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

Chevre Sounds Fancy, But…

Ingredients for Goat Cheese

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

 

 

This is totally comfort food. You’ll feel empowered if you make it yourself.  Here’s how you do it.

If you can, I’d suggest going in on supplies with two or three other friends who are interested in making cheese at home. Then just divide up the rennet and dehydrated culture. Otherwise, you’ll just have a decade’s worth of rennet for your home kitchen. It’s cheap though, so don’t fret if you’re going solo.  All products mentioned can easily be shipped to your door from the Dairy Connection.

Rennet

The bottle of rennet pictured in this post is derived from vegetable sources instead of a bovine stomach. It fits one popular definition of vegan in Wisconsin — no animal products except for cheese. *wink*

Culture

Order the MM100 mesophilic culture or mesophilic aromatic type B.  Either is good for goat cheese.  I use the MM100.

Auxillary Supplies

Get yourself two molds of your chosen shape, and a foot or so square of cheesecloth — and not the loose weave culinary variety, a fine weave cheesecloth or butter muslin — or even paper coffee filters for a Chemex carafe.

Steps to a Kitchen Fromagerie

1. Pour two quarts of room temperature goat milk into a stock pot. If the milk isn’t room temperature give it a low heat on the stove top until the it measures 72 degrees on a candy thermometer.
2. Add 1/4 teaspoon of MM100 culture crystals. Stir. Add one drop of rennet. Seriously, one drop. Stir again. Put the cover on the stock pot and let it sit in a warm spot (72ish degrees again) for somewhere between 12 and 18 hours. Our timing is sometimes bad, which is why I give leeway for forgetfulness and/or overscheduling. If you start your cheese at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday, that doesn’t mean you have to set your alarm for the middle of the night to tend to it.
3. After 12-18 hours, line a collander with your cheesecloth or paper coffee filter. Ladle a bit of the now separated curds and whey into the collander. Keep doing this until you can pour the entire contents of the stock pot into the collander. Leave the whole mess on the countertop to let the curds drain away from the whey for 8 hours or so.
4. After 8 hours, scrape the creamy white curds (it’ll look like heavy sour cream) into a clean mixing bowl and season with whatever you like. I’d start with salt to taste. Maybe black pepper. I’ve used crumbled saffron threads, curry powder, caraway seed crushed by a mortor and pestel, pressed garlic, fresh basil leaves (which turn black in the fridge, so save them until the next step and line the mold forms with leaves)… the list goes on.
5. After seasoning, spoon the curds into your mold forms. Two quarts of milk should fill two pyramid molds about 2/3 full. You’ll need something underneath the molds to catch the remaining whey as it drains off. I used pint glasses for this batch pictured here. I also covered the tops loosley with plastic wrap to keep the top from drying out too much. That’s optional.
6. Leave the mold forms out to drain for another 24 hours. After one day, put them in the fridge and leave them to firm up for 2-3 days. Unmold and eat your cheese. If it is too bland for you, sprinkle with salt, wrap it in plastic and leave it in the fridge for a day. Eat the cheese within a week for best consistency. Yay! Cheese. Easy.

Nepalese Cuisine: Hing optional.*

Himal Chuli, a tiny Nepalese joint on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, offers two Takari specials each day.  The names and ingredients are listed on either side of a clear plastic note card holder in the middle of each table.  Cauli, with a savory, fragrant stew of cauliflower, carrot, green bean and potato, almost always occupies a space on one side of the card and is a perennial favorite.  Read more about Himal Chuli at this blog, Eating in Madison from A-Z.

I had known the delights of Cauli takari for a few years when I discovered the recipe on my bookshelf, in a binder stuffed with newspaper clippings.  I wasn’t sure if I should bow to Brahma, Vishnu or maybe Buddha (I realized I didn’t know much about Nepali food OR religion.  I figured it out when the bill came with a handwritten Namaste on the blank side) — but I whooped with joy. 

There’s another Nepalese recipe I like quite a bit; for simple Chana.  The one catch with this recipe is that it calls for a pinch of “hing.”  This is Hindi for the root of an herb known as Asafetida.  I’m not sure where to procure such an herb and am less inclined to say it is necessary after learning that the leafy part of the plant has a overpowering, pungent smell that some people refer to as “devil’s dung.”  I’d say that is a prime example of an optional ingredient.

cauli takari

nepalese-chana

Meatloaf of the Gods

Inside Monty's

You’d think I’m some sort of down home cook because I post recipes for casseroles and loaves of meat.  But I think this is because I don’t write down recipes for my more exotic cuisine.  Anyhow, this could be a blue ribbon winner of a meatloaf if they had such a contest at the county fair.  Be my guest if you want to enter this recipe into a contest… just send me a photo of yourself with the blue ribbon.  Monty’s Blue Plate in Madison created this recipe.  A couple years ago, I saw a cookbook that reprinted these meatloaf instructions at a local bookstore.  I was too cheap to buy the book, but I had my camera with me.  So I set it to macro mode, got up close to the page and *click.*  The secret of the Gods was mine!  I’ve reformatted the recipe since the resulting photo was so fuzzy I had to creatively interpret some of the ingredients.  My version is so good that you’ll need to make your mashed potatoes with a stick of butter and  half & half to equal the deliciosity of this meatloaf.

meatloaf-of-the-gods-recipe

Green Beans and Tofu Recipe

I make the recipe look harder than it is, which is why I am not in the recipe book business.  My interpretation of this Molly Katzen recipe has always been known to me simply as green beans and tofu.  Original, huh?  It is gluten-free…unless of course you deviate from the recipe.  You’re on your own if you do that.  Good luck.

To casseroles and comfort food…

What food category is more about opportunity than the casserole?  You make something out of nothing.  Pull yourself up by your culinary bootstraps and cobble together a nutritious meal.  Take the foods you like to eat, or just the ones you have on hand, let them mingle in a dish, warm them up together and you’ve got one hot pilate of a meal.  So is the case with my latest creation: Cheddar Mac. 

Velveeta can kiss my curds because I prefer to use cheese in my comfort food recipe.   It contains mostly whole ingredients, is delicious, fast and simple and will make you feel like yarfing if you eat two servings of it before you go out for a run.  You’ve been warned.  

 PDF cheddar-mac-recipe