Ricotta Cheese made from Whey

In my previous post about making swiss cheese I mentioned saving the whey for another recipe.  When making various cheeses you may find yourself with a good amount of whey left over.  Not wanting to waste this we make ricotta cheese.  It is a very simple cheese to make.  For this we used the book “Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking” by Gianaclis Caldwell.  It is an excellent book if you are moving beyond beginner cheeses.

Again it is important to make sure everything is sterile.

While continually stirring bring the whey up to 195-200F or 91-93C.  It is important this does not boil!

Once the temp is reached let it cool back down to 190F/88C while stirring.  Now it is time to introduce the acid.  You can use lemon juice or vinegar, usually white or cider.  To do this 1 tablespoon is added at a time until the curds separate enough.

Have a colander lined with cheese cloth or butter muslin over a large bowl to drain the cheese.

Once most of it has been drained hang in a spot that is not drafty to let the rest of the whey drain.  This takes about an hour.

Salt to taste if you like and then store in an airtight container in the fridge.  It keeps about a week.   I didn’t salt this as I wanted it for a recipe.

What to do with the leftover whey after this recipe?  Compost pile or the garden. 

 

Growing Alfalfa Sprouts

We came across alfalfa sprout seeds at our local gardening store and thought they would be fun to grow.  Thought this would be cool and plunked the seeds in soil and watched it go all wrong.  Turns out we should have read the directions.  You don’t plant them in soil but rather in a jar with water.  Even cooler! 

It takes 5 or 6 days to get the harvest so it is pretty easy overall.

You will need some seed, water, a mason jar, butter muslin, and some bleach.  Store the seeds you don’t use in a sandwich baggie.

To start it is important to sterilise the seed in a bleach solution of 1 tsp bleach in 1 cup of hot water.  The seed is gathered in fields with animals and you don’t want to risk e coli.  Soak for about 15 minutes.

Pour into a strainer and rinse thoroughly.

Rinse the jar and pour the seeds back into the jar.  Cut a small piece of butter muslin and place it over the opening of the jar and tighten the ring over it.  Fill with water and pour most of it out again and leave on the draining board upside down so the excess water can drip out.  Do this bit daily until it is ready to “harvest”.

Using a large bowl tip out the sprouts and gently loosen the clump.

Fill with water and let the seed shells float to the top and skim off.

Drain until mostly dry then store in an airtight container in the fridge.  It is great on salads and sandwiches.

Diesel Gala in Swanage

I like trains.  In the train world that comes across as a bit strange but I find them fascinating.  I think because I love machines.  I love steam trains and my husband is into D & Es.  So a year ago this weekend we headed to Swanage to see my in-laws and to attend the Diesel Gala.  It is happening again this weekend and I hope it is as successful as it was last year as it was a lot of fun.  Swanage Diesel Gala.

The weather was perfect and they had a wonderful beer festival at Harmon’s Cross so there was a great festive feel to the whole weekend.  In Swanage there is a great spot on the bridge to take pictures of all the action coming and going.

The next day was gorgeous so we hiked to Corfe Castle and saw the trains rumble past.

And of course we had to stop at Harmon’s Cross to sample the local beers and ciders.

And lucky for me they still kept the steam trains running.    They had a bit of fun and added the D to the number for the occasion.

Personally, I like to be where all the fun is so I grab a footplate ride when I can.  My FIL is the driver on this trip.    It’s the best seat in the house!

They have the steam gala in September and some day I hope to go to that one.  That would be amazing.

Making Swiss Cheese part 1

We were in a cheese making mood this past weekend and made a few kinds of cheeses.  The first we made is a Swiss cheese.  This was our second batch as the first batch had a bit of a learning curve.  Though I have to say the first batch my husband made had a great flavour.  The rind came out a bit thick but we think that was because of old rennet.  Other than it was great.  So we were ready for another go.  With new rennet.    We also use Ricki Carroll’s book “Home Cheese Making” for this.  She also sells the starters and supplies needed for most cheese making.  I know there are more and more sources now as more people are into making their own cheese.  We’ve just stuck with her store.

This is what the cheese looked like from the first batch.

Before starting sterilise everything!

As we’ve made our previous cheeses we only use raw milk.  Pasteurization breaks down the proteins needed to make great cheese.  Especially the ultra-pasteurization.  That is pretty much useless.  When buying raw milk just make sure the farm does regular testing so it is safe.

Pour two gallons into a large pot.  Heat the milk to 90F.  Stir as the milk heats so it is consistent and doesn’t catch on the bottom.  We usually have the heat at medium for this.  You don’t want it to heat rapidly.  Once the milk is at 90F then the thermophilic starter is added.  We buy the pre-portioned packets but if you prepare it then 4 oz is needed.  Stir well.

