more kitchen alchemy (or, my yeast pee was awesome!)

The mead is finished and it's really good. The blackberry batch turned out drier than I expected (additional yeasts on the blackberries maybe?) and the plain one is really nice - a different flavour than last time, despite using the same honey. (Well, from the same company - maybe their bees were in a different place?) Anyway, success!

I also recently tackled another alchemical hurdle - cheese! The Scholefield clan went away for 3 weeks and I was under orders to preserve their milk share for that time. They get 3 gallons a week, and my fridge operates at capacity most of the time, so immediate processing was necessary. They requested feta, so I made some using some "rennet" I found at Ambrosio and yogurt as the starter, and a recipe I found on the internet. It turned out ok, but 3 gallons of milk makes a decent amount of feta, so I thought I should produce something else the next week.

The following week I borrowed our cowshare administrator's book on cheesemaking and attempted a queso fresco. It was actually pretty fun to make - cheese curds are like a blend of jello and cheese, and enjoyable to cut and play with - but on further reading I discovered that the rennet I had bought was actually junket rennet, and largely unsuitable for cheese. Indeed, the cheese that resulted was edible, but didn't melt, and had some crunchy bits because I had no kosher salt, only celtic sea salt, which contains small particles of "minerals" (aka sand).

So I did some panicked ordering off the good old internet. Several days later, thanks to some speedy shipping by Danlac, I had proper rennet and some mesophilic starter. I had to do math to figure out how much rennet to use, and as it turned out the stuff I got was SO concentrated that the amount was on the order of milligrams and I had to use Stirling's powder-measure scale. But wow what a difference! The milk gelled up in an hour and was a much firmer set than with the junket rennet. Lesson learned.

The next batch of cheese turned out decidedly better, and I made some with garlic and herbs in it that was really quite tasty. I had another batch planned, but I got distracted while heating the milk and ended up scalding it, so I reduced it by half and turned it into pumpkin pie ice cream, which was also pretty tasty.

After all that I was a bit cheesed-out. But I've had a rest now, and it's colder so I think my pantry might actually be the right temperature for aging cheese soon, so I will attempt something more cheddar-like next.

An Easy Snack

Sarah's sister here - once again covering for Sarah's lack of postings. I do not consider her preceding post as valid since, as a science nerd, it made me cringe a bit. I am glad you enjoy the wonder that is fermentation dear, but bacteria do not fart carbon dioxide and pee alcohol (and bad spirits don't give you a tummy ache either)! Please refer to Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" for less whimsical explanations of these mysterious phenomena.

I thought I would post another easy recipe, this one for a tasty afternoon snack that will get rid of any mushrooms you have turning smelly in your fridge. Good for using stale baguette too.

Mushroom Topping:
-a bunch of button mushrooms, diced into very small pieces (if you have exotic or wild mushrooms, all the better)
-butter and olive oil for some sautéing
-a clove of garlic, minced
-small sploosh of dry sherry, or a touch of brandy
-salt and pepper
-thyme
-cream (half and half is fine, whipping cream would be nice too)

Method:
Put butter and olive oil (or one or the other) in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add mushrooms and saute for a while until partially cooked. Add garlic and keep sauteing for a while longer to get rid of the water. Add sherry or brandy (note that brandy is a bit stronger and can get nasty if you add too much, so I stick to sherry when possible). Let the liquid cook mostly then add thyme, salt and pepper. Once liquid is gone add some cream. Cook off the liquid so it is a thick coating on the mushroom pieces. Taste for desired level of saltiness and increase if necessary. Take off heat and serve on little toast rounds or in cooked mini-tart shells. This is very easy and people like it. You could get fancy and add some bacon or cheese or dried fruit, but this is perfectly good as is.

And before I forget - let me mention how much I enjoy Niagara Grocery. It is a nifty, family-run place with some great local products and it is conveniently located a couple of blocks from my seester's house for those times when I need cream in the morning and the fridge is empty.

Alchemy

I am SO sorry for failing to entertain people. I had vacations to go on, job interviews, and a busted computer, but I suppose I should have made blogging more of a priority than, say, paying attention to my child. Or feeding my husband.

Anyway, I have a blog post now. It's about how much fun it is to use chemistry without really understanding it. This is illustrated best by late-summer preserving. Specifically, jam, jelly, mead, pickles and sauerkraut.

See, I KNOW that fruit contains this thing called pectin, and when it's heated to the right point (223F last I checked, I think) pectin will make jams and jellies set. The trick is finding fruit that's the right degree of ripeness (or not ripeness) so that the amount of sugar you have to add to get the temperature to go that high doesn't make the jam or jelly taste disgustingly sweet, and that contains enough pectin anyway. (Yes, I spurn the pectin you buy in a box in the grocery store. It makes jam too hard, and flavourless. As an aside, people who make "low-sugar" jam belong in the same rung of hell as the low-fat dairy types.)

