October Bean Soup

It’s getting colder and colder in my neck of the woods.  Crow Hollow is rusting, as seen to the left.   I’ve been saying I will make food from what I have in the house for a while.  Finally did it.  The result is the recipe that’s attached here.  A combo of the famous Senate Navy Bean Soup and a traditional bean with bacon soup recipe.  I’ve had a bag of dried cannellini beans in my pantry forever.  To me, that’s more than 2 years.   

It is the end of the harvest season, so I added celeriac, carrot and onion to the mix.  Rupena’s was out of smoked ham hocks, so I got thickly sliced bacon custom cut off the slab.  Salty.  I didn’t need a lot of extra salt even though I used 10 cups of water.  I suppose  you could omit the wine, but I had Two Buck Chuck on hand, so I used it.  The vinegar, however, is essential.  Something sweet and tart if you don’t have sherry wine vinegar.  It was late when the soup was done and I just left it out on the stove top to cool overnight.  It didn’t make me sick when I tasted it this morning, before we put it in the fridge.  In fact, it was fabulous.  So enough of my introduction.  Here’s the October Bean Soup Recipe. 

Summer Squash Soup Making

Summer Squash Soup Making

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

 

Seriously, I would have never made soup like this. To not sautee aromatics just doesn’t make sense to me. But read the description attached to this photo for an easy, hands-off style recipe that’ll use up your lingering summer squash.  Mmmm.

Saint Maure By Me

Saint Maure by Me

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

Tomato and cheese season is the best season.

P I G: Pig

Flying Pig

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

This photo really appeals to me. I like the roof of the house in the corner. Wish I would have framed it up with more rooftop. I like the half blue sky. The unfancy tripod that holds up the pig. The pig. It’s classic Driftless Wisconsin to me. A land where people are genuine and weird and just like me. Thanks people of the unglaciated region just east of the Mississippi River!! You’re the best.

The Engagment Rings Revealed & a Bird Escapes from the Aviary

Gentlemen,

On the topic of engagement and marriage:

The following is a likely scenario if you have a significant other in your life whose company you enjoy.  You choose to buy an article of sparkling jewelry, a ring for her left hand.  After months of planning and keeping your secret limited to a narrow swath of essential people you announce in a dramatic fashion that you’d like to marry the woman you adore.  You present her with the shiny pretty you’ve procured.  It meets her tastes and desires in finger fashion.  It’s a genuinely touching moment.  Assuming she says yes, people observing the moment will cry.  Incidentally, you shouldn’t worry about this display of raw feeling from strangers, this is a typical show of emotional solidarity.  They’ll clap you on the back for being an outstanding chap, whether or not they know it to be true.  “Good show, my man!” your witnesses and associates may say if you’ve succeeded in getting her to affirm and share your intention.

Her ring is scrutinized by others.  She gazes upon it, turning her hand slightly back and forth to watch the precious sparkle in the sun/moon light.  It’s a symbol and a reminder.  You’ve secured a most important promise for a lifetime of fulfillment.  She has a ring to prove to you — and everyone she encounters — that she is intended to you. What about your promise to her?  Wouldn’t you want a reminder of this occasion?  Wouldn’t SHE want you to have a reminder of this occasion? I think yes twice.

I like tradition as much as most people.  I think rituals are important and meaningful.  But the resistance to mildly bucking social convention occasionally makes me irritable.  Like my decision to wear an engagement ring.  Yes,  I proposed to a woman.  She said yes.  There were tears and clapping of backs and sparkly things and I wanted something else out of the deal.  I wanted a ring too.  So I bought myself one.  I put it on moments after I slipped hers onto her hand.  It was OUR promise I wanted to advertise and remember and honor.  Anyone who wants to tell me I shouldn’t, please speak up so I know which direction to point my grudge.

Some folks who are peripherally involved in our lives thought we secretly got married — maybe for scandalous reasons or because of illicit logic– but none of these people would ask either one of us about my ring.  I’m not trying to be  difficult.  The only statement I’m making is that I love her and consequently am devoted to her.  I’m wearing it as a symbol just like she wears hers.  And I’m really just here to tell everyone else who disagrees to stick it.  Nyeah.