The take 1/4 milk of the milk with the starter mixed in and add 1 tsp of Propionic shermannii to the 1/4 milk and mix well.  Add back into the milk on the stove and mix well.  This needs to ripen for 10 minutes.

The next step calls for the rennet.  We purchase organic vegetable based rennet.   The directions on the back are a bit strange.  It says it is double strength so use 1/3 the amount called for in the recipe.  To me if it is double strength then it should call for using 1/2 the amount in the recipe.  Right?  So about a minute before the milk is done ripening prepare the rennet.  Use 1/4 cup of spring water because you don’t want any chlorine in it.  The recipe calls for 1/2 tsp rennet to be dissolved so we used 1/4 tsp plus a couple of drops.  Pour into the milk and stir up and down.  If you are using raw milk like we do then it needs to be top stirred for a few minutes to keep the butter fat down.  To do this, use the bottom of your spoon and stir 1/2 inch to and inch down from the surface.

At this point the milk needs to rest at 90F for 30 minutes.  The thermophilic starter generates heat so if it goes a few degrees above 90 don’t panic.  If it drops just turn the heat on a bit to bring it back up.  After it sets and the curds pull away from the sides it is time to cut the curds.  Her recipe states 1/4 inch cubes.  In a large pot that is impossible.  Use a curd knife for the blocks by cutting straight one way then cutting lines 90 degrees from the original lines.  Then you need to cut at an angle to cut the interior of the curd.  Then gently use a whisk to cut them into the small curd.

Now get ready for a ton of stirring.  The first bit is for 40 minutes.  You stir gently while keep the temperature at 90F.  According to Ricki’s book this is called foreworking.  It helps expel the whey from the curds.

Then to add a bit of a challenge the next bit calls for raising the temperature a degree at a time until it reaches 120F.  You need to keep this as close to 30 minutes as possible as this extracts the whey from the curds.  You’ll notice the curds getting smaller through this process.

At the end of the 30 minutes the curds should be smaller and squeaky if you eat them.  This stage is called the “proper break”.  A way to test them is to take a small handful and press into a ball.  This ball should easily break apart into the little curds again.  Turn off the heat and let it rest for five minutes.  While it is doing that prepare some cheese cloth or butter muslin in a strainer.  You’ll want a couple of large containers to catch the whey.  Don’t throw out the whey!  You can use it to make fresh ricotta cheese.  Stay tuned for that post.  Pour into the strainer.

At this point you want the mold set up.  My husband made a great contraption so we can press the cheese.  This recipe calls for a two pound mould.  Place the curds into the mould still wrapped in the cheese cloth or butter muslin.

Fold in the cloth and place the pressing part into the mould.  Place the top of the press over this.  It is important to do all this before the curds cool.  For the first pressing you need 8-10lbs on top and let it stay there for 15 minutes.

You should see whey being pressed out.  At the end of 15 minutes remove the curd and gently unwrap the curd.  Turn the curd over and put it back into the press.

Up the weight to 14lbs and press for 30 minutes.  Turn the cheese and press for 2 hours.  Turn again, increase the weight to 15lbs and then press for 12 hours.  We usually leave this overnight.  Once the pressing is done the cheese needs to be soaked in brine for 12 hours.  To make the brine you want to dissolve 2 lbs of cheese or kosher salt in a gallon of spring water.  Let the cheese soak in the fridge during this step.  The exposed side needs to have some salt sprinkled on it.

At the end of 12 hours pat the cheese dry, place on a clean board and place in the “cheese cave”.  Now some have a real cheese cave.  We haven’t gotten that far so we use a wine cooler.  The temp needs to be 50-55F and the humidity should be around 85%.  For the first week the cheese needs to be turned every day and wiped with salt water.  Do not soak the cheese.  You do not want wet cheese!

Part 2 will be posted when the cheese is done and will have the final steps to it.  This cheese needs to age at least 3 months.  It is very hard to wait! 

Slow Cooked Lamb with a Red Wine Reduction Sauce

Earlier this year I cooked my first piece of lamb with a mushroom rub with a shoulder cut.  I had commented that while the flavour was amazing the meat didn’t come out as tender as I would have liked.  There were a few recommendations stating that a shoulder cut should be slow cooked.  As we had more shoulder cuts that is how I chose to do it this time.  The results were much better with really tender meat.

