Is It Worth It? Homemade Ricotta

Ricotta is pretty much the easiest cheese you can make - just heat regular milk and buttermilk together.  The most difficult part is finding the cheesecloth, but I have a houseboy for that.  The second most difficult part is figuring out what to do with it.  I knew I didn't want to bury it in layers of noodles and sauce where it would go unnoticed.  Ricotta goes beautifully with all sorts of delicious spring vegetables like peas and asparagus and the zucchinis and tomatoes of summer; but despite it being 90 degrees this weekend (yes, 90, no, I'm not excited about it), the full flush of the spring harvest hasn't arrived at the market yet.

Then I found this recipe for a ricotta bruschetta with lemon zest and honey and an idea was born: weeknight tapas.  About an hour before dinner, I heated a half-gallon of the tastiest 2% milk I could find with 2 cups of buttermilk until the curds and whey separated.

Why would Miss Muffet want to eat that?

While the milk was heating, I started on the other tapas.  To keep it simple, there would be only three plates, (1) the bruschetta, (2) a roasted beet salad made with local goat cheese and walnuts, and (3) my favorite tapas ever.  Two years ago, we visited our friends Holly and Kevin and they took us and our friend Bren to an amazing tapas place.

The tapas are so good, we're hysterical

Although the sangria may have helped

My favorite little plate contained bacon wrapped dates.  I'm not usually a big fan of dates, they are too sweet for me.  But wrap them in smoky, salty bacon and I'm all over it.  Every time I have seen them on a menu in the last two years I ordered them.  So with some dates from my grandma sitting in my refrigerator and some cottage bacon (one of three types of bacon made by our friendly local charcutier) from the farmer's market, we were ready to go.

I let the curds drain 15-20 minutes which made it quite a bit drier than what you find in the tub at the grocery store.  I seasoned with salt and pepper and piled it onto the broiled bread.  Zest a lemon, drizzle on just a hint of honey, and that is one pretty appetizer.  

We ate as much as we could, but there was still quite a bit of ricotta left over.  Luckily, I had another dish up my sleeve - Spinach and Artichoke Stuffed Shells in a Ricotta Sauce.

I added a huge bag of local spinach to the filling, doubled the ricotta, and layered a spicy marinara on the bottom of the shells.  I was really happy with the results - cheesy but still light and bright.  I took a pan of them over to Veronica and Mike's for a KU watch party.

And KU resoundingly defeated Richmond - coincidence?  I think not.  

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK! GO

Yogurt and Memories

I may have set myself up for failure when I decided to make my own yogurt.  You see, I was in search of a very specific yogurt.  My Platonic ideal yogurt is thick and creamy, served from an earthenware crock in a small, dark dining room up narrow spiral stairs on the second floor of a little hotel in Athens, the name of which has long since escaped me.

I ate this yogurt each morning in the final days of 2005 when Summer and I spent a few fleeting days in Greece.

You see now why no yogurt could live up to this hype.  I tried this very basic recipe from the kitchn and it was thin and without much flavor.  Covered in strawberries macerated with sugar and balsamic vinegar, it is okay, but the rest of yogurt will get dumped into smoothies.

The nice thing about making yogurt is that it is pretty easy.  Just heat a half-gallon of milk, do about 30 minutes of yoga (not required, but recommended) while it cools to 115 degrees, stir in a 1/2 cup of active yogurt, then wrap it in all your clean towels and leave in a warm (but turned off) oven overnight.

So is it worth it to make your own yogurt?  Maybe, I'll save my judgement until I give this another try.  I'm not sure my starter yogurt was in great shape, nor did I maintain the yogurt at the right temperature for long enough.  I've heard that you can make it in your crock pot so I may try that sometime soon - I'd be glad to hear any suggestions from those of you who make your own.  For now, I foresee a lot of smoothies - or maybe frozen yogurt - in my future.

You have yogurt?

Gimme.

I Can Can

Learning how to can seems like a skill from the days before refrigeration, but it has been growing in popularity recently as a way to maintain a commitment to local produce year-round.  But as the bounty of summer gave way to the slim pickings of the winter market, I thought I had missed my canning window.  But then we moved to Texas, home of these beauties.

The Texas Rio Star Grapefruit

As I think about what types of canning recipes are worth my time, I really want things I can't find at the grocery store.  So simple orange marmalade wasn't good enough.  The salmon-blush of grapefruit marmalade, however, can rarely be found on a supermarket shelf.  I found this recipe online at the cosmic cowgirl's very cute blog and set to work.

I love the smell of grapefruit, but I find it can be too bitter for me.  I also decided that I wanted to cut the amount of sugar in the jam so I added additional low-sugar pectin.  In the end, I removed almost all the peel  to reduce the bitterness and ended up with four jars of mildly bitter, but sweet and bright jam.

Look how pretty!!