The mystery is, I have NO idea why pectin does that. I don't know if it forms some sort of crystal lattice or expand-o-starch molecules or what. I tried to read the explanation on wikipedia and bailed out after "The characteristic structure of pectin is a linear chain of α-(1-4)-linked D-galacturonic acid that forms the pectin-backbone, a homogalacturonan." I decided I like it better as a mystery. You take fruit, you take sugar, you throw them together on the stove, and at some point, you get jam. If you screw up and jar it before it's really done, you can always go back and boil it up again and fix it. Unripe fruit has more pectin, so picking fruit for jam is fun because you can go to places that other people have already been to and still pick lots, AND if you happen across a really ripe berry or fruit, you can just munch it up secure in the knowledge that your gluttony is helping your jam set. What could be better?

The mysteries of pectin are nothing, however, to the mysteries of lactobacteria. GERMS!!! yay. And they make pickles for you. People who are afraid of germs haul out their canning equipment and vinegar and whatnot and have to wait, like, 3 months for their pickles to be ready. Me, I love germs. I wash little bitty cucumbers and stuff them in a jar with salt water, garlic, dill and grape leaves. (Another lovely alchemical mystery. Actually no, a lack of alchemical mystery... the grape leaves stop the cucumbers from going mushy.) I stick them in the pantry with the jar lids on lightly to prevent unfortunate explosions and typically bugger off on vacation for a week. When I come back, they have magically turned into pickles. Intellectually I know that salt-tolerant lactobacteria are responsible, but I don't know what the bacteria actually DO. What part of the pickles do they eat? Why do they turn sour? Is that like eating bacteria poop? I don't understand. But I don't have to - that's the good part. I trust my bacteria. They make things tasty and good for me. And then I eat them. Ha ha ha! (Sauerkraut is even easier. Shred cabbage, mix with salt, pound into jar, wait.)

The mead part I actually understand. Yeasts are easier, somehow. Wee beasties that eat sugar, fart carbon dioxide, and pee out alcohol. So I kind of get the science on this one, but it's still really fun to just mix honey and water and watch it get all foamy and bubbly. Sourdough bread is similarly entertaining, except when I forget I left some rising and I come back and it's like some sort of slime mold crawling all over the oven, mocking my attempts to keep the damn thing clean.

I just think this stuff is so FUN. It's like nature has all this fantastic food ideas just waiting for you, and you just have to mix it right and then leave it alone. No other animal could have discovered these things. The kind of ingenuity and willingness to put food that microorganisms have tampered with in our mouths, and claim to enjoy it, is what makes humans really special. Also, the patience to wait it out and let perfectly good food get munched on by microorganisms first. I don't see raccoons, for instance, waiting for things to start fermenting in the garbage before knocking it over. Never mind that getting into outer space stuff or those nuclear reactors - the fact that ordinary humans can team up with things they can't even see to make food tastier and last longer is pretty remarkable.

Lemon Pickled Onions

Once again, Sarah is failing to entertain me with blog posts - it's like she's busy or something. Once again, I will pick up the slack with a tasty and simple recipe. A condiment this time - lemon pickled onions. I think I saw Jamie Oliver do this on TV, and now I make it frequently and put it on just about everything - salad, burgers, salad, in soup, salad, sandwich or I just eat them out of the dish.

Directions:
Thinly slice some red onion (you can use yellow onion, but it really isn't as good). The thinner you can get it, the better. Sprinkle liberally with salt. Cover with fresh squeezed lemon juice, none of that stuff in a bottle. You can also use lime juice for a slightly different flavour. Leave for at least 10 minutes (the thinner it is sliced, the quicker it pickles) and then use or cover and put in the fridge, liquid and all. It keeps for at least a week, but I usually finish it off pretty quickly so I don't know how long it will go for. You can use the juice in salad dressing, or anything that needs some acidity. This recipe has proved to be quite popular with friends and family. Give it a try.

Japanese breakfast

Don't ever let anyone tell you kids aren't influenced by things they see "just in passing" on TV. In this case, it was a good thing - Rowan wanted breakfast like Satsuki and Mei from "My Neighbour Totoro". I didn't remember exactly what it had looked like - not that remembering would have helped, necessarily - so I looked up what constituted a traditional Japanese breakfast and found many a site, all listing essentially the same things:

- rice
- fish, usually grilled
- miso soup
- natto
- pickles and/or ume plums

I didn't feel up to the natto. I've heard nasty things about it and didn't feel that breakfast was a good time to deal with a food phobia. So I substituted toasted mochi instead. (BC-vegetarian mochi knockoff, actually, made with brown rice.) Totally not the same thing, but I'm ok with that.

I did make the miso soup from scratch, and finally, with the addition of kombu and bonito flakes (turned into dashi), it actually tasted RIGHT. Apparently few Japanese make dashi from scratch these days, and I have to wonder why, since it takes like 5 minutes - especially if you cheat and boil the kombu for 3 minutes instead of soaking it for half an hour in cold water (it tasted fine). Wierd. Anyway, I had the remains of a tub of shiro miso, fortunately, and vast stashes of seaweed, because I'm weird that way. I didn't have any tofu, unfortunately, so we just had plain wakame soup.