Golden brown elixir of life, I drink you

My heart soared out of Café Soleil that day, and I a step behind it, spilling into the springtime sun, dancing across the boulevard to Capitol Square where farmers greeted me with a bounty of early greens, sunchokes and overwintered cipollini onions. I had a song on my lips that matched the dulcet tones of the flock of Cerulean warblers who stopped on our bountiful isthmus called Madison during their Northward journey through the heartland of America. The tune I sang began with these words: Magic Coffee.  I have to give credit where credit is due.

L’Etoile restaurant is an award-winning, multi-star restaurant on the second-floor an old brick building across the street from the State Capitol of Wisconsin. Years ago, in the downstairs storefront of the edifice that contains this culinary powerhouse, on every Saturday morning of the Madison Farmer’s Market, L’Etoile’s chefs began selling pastries you couldn’t previously have found this side of Paris.  Demand for Midwestern ingredients with European technique proved to be high. If you arrived at doors of the first floor of L’Etoile after 9 a.m., you didn’t stand a chance of tasting a crispy sugary spice wheel or smoked salmon and chevre croissant. They’d sell out early.  Coffee wasn’t their strong suit though. I always had to travel down the street to a coffee cart for a caffeine kick.

Eventually, this impromptu Bohemian patisserie evolved into a dependable, fancified eatery called Café Soleil.  Then someone on staff at the Café invented a creamy iced coffee drink they call Magic Coffee.  Alongside a cheesey gougere or marzipan croissant, Magic Coffee creates a breakfast experience that makes the soles of your feet float off the ground a little bit. I didn’t attempt to crack their code letter-for-letter, but certainly they were the inspiration for this recipe. Thank you, oh great and powerful inventor of sweet iced coffee.  The people of Pennsic thank you as well.

Bilge Water ala Turkish, aka: Magic Coffee

• 1 pound full-bodied coffee, ground for a French press/toddy maker  (I use Brazil Traditional Dry from Alterra Coffee Roasters)
• 1 gallon room temperature water
• 1/4 vanilla bean, split and scraped of seeds (use both  pod and seeds)
• 4 green cardamom pods
• 2 black cardamom pods
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom seeds
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 1 whole star anise
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 cup brown sugar (more/less to taste) 

1. Combine whole and ground spices with coffee in a 2 gallon container.  Mix to incorporate spices and coffee.
2. Add a half gallon of water slowly, saturating coffee grounds entirely. Wait for 20 seconds, coffee should release a bit of oil. 
3. Add another half gallon of water.  Mix gently to incorporate.
4. Let stand 12-18 hours.
5. Strain liquid through a fine weave cheesecloth or cotton muslin into a 1 gallon receptacle.
6. Dissolve sugar into the liquid.

To make Bilge Water suitable for consumption, follow this rule: to every 12 ounces of coffee, add 2 ounces half and half and sweeten to taste.  For the *Pennsic variation*, omit additional sweetener and pour in 6 ounces of finest quality chocolate milk for a 20 ounce mug of breakfast that’ll curl your moustache and provide ballast for your journey topside. The black liquid is truly a fine sipping brew for a small coffee mug. I prefer to accoutreize it with cream and chocolate. It’s your coffee, drink it how you like. Deviate from my recipe at your own risk and pleasure.

Drink well my friends,

Jizo Sama

Blueberry Pie from Beans and Barley

This is the best fresh fruit pie of all time.  I made it with blackberries once.  Blackberries that I bled for.  Blueberries are so much kinder and gentler, so stick with those for starters.  Don’t make their crust though.  The recipe’s not that great.  I’d just make the blueberry filling and top it with fresh whipped cream or eat it with vanilla frozen custard (which you may have to come to Milwaukee to find…sorry).

Blueberry Pie Recipe

Moustache n’ Elixir

013

Originally uploaded by ScarletOT

 

Curative elixer from Anodyne in hand, a mega-big cup to match his wooly moustache, Jizo Sama began his holiday journey on July 3rd. The weekend saw two fireworks displays, two kids, aged 10 and 12, and five more cups of coffee just like this one. Phew. Good times had by all. My Flickr has documentation of said holiday weekend.

