Archive for the 'cheese' Category
This is me and my pal Pierre A. Lamielle (wouldn’t it be cool to have the initials P.A.L.? I thought so too). He wrote a cookbook, then flew to Paris and got a big fancy award for it. Which he totally should have – Kitchen Scraps is bloody brilliant. It’s like no other cookbook you’ve ever seen – totally readable in bed, good for a laugh, each page a literal work of art. Stories, jokes, morals, humour. Whorehouses, the three bears, cupids, Roman soldiers with six-packs – it’s got it all.
So to celebrate I got a copy to give away for that happy event of days gone by we used to call Free Stuff Fridays. I figured it would only be fitting to make something from his book for dinner tonight, but Mike had a show, W has a birthday party (he got his first real invite from a kid at school – not a relative or friend of ours – sniff) and I went to get a sneak peek at the new CHAR CUT (it opens on Monday!) and then to judge the Lawson Lundell Celebrity Hors d’ Oeuvres Competition (a fundraiser for ATP) – which is my long way of saying there was no need to cook dinner tonight. And tomorrow night we have a fabulously cheesy dinner party to attend (don’t worry – you’ll get a full report) – so I had resigned to making a batch of brownies (not much of a let down, that) when I noticed instructions on how to make ricotta down at the bottom of a page containing a risotto recipe.
I’ve made mozzarella from scratch before, and pseudo-mascarpone, but ricotta has been on my to-make list for eons. I love how Pierre’s recipe fits in a little box – this is why we get on so well – he doesn’t use too many words. (And the words he does use are well-thought and hilarious.) Making ricotta is not at all complicated, nor does it require rennet tablets or other odd ingredients called for in other cheese-making processes, and I did it while unloading groceries. Dumped a 4L jug of whole milk into a pot and cranked it up as I unpacked, and when it came to a simmer pulled it off the heat, stirred in 1/4 cup of vinegar (you could use lemon juice, even – but Pierre says plain vinegar is the most neutral) and lidded it for an hour. Longer, in fact, because I completely forgot about it, and when I got out of the shower with 10 minutes before I had to leave and remembered the ricotta I ran down to the kitchen in my robe and scooped the curds out of the pot into a sieve to strain, not even bothering with cheesecloth. And it worked: I had freshly-made ricotta.
(They whey, by the way, is very nutritious – don’t dump it out, but keep it to use in pancakes, muffins, waffles etc. – I funneled it back into the milk jug and still had about 2 1/2L.)
So to recap:
Homemade Ricotta
Bring 4L whole milk to a simmer (190°F) in a large pot. Remove from heat, add 1/4 cup white vinegar, stirring only once. Put the lid on and leave it for an hour. Gently scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon into a sieve (Pierre suggested a cheescloth-lined colander, which would work too, but if you don’t have cheesecloth no biggie) – if you like, let it sit in the sieve overnight in the fridge to drain – you can leave it until it’s as dry as you like. Keep the whey in the fridge and use it for baking, soup, etc. Makes about 1 lb. fresh ricotta.
And now, as it’s well past midnight and I’m far too busy digesting far too many different types of animal (11 restaurants x 2 or 3 hors d’oeuvres each, and some I might have had seconds and thirds of) I can’t tell you about them all. But I do want to mention the ones that really stood out – the winners we chose, and the things I ate most of – chef Darby Kells from the Concorde Restolounge in Aspen Woods made killer braised lamb shank tarts with brandy soaked cherries and wild game reduction – the reduction takes him 3 days to cook down into an essence of meat with the consistency of maple syrup – and the lamb shank is braised at 250 degrees for a full 8 hours. Marvy. The Main Dish did cherry pink bacon with aged cheddar on grilled panini topped with cherry braised pork belly (AND HOW DID I MISS OUT ON SECONDS OF THAT?) chased by sour cherry ice cream floats. Dandy. Open Range made Mexican tamales with braised beef and cheddar, wrapped in banana leaves – open faced duck ravioli and espresso ice cream on flat, chewy chocolate chip cookies. But the most memorable thing I ate tonight was the pink lemonade cocktail (served in a shot glass) topped with a strawberry-mascarpone Swiss roll covered in Pop Rocks – yes, Pop Rocks! – created by Kristin, Mariah and Jenna of Trader’s Grill in the Marriott. It may sound hideous, but it totally worked – the sweetness of the cake followed by an intensely sour shot of lemonade, and the Pop Rocks – it was like the scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego takes a bite and is instantly sucked through a wormhole to his childhood. They popped pleasantly in our mouths – not noisily, as they do straight – up – adding a sort of effervescence to the experience. It was fab. And so rare to come across something edible that was totally original!