I also found that the Japanese often eat salmon lightly salt-cured, which I tried. I salted the small filet of spring that I'd bought pretty heavily - about twice what I'd put on just to cook it - wrapped it in the paper it came in and left it uncovered otherwise on a plate in the fridge overnight. Then to cook it, I stuck a dry small frypan under the broiler for ten minutes or so, lightly oiled the skin side of the salmon and stuck it skin-side down in the pan. I left it in the oven for maybe 5 minutes and when I took it out I put the pan on an already-hot burner to crisp the skin a little more. It was still slightly translucent in the middle, and it was sooooo good. I highly recommend this method for salmon.

I also steamed some greens (bok choy) and made a little dipping sauce for the mochi out of maple syrup, soy sauce, and miso. The mochi was definitely improved by this.

Overall it took less than an hour to put this together, and if I'd done some minimal prep the night before - put the kombu in the cold water for the soup, put the rice in the rice cooker, chopped and washed the veg - I think I could have got it down to about 30 minutes. Some of it of course is timing practice, too. But I think it's a weekend thing, not a weekday morning rush-breakfast.

Rowan looooved the miso soup and the salmon, though. These are quick and easy and may very well become breakfast staples. (Very small portions of salmon, btw - about 2 oz each.) And I suppose that even without the greens and the mochi, it's a pretty balanced breakfast since there is lots of seaweed in the miso soup. Better than, say, oatmeal. And it kept me going until lunchtime with no need for snacks, which was great. Stirling wasn't such a fan - I think I'm pushing things "denying" him breakfast cereal (which is evil) and this was too far out of his comfort zone. But Rowan and I liked it. (For the record, if Stirling wants breakfast cereal, he can buy it himself. I just won't. I did, however, make him granola yesterday too. )

Oh, and I kind of forgot the pickles. I HAD pickles - I made some quick radish pickles the other day, and they were lovely - and I put them in a bowl, and completely forgot about them on the counter. I ate a few afterwards, if that counts.

So, thumbs up for the Japanese-style breakfast. (And no, it wasn't my usual hardcore local fare, although much of the seaweed was local, the greens and the salmon were local, and the mochi and miso was *made* locally. I'm sure some kind of local adaptation for bonito could be made if I tried hard enough, but... there's a limit, y'know?)

101 uses for arugula

Well, not really. I can think of 3 or 4, but I thought I'd post them since it is that time of year when so many people buy huge bags of arugula because it's all lovely and fresh and green and that first bite tastes so good.

Then they bring the bags home, find that their kids/husbands/wives won't eat the stuff, and it sits in the fridge, maybe decreasing by 10 leaves or so every time a salad is made, and eventually turns yellow and starts to smell iffy.

However, here's something you might not know: you don't HAVE to eat it raw. In fact, studies* have shown that children prefer most greens - including arugula - cooked. With lots of butter. Interestingly, many of the nutrients - especially vitamins - in greens are better absorbed in the presence of fats, so the butter is a good idea nutritionally, not just taste-wise.

So idea #1: quickly blanch the arugula, and toss with butter and balsamic vinegar. Delicious. (This works well for any greens, actually.)

Idea #2: pretend it's spinach.Arugula can also work very well as a spinach substitute. Any recipe that calls for cooked spinach will also work with cooked arugula. I actually prefer it to spinach, because it lacks that weird tooth-feel that spinach has.

Idea #3: add to spaghetti sauce. Just wash and toss in about 5 minutes before serving. As long as it's wilted, it's good to go.Frequently, I find that pasta sauces often go further if you add some greenery. Arugula is a good choice because it actually adds a bit of flavour, too, and it mitigates the cop-out feel of spaghetti night, since you're getting greenery into the kids and reducing the vegetable population in the fridge.

Idea #4: Risotto. Arugula lightens up a risotto nicely, making it feel more spring-like and fluffy. Just make a regular risotto with white wine and chicken stock, cook it a little dryer than normal, and add loads of coarsely chopped arugula and a few handfuls of grated asiago at the end. Serve when the arugula is fully wilted. Yummy.

*Ok, it was one study, and it was conducted at my house.

lavender tarts

This is an adaptation of a very old family recipe for tarts that are called either egg tarts or vinegar tarts, depending on whom you talk to. Originally it was meant as a faux lemon tart recipe, as it came out of Nova Scotia back in the day when lemons weren't readily available.

You will need 24 small tart shells, or 12 large (muffin-sized) ones.

Filling (original recipe)

3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
splash vanilla essence

Mix sugar and eggs but do not overmix to frothiness. Add vinegar and vanilla and mix to combine. Pour into tart shells and bake at 375F until tops are nicely browned.

Filling (fancy lavender version)

3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp or so lavender flowers

Before you even make the pastry, place the vinegar and lavender flowers in a small saucepan over low heat. Don't let it boil. Leave it there until you need it.

Once the pastry is made and the tart shells are ready, mix as above, except pass the vinegar through a sieve to remove the lavender flowers before you measure 3 tbsp for the mixture. If you have a tiny bit extra (it's hard to say how much the flowers will absorb) you can toss it in. If you have less than 3 tbsp, just add regular apple cider vinegar as needed.

Sprinkle the tops with a few dry lavender flowers before you put the tarts in the oven, and bake as above.