Preheat the oven to 275F/135C

I salt and peppered the lamb then heated up a skillet with olive oil to sear the lamb.  Sear both sides for about 4 minutes each.  If it is a thicker piece then do it for longer.

Chop up several cloves of garlic and some fresh rosemary.  We have a plant that survived all winter so I was able to use that.  And for someone that is horrible with houseplants, this is huge!

In a shallow baking pan put in 1 cup stock of your choice.  I used turkey stock and added the garlic, rosemary, and the lamb.

I decided to use this red wine as it’s a great drinking wine.  Not very mellow so I think in hindsight I would choose a mellow Italian but this wine was really good with the roasted potatoes and parsnips I served with this.

I added about 3/4 cup of wine to the dish.

Cover and slow cook for about an hour and a half.  If it is a thicker cut cook longer until it is done the way you want it.

Remove the lamb and over with tin foil and keep in a warm place while you finish the sauce and the rest of the dinner.  I put the plate on top of the toaster oven that I was roasting the veg in.  Pour the liquid into a sauce pan and bring to a simmer.  Add a bit of flour to some water and add to the sauce to thicken.  Because the wine was a strong flavour I added a bit of veg bouillon to give a bit of depth to the sauce.  Reduce down.

Once the veg is done, plate and drizzle the sauce over the lamb.

I really enjoyed this dish and will definitely experiment with the slow cooking of this meat.

 

White Soda Bread

Years ago I thought I would try soda bread.  Can’t remember the recipe but it is just as well as that attempt produced something closer to concrete than delicious bread.  You could do some serious damage with that thing!  A few years ago my mum and dad gave me a cookbook called “Irish Traditional Cooking” by Darina Allen.  It’s a lovely cookbook with tidbits on the history of recipes and ingredients.  I had some buttermilk left over so I thought it was as good as time as any to try my hand at this again.  Really glad I did.  So much better than the previous attempt. 

Preheat the oven to 450F/232C.  In a mixing bowl add 4 cups flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda.  Mix that well.

The recipe calls for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of buttermilk.  Basically start with the lower amount and add if you need to as it depends on the flour if it needs more moisture.  You don’t want it overly wet or sticky as a dough.

Mix it all together.  You can tell if it needs more buttermilk as mine did.  It looked very clumpy.

After adding another 1/4 cup of buttermilk the dough came together.  It needs to be kneaded a few times to, as Darina said in the book, “tidy it up”.

When preheating the oven I put in our large pizza stone that we also use to bake bread.  So for the next step I laid the dough out on parchment paper for ease of transfer.  Work the dough into a round disc.  About 2″ thick or so.  Then, and I love this part, “cut a cross on it to let the fairies out!” 

Bake for 15 minutes at 450F/232C and then lower the temp to 400F/204C for 20-30 minutes until it sounds hollow on the bottom.

It says to cool but I love hot bread with butter melting into it.

This is a great quick bread and it will be wonderful with homemade soup.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

When I was growing up there were two special treats mum would make.  Lemon meringue pie and lemon curd.  They were amazing.  Poor mum would be over a hot stove making the curd, canning it, etc and I would come along and just gloop the stuff on my toast.  It was the best!  I’ve had store bought but I gave up buying it as it wasn’t the same.  And the pie was just cool looking to a little kid.

So when I was pinning various stuff on Pinterest I came across this recipe for Lemon Meringue Cupcakes from King Arthur Flour and knew I just had to make them.  It flashed me back to when I was small having the lovely treats.

Now the recipe calls for making the lemon curd in the microwave.  I was sceptical to say the least but Maria Dernikos posted the other day about this method and said it worked.  So I gave it a try.  It is very tasty.  Not the same as mum’s homemade mind you but it does the trick.  I made the whole recipe today but I recommend doing the curd the day before.  Nothing is overly difficult but there are many steps to this.

First I baked the cupcakes.  So I pre-heated the oven to 400F/204C and lined a muffin tin with cupcake paper.  The recipe calls for a light spray of oil so I did that as well.  Not sure whether that is needed but as these are my first real cupcakes (not just using cake batter in muffin tins and keeping fingers crossed) I followed the directions.

In a mixing bowl add 1 1/2 cup flour, 1tsp, baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup butter (room temp), 1 large egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/3 cup buttermilk.  Mix all together.  It will be dry at first and you’ll need to scrape the sides as it mixes.  But it will smooth out.  Then add another 1/3 cup of buttermilk and mix until smooth and blended.

Spoon batter into the cupcake paper filling about 2/3s full.

Bake 15-18 minutes until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.  Put the cupcakes on a cooling rack to cool fully.