So – it being the bleak midwinter and all (in Calgary, anyway), and my freezer once again overfloweth, I thought I’d start a new game next week – another rousing rendition of Name That Frozen Baggie. I really do need to reduce the contents of my freezer, and so thought we could have some fun with it – so next week I’m going to pull stuff out in the morning and post it on Twitter, and see if anyone can guess what’s for dinner that night…
And so for Free Stuff Fridays – for a copy of Pierre’s fabulous new cookbook, Kitchen Scraps, what’s in your freezer?
February 20 2010 | cheese | 108 Comments »
One of the many benefits of making your own crusty loaves of bread on a regular basis is a plethora of bread ends to turn into the very best croutons ever. Honestly, I have been spoiled forever and will never buy a box of them again. Not that I ever really did before.
So I made some. And remember those spiced nuts I put away for a salad later? Well this is it. I had so been looking forward to a big salad since that no-shop drought… Mike went and bought a box of organic salad greens. I finely cubed a butternut squash and roasted it, and had some soft goat cheese. The whole thing was orchestrated like a perfect salad symphony.
And when the time came to assemble it, I pulled the box out of the back of the fridge. W had been playing with the temperature control, cranked it up as high as it would go, and the greens were frozen. Solid.
So I ran over to the market, but they only had Romaine. Which was a bit of a letdown. But I made up for it by – drumroll, please – instead of sprinkling the spiced nuts overtop, finely chopping them and then rolling walnut-sized balls of soft goat cheese in them to coat, making little goat cheese truffles that were crunchy-spicy on the outside with a soft interior; they would have been great for a party plate, but worked perfectly atop a salad as you can cut through them with your fork like soft butter.
Really, you could do this with any kind of soft cheese and finely chopped toasted nuts, and any variety of spiced or candied nuts, given a pulse (do it gently to avoid making nut butter, although that would be pretty damn tasty too) in the food processor.
Good news! I have been scouting out some stuff for FSF, and have been promised some fun and yummy things. Which I will wait to have delivered into my own hands before I give away.
Meanwhile, I’ve been pondering whether my idea for this week’s Free Stuff Friday is completely silly or not. (I imagine opinions will be split on the matter.) But I keep coming back to not – because of the whole idea of our food having a history and a story to tell. So this week I’m going to instigate our first (and perhaps only, depending on how it goes) Free-for-All Friday and give away 40 year old sourdough starter that originated in the kitchens of the Banff Springs Hotel, to anyone who would like some, complete with instructions on how to keep it going once it takes up residence in your own fridge. And of course you can then pass it on.
Depending on how this goes I’ll either spend a morning delivering jars all over town, or we could coordinate a coffee somewhere, or something. (We’d be like the groups of moms with babies, only all with jars of smelly starter.) But if you love the idea of a sourdough starter and want to get your own going from this monster, here’s your chance. Put your name in, and next week I’ll compile them and figure out the logistics.
And as a consolation prize for those of you who are not in town (or don’t want starter), I’ll draw for a copy of One Smart Cookie. (I take all your comments and then use a random number generator to pick a number – or sometimes I yell downstairs to Mike and say “pick a number between 1 and 58!”)
This week I’d love to know about those dishes that have a story to tell. Perhaps a history in your family, or with friends; those that have been handed down from past generations, or anything you do for a particular holiday or season. Or… whatever you ate for dinner last night.
March 28 2009 | appetizers and cheese and salads | 52 Comments »
We went to a small party tonight to say goodbye to R, who is moving to the west coast. It was warm enough for a barbecue – Italian sausages in hoagie buns, nachos with guacamole, and a baked spinach and artichoke dip I brought along. (Unbaked for transport, then popped in the oven for 20 minutes when it came time to eat it.) Tortilla chips would have gone well – typically it’s served with tortillas in restaurants – but by the time the dip was baked we had eaten all but the broken ones with the guacamole. (And by “we” I mean “me”.)
Most spinach & artichoke dips have loads of mayo, sour cream and Parmesan cheese; I trimmed this down quite a bit, so it still works without weighing you down too much.
Baked Spinach & Artichoke Dip
If you don’t like your dip chunky, put everything in the food processor and pulse it until it’s as smooth as you like.
1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and finely chopped
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/2 cup light sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 an 8 oz. pkg. light cream cheese (not fat free)
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 clove of garlic, finely crushed
salt & pepper
1/2 cup grated part-skim mozzarella and/or an extra 2-4 Tbsp. grated Parmesan
Preheat oven to 375F.