Of course, there is no better use for freshly made jam than spreading it on warm, homemade bread.  Luckily, I've been baking two loaves a week so I always have some on hand.

Realizing that it will take me months to get through the jam one tablespoon at a time, I decided to incorporate it into a BBQ sauce for a shredded pork shoulder.  The sauce was delicious - just a little sweet with a good bit of heat and a deep, rich flavor.  I piled the meat onto homemade buns (definitely worth the extra effort) and paired it with a feta coleslaw inspired by the BBQ truck that parks at the farmer's market each weekend.  If you want to try them (and I think you should), I've written out my recipes below.

You can decide whether or not you want to take an artistic still life of your ingredients before you begin.

Fruity, Spicy BBQ Shredded Pork

This makes a pretty spicy sauce - feel free to reduce the chipotle chiles to taste.  My local market had pork shoulder cut into large chunks labeled "carnitas meat," but a bone-in shoulder would work just as well with an increased cooking time.  If you don't have grapefruit jam, I'm sure orange marmalade would be almost as good.

     3 lbs pork shoulder, cut into 6 pieces

     1 small onion, finely diced

     4 cloves garlic, minced

     3 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced

     1/2 c. grapefruit jam

     1/2 c. hoisin sauce

     6 oz tomato paste

     3 T balsamic vinegar

     2 T wochestershire sauce

     2 T chili powder

     1 T cumin

     1 T salt

Mix all ingredients together and coat pork in the crock pot.  Cook on low 4-6 hours (during which time, you should make the buns and watch KU win an NCAA tournament game).  Remove pork and let sit until cool enough to handle.  Meanwhile, let sauce continue to simmer in crockpot to thicken.  Shred pork and return to sauce.  Serve on soft buns, with pickles if you have them.

Feta Slaw

     1/2 head cabbage, green or red

     2 carrots, grated

     1 red bell pepper, julienned

     5 green onions, thinly sliced

     6 oz feta, crumbled

     1 T canola oil

     1/4 c red wine vinegar

     1 t dried oregano

     salt and pepper

Shred half a head of cabbage (I made a stirfry with the other half, but you'll do as you see fit) and toss with grated carrots, julienned bell pepper, and green onions.  Whisk together oil, vinegar, oregano,  several grinds of pepper, and a pinch of salt.  When ready to serve, mix vegetables and feta with the dressing.

My first run at canning was really time-consuming (the better part of two nights).  But it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to making super-garlicy pickles, our own house-blend of salsa, and more jams and fruit butters as the farmer's market options grow.  I may even go pick my own berries for preserves

Hank Likes to Help in the Kitchen

Is it Worth it?

I wish I were making more of my own food. I have friends who make most of their own bread, cheese, yogurt, beer, and other essentials. For the most part, my friends make these things because they find that the quality of the food is better not to mention the fact that you know what is in it. This later issue has had me thinking as I have read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan which was recommended to me by Laurel. The simple premise is that we should be eating food, a radical idea only once you consider how much not-food there is in what we buy at the grocery store. To wit, this list of ingredients in Wonder Bread:
1. Whole wheat flour
2. Water
3. wheat gluten
4. high fructose corn syrup
5. soybean oil
6. salt
7. molasses
8. yeast
9. mono and diglycerides
10. exthoxylated mono and diglycerides
11. dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide)
12. datem
13. calcium sulfate
14. vinegar
15. yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate)
16. extracts of malted barley and corn
17. dicalcium phosphate
18. diammonium phosphate
19. calcium propionate (to retain freshness)

You may be familiar with calcium sulfate because they make drywall out of it. When I make bread, it contains:
1. flour
2. yeast
3. salt
4. water
5. honey (sometimes)

Beyond not putting weird things you don’t know what are in your body, it may actually be cheaper to make your own. I read an article several months ago in Slate magazine indicating that you can make less expensive, more delicious bagels, yogurt, crackers, and granola at home (although cream cheese and jam are about the same). So with all of these things rumbling around in my head, I’ve decided to start a semi-regular series that I’m calling “Is it worth it?” There is a long list of foods that I frequently buy that I want to try making myself. Bearing in mind that I am trying to complete my dissertation within the next year, a major consideration is how MUCH better is something given the amount of effort that goes into it. So without further ado, the first review is here.



Is it worth it to make your own flour tortillas? YES! Absolutely hands down. Homemade tortillas are chewy and flavorful (did you know tortillas could taste like something?) not to mention that their thicker texture saves you from the devastating burrito rupture. I made mine based on this recipe from the apartment kitchen and it was a snap. Mix everything together, wait 30 minutes while you assemble the rest of your fixings and then roll them out and cook them in a dry pan. Super fast and easy – the hardest part is rolling them out. I’ll admit that most of mine looked like a central African country, but they sure tasted like Mexico to me.