Fromage Free Press

Feta Brines; Paneer Shines

Bay View, Wis.– You know that gallon-sized jar of brine and cheese pictured in my last post?  I fished out a hunk to test the cheese at the 10 day point.  It’s standing up just fine.  Crumbly and dry on the inside.  Salty on the outside.  After a jolt of kosher salt on your tongue, there’s funky feta flavor behind there.  Strange thing though — it’s kinda chlorine-y.  I wonder why this is.  Perhaps filtered spring water would be better than Milwaukee’s best tap water.  Perhaps I should wait a full month before tasting again.  I’ve reached the upper threshold of my hobbyist cheese making resources so I have no definitive answer.  I wonder if I could get ahold of Sid at Carr Valley.  Sigh.  We’ll have to sit and wait for my primary research experiment to run its course in my basement fridge.

Paneer cheese.  Make it at home and you will be loved by all — at least for your cooking.  It happens so quickly, I forget to photograph the process and it’s eaten before I get my camera to document it in prepared dishes.  Here’s how to make it, sans photographs.

Obtain one gallon of whole milk.  In a stock pot on the stove top, heat the milk to just shy of 185 degrees.  Dump in about a quarter cup of white vinegar and you’ll see the curd start to separate right away.  Keep the temperature steady for 5-10 minutes while stirring occasionally.  You’ll see the whey get thinner, more watery and turn pale green as more proteins coagulate.  You’ll notice the small curds clumping up nicely in a slotted spoon.  Once you’ve got good separation of curds and whey, turn off the heat, line a big colander with cheesecloth (not the cloth you use to make sachets for mulled cider, honest fine weave cheesecloth), pour the contents of the stock pot through the cheesecloth (reserve  the whey if you want — otherwise, pour down the drain).   Tie up the corners of the cloth and hang up to drain for a few hours or overnight in a cool place.  Unwrap from cheesecloth and badda bing, you’ve got paneer.  You could shape it into a block with right angles at this point too.  I’m not that particular, so I cut it into cubes and serve in staple Indian dishes like Palak Paneer.  Or with pasta and herbs and olive oil.

Cast Iron Carnage

Burns-Boose Kitchen, Wis.– In tangential feta news, the pot rack that held up my cheesecloth-wrapped feta fell down while we were away for the weekend.  We showed up with out-of-town pals in tow to find our freshly-cleaned kitchen floor covered in bits of safety glass from a shattered pot lid.  Fortunately for us,  we had the sweetest houseguests of all time on our side, as they proceeded to help sweep up the mess before we brought in luggage.   I mean, hands and knees with dustpan sweeping.  So I’m not hyperbolizing when I say “of all time.”  Anyhow, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the carnage?  Not frustration over the gouges in our kitchen wall, but a grateful phew that the wreckage didn’t ruin a batch of cheese.  So new cheese draining area needed.  Preferrably one that doesn’t share space with cast iron skillets.

If that’s cheese, it smells good

One step in the process of making feta cheese is to hang the curds for a day or so while the whey drains.  This is feta hanging to the right. And below x 3.  I made a batch recently.  Successfully, even.

 

 

At hour 12 or so, the cheesecloth and its contents begin to smell a bit like cat puke.  Probably any small animal’s puke…or even my sophomore year roommate’s after 3/4 of a bottle of kiwi flavored Mad Dog 20/20.  Point being, the smell is a bit foul if you don’t know the source.  According to my significant other, when you realize the odor is coming from cheese, it still doesn’t exactly smell good but it no longer makes you want to wretch.

After a day of draining, you cut up the curds into blocks to cure at room temperature for another couple days.  Somewhere during this stretch, it begins to smell like delicious cheese, but not until you lift the lid a couple times to check on it, recoiling visibly as if you just retrieved from the back of the fridge last month’s leftovers.  At the 72 hour mark, it really does smell good and is ready to sit in a brine solution to develop flavor.  This jar is going to wait four weeks before opening.

To get started in cheese theory 101 (and 102 & 103), I recommend checking out this book called American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheesesby Paul Kindstedt.  No recipes in there but textbook facts and guidance. For example, your brining solution and cheese should be the same temperature for maximum salt absorption and to minimize the risk of subpar or sketchy cheese.  Go to Dairyconnection for help with supplies and recipes.  Great service from these folks.

I made this batch with two gallons of whole cow’s milk and one quart of goat milk.  Traditionally sheep and/or goat is used in feta but I didn’t have that readily available so I, as usual, went into guerilla culinary mode and made do with a recipe deviation.  Ha, you can’t stop me.  I’m wild.