If you like, pulse the artichoke hearts and spinach with the sour cream or yogurt in a food processor until roughly chopped. In a bowl, mash together the cream cheese, mayo, Parmesan cheese, garlic and salt and pepper until well blended. Stir in the artichoke-spinach mixture and spread in a shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with grated mozzarella or more Parmesan cheese. (The photo above is just Parmesan.)
Bake until heated through and bubbly, about 25 minutes. Serve warm with tortilla chips or sliced soft, crusty baguette.
(The leftovers would have made a tasty omelette filling, had there been any.)
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September 13 2008 | appetizers and cheese and vegetarian | 6 Comments »
Today I wanted baked pasta. Lazy lasagna or something of that genre; tomato sauce, crispy cheese, maybe some spinach or sausage, stocky pasta you can pick up with a fork, like ziti, which is hard to find (unless you’re at the Italian market) so I usually substitute penne.
I had a container of spreadable black pepper goat cheese with a looming expiry date, and thought that instead of dropping spoonfuls of ricotta on my baked/faked lasagna, I’d drop bits of that. I went to get out the penne and remembered my vow to not buy any more pasta until I used up the collection of unusual shapes I always feel inclined to buy and then don’t know what the (H E double hockey sticks) to do with.
I was penneless. And truthfully, sick of the whole wheat rotini that has become W’s Puppy Chow. So I pulled out a bag of pennoni giganti (giant penne) and decided to just use it. They resembled mini cannelloni, so I imagined myself piping a lovely goat cheese mixture into each one (using a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off) and baking them topped with tomato sauce and cheese.
After boiling them, they were twice their dry size and sat there like big slippery tubes of calamari. You can imagine how gracefully I filled them with a runny mixture of goat cheese, egg, spinach, sautéed zucchini and garlic. It’s a good thing we have a dog.
I quickly realized that pure goat cheese would be far too intense as a filling on its own – not like ricotta – and so tried to loosen it up with an egg and add some wilted spinach. Bagged spinach, by the way, is perfect to throw into the freezer - when you need chopped spinach you just crush the bag with your hands and it shatters, saving you the chopping. The second half of my bagged spinach always ends up in the freezer. So this time it ended up in a hot skillet with a bit of oil, and cooked down to practically nothing, so I panicked, rooted through my fridge and came out with a zucchini (roasted red peppers or sun dried tomatoes would have been good too), chopped it and sautéed it with a couple cloves of garlic, and added that too. And a spoonful of pesto. I just needed to bulk it up enough to fill the $%#!%@!! giant penne.
So I filled them as best I could, laid them awkwardly in a baking dish, poured tomato sauce over top, and grated part-skim mozzarella and Parmesan over that. Then baked it at 350 until it was bubbly and golden.
It turned out to closely resemble a lasagna; I could cut it into squares, even. Mike thought it was superb. And although I took the longest route possible to get my baked pasta (high-maintenance lasagna you might say; the opposite of lazy) it was exactly what I wanted for dinner.
The End.
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September 10 2008 | cheese and one dish and pasta and vegetarian | 10 Comments »
Sorry, quesadillas again. We narrowly averted Inglewood Pizza by a busy signal. Good thing there was a hockey game.
It still surprises me that often I still have no idea what’s for dinner at 6:20 at night. Quesadillas are a common stand-by, as you may have noticed; one step up from the grilled cheese sandwich, and assembled out of virtually anything you have around, provided some of it is cheese. I keep whole wheat flour tortillas in the freezer primarily for these, and also for peanut butter banana wraps. They have saved dinner (and lunch, and breakfast) on many a busy occasion.
Tonight, they were constructed out of black beans (there’s always a can on the shelf), finely chopped tomato and thin slices of jalapeño havarti I got at the cheese market last weekend. Bonus: I use quesadilla wedges to scoop up copious amounts of chunky salsa, thus boosting my lycopene intake.
And here’s another idea: when camping, you can make s’mores quesadillas with chocolate chips and mini marshmallows, either in a skillet on the Coleman stove, or wrapped in foil and tossed in the hot coals. A sliced banana in there is yummy, too.
Or just stick with the cheese.
Tomorrow night, I’ll be downtown at dinnertime for the June First Thursday. If anyone wants to join our group of 12 (so far!) to go restaurant and gallery-hopping, meet us on the Teatro patio at 5pm tomorrow night! (Free drinks and snacks, and deals on others!)
June 04 2008 | appetizers and cheese and sandwiches and snacks and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
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