stuff around for when you don't have time to cook but want something good and homemade.  In particular, I need to have easy breakfast food on hand because sometimes, fruit just doesn't cut it.

I made a rare visit to the grocery store to stock up on fruit (its too early in my CSA for me to get enough fruit to last me a week since I eat a ton of fruit) and goods for a few projects.  Mangos were on sale.  Not just any mangos, but Ataulfo (aka Champagne) mangos which have a lovely creamy texture.  I fell in love with these mangos when I lived in Mexico.  And just like those mangos, these ones were also from Mexico and not organic, but cases of mangos were on sale for $10.  That meant about 20 mangos for $10... the frugal side of me won in the contest of "local and organic" versus "but its 50 cents a mango!" 

I decided to dry a large chunk of the mangos, turn some of them into creamy mango swirl popsicles, and the rest were turned into a tangy Mango Rum Preserves.  Since I don't like to mass produce jams and pickles until a recipe is tried and true, I did a test batch.  Since mango is so thick to begin with, it doesn't really need the fruit pectin for it to set properly.  I basically cooked the following ingredients together on low for about 20-30 minutes until it formed a nice thick consistency and it was almost starting to brown on the pan.

• 1 1/2 cups diced mango
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 TBSP rum
• 1/4 cup sugar
• Juice of half a lemon

Next time I'll make sure my mango is completely ripe.  I got impatient and used some slightly underripe mangos.  This is still a lovely tangy and chunky jam not too sweet and is wonderful spread on homemade english muffins (which I keep on hand at all times).

Another staple of mine is Granola.  The beauty of granola is that it can be sprinkled on top of just about anything, fruit, yogurt, ice cream... or eaten plain.  I melted 2 TBSP real maple syrup, 2 TBSP raw honey, 1/4 cup canola oil, 1 tsp cinnamon, a dash of vanilla extract, and 1/4 tsp salt together.  Then I poured this over a mixture of 3/4 cups of raw walnuts, 1/2 cup wheat bran, and 4 cups rolled oats.  Bake at 325 for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice until crunchy.  Then once its cool, add whatever dried fruit you have on hand.  I had some dried plums from my Lawyers Have a Heart 10K race packet, so I just threw those in.

Since I am in the process of curing my own bacon, I decided I needed to use the last of my fancy bacon in the freezer.  This decision coupled with the guilt of not having any breakfast items on hand for Boy the last time he was here spawned the rebirth of my mini-quiches.  That is, a crustless quiche made in muffin tins for perfect breakfast portioning, which can be easily frozen and reheated.  This time, I did a Bacon Radish Green Quiche, a marriage of leftover fancy bacon and some of the greens in my last CSA basket I am trying to work my way through.  This recipe is so flexible it doesn't really warrant a recipe per se.  Its basically eggs whisked vigorously with some dry nonfat milk, mild cheddar, radish greens, cooked bacon, salt and pepper with shaved parmesan on top... then baked at 350 until the quiches rise and the cheese gets crunchy on top.  I usually wrap these in plastic wrap and then store them in a freezer bag to avoid freezer burn.  They reheat really fast in the toaster oven in the morning, which I usually do on a small piece of tin foil at the same time as I toast my english muffin. 

The Joys Of Things Which Ferment

For someone who can be very impatient, I have managed to pick up a number of cooking hobbies which require a lot of patience.  I've graduated from breads that only require one single hour rise to breads which take two or more days to craft from start to finish.  I've thrown myself into beer brewing, which takes a good four hours on the front end, a couple hours in the middle, and at least a month before the product comes to fruition.  It takes an extra month for the flavors to fully develop.  I've become pickled obsessed, which although can be sometimes enjoyed in as few as 24 hours, usually requires at least two weeks for the flavors to develop properly.  And so of course, I decided that I must start making my own cheese, which can take up to four whole months to do properly.  My first experiment?  Monterey Jack.

After doing a significant amount of research online and reading through the better part of Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll which my trusty Boy purchased, I ended up ordering a beginners kit that comes with the appropriate cultures and rennet from her company, the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.  It comes with recipes for about 8 or 9 different kinds of cheese, but the ingredients are flexible enough to make only your favorites (for example, I won't make the parmesan).  It also shows you how to do hard cheeses without the fancy presses that cost a ton of money.  Although there are ways to make hard cheeses using ingredients you can find at the grocery store (namely junket rennet and buttermilk or yogurt), I decided to do this the proper way since from what I've read, results can be mixed given unknowns about the cultures in the buttermilk or yogurt.  Plus, apparantly junket rennet is fairly weak and so isn't recommended for hard cheeses.

My first impressions of the beginners kit was that it was a little bit incomplete.  It didn't come with a top part of the cheese mold and suggests you use an appropriate sized plate.  I have square plates so they obviously don't fit into the round cheese mold.  I ended up cutting out something about the right size out of cardboard and putting it in a ziploc.  It also didn't come with the cheese wax, but warns you of that on the website so no huge ding there.  The instructions are quite truncated as compared to the book, for obvious reasons, but I'm glad I did some background reading so as to be able to easily fill in any gaps or questions.  All in all, the little guide did give a weath of information, from the kind of milk to use to how to wax your cheese.  Each component tells you where you need to store it (cultures in freezer, for example). 

One thing all resources told me was to get raw milk or the closest thing to raw milk as possible (that means, no ultrapasturized milk products, and if pasturized, you might have to add calcium choloride to get the cheese to firm up properly).  Well, it just so happens that raw milk is readily available at my Farmer's Market.  Okay, but what happens if I can't make it to the Farmer's Market?  Whole Foods to the rescue!  They stock a local Virginia dairy's whole organic creamline milk... it comes in the old school milk bottles for about $3, but there is a $2 bottle deposit.  This is actually cheaper than buying regular organic milk when you return the bottle.  But the bottles are also cool in and of themselves and I kinda wanna keep 'em.

Basically, making cheese requires a ton of patience and constant monitoring of temperature and stirring of curds.  It would probably take me 2 hours just to type out what I had to do.  Just know that this is easily a 5 to 6 hour project, requires vigilence, patience, and a good thermometer.  One day, maybe, if I ever need to waste a couple hours, I might actually blog out what exactly the process was.  Or you could just go buy the book and save me the time.  Hehe. 

Photo montage of the cheese making process:

Update July 21, 2010: Boy and I cut open the cheese.  It looks and tastes like a young monterey jack cheese and melts beautifully!