Next I made the lemon curd.  I bought some lovely organic lemons from our new local co-op for this.

You will need one cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, one cup sugar, 1/2 cup of melted butter, and 2 large eggs.  Use a fairly large bowl for this as the curd tends to expand near the end of cooking.  Mix all of this together.

Now King Arthur recommends cooking in the microwave one minute at a time with stirring in between.  This is because every microwave is different and it could be done quickly or if your microwave is old like ours it can take awhile.  But you need to stir each time.   As it gets close to being done it will rise up quickly in the bowl so I found towards the end I was doing 20 second intervals.

The curd should coat the back of the spoon like a syrup.

This needs to chill for a few hours to thicken.  Another reason to do it the day before.  Once the curd is ready it should look a bit like this does.

The recipe mentions a cupcake corer.  Clearly I need to learn more as I had never heard of such a thing.  I just used a knife to take out plugs of cupcake which left little cones for the curd.

Spoon in the curd into the little cones.

I then put the cupcakes into the fridge to set some more while I did the meringue.  For the meringue take 3 egg whites and 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar and put it into a clean mixing bowl.

Whip until you have soft peaks.

Add 1/8 tsp of salt and mix it in.  Then add 6T of sugar, one at a time, as the mixer whips it into a lovely meringue.  I did this on high speed until I got the stiff peaks and it was “light and billowy” per King Arthur.

It mentions then piping it onto the cupcakes.  One that just leads to more dishes and two I like the random peaks, just like the pie.  So I spooned the meringue onto the cupcakes and created the peaks.

Then place under the broiler until golden.  This happens very quickly as I learned today as, ahem, some came out more toasted than the others.  Oops.

Once you slice into this lovely lemony dessert the curd should be slightly runny but not too much.

Well worth the effort.  Though the only bad part about this is it only makes 12!  Sigh. 

Duct Tape Purse

This past week was the spring school holiday for our kids and I like to come up with different “theme” days for them.  Thursday was craft day and I was looking for inspiration for crafts and I found a few blogs talking about duct tape purses.  I have to admit I did not realise how popular this had become and the wide variety of duct tape that was on offer.  It’s a bit mind boggling!

I took my inspiration for my daughter’s purse from All Things Thrifty.  So off we went to the store to pick out what duct tape the kids wanted to use.

My daughter had an old shirt that didn’t fit anymore so it was perfect for this project.  I recommend using a tray as well for this.  And a good pair of scissors.  Sounds like a no-brainer but I grabbed our worst scissors and as we were doing this at a park with a picnic we ended up struggling a bit.  We’ll know better next time!

Cut out a piece of fabric that is the size you would like for the purse.  This will be folded in half to cover both sides of the purse.  Tape it down on the backside of the tray.

Take the chosen duct tape and cut to length you need and tape it down in the pattern you want on the fabric.  My daughter wanted horizontal stripes for her purse.

Trim the tape it is all even on the edges.  Remove from the tray and fold in half.  If you used good scissors the fabric would have been cut smoothly and you won’t have to worry about the tape sticking together.  I didn’t do that so there were some tricky moments!

Tape up the sides.  Here is the trickiest part of the whole thing.  The bottom corners need to be tucked in to square off the bottom and sides.  The outside and inside need to look like this:

Next tape up the bottom and inside seams to strengthen and finish off the edges.  Also, tape along the top to finish that edge.

My daughter chose to have fabric handles so we took the sleeves of the old shirt and cut them into strips.  Then we braided them and attached them with tape to the inside of the bag.

And before you know it you have a really cute bag!

For my son we did a little satchel that followed this from Craft-Create-Connect.  We used a sandwich ziploc bag for him as he just needed a small bag for Lego.  He was so excited they had Angry Birds! 

Pak Choi Saga Continues

I didn’t have high hopes for this as the feedback we received was you couldn’t transplant pak choi.  Low and behold, it’s looking fabulous!    We stepped it up to a larger pot then have since put it between the broccoli and fingers crossed it is doing well.    Can’t wait to eat it!

Leeks and Onions

The other day I had the grand plan of recreating a dish I had in Paris.  It was an unmitigated disaster.  The key ingredient was the artichoke.  I had never prepared one before and I may never again.  The dish was a lovely tender bottom half of an artichoke with amazing smoked salmon, a poached egg, and a mustard sauce.  The last three I was able to do.  However we now have a pot that is blackened and I’ll have to attack that with oven cleaner.  I hope that works.  I was steaming the artichoke and it ran out of water.  Sigh.

So I moved on to other things.  I decided it was time to get the leeks and onions into the ground.  We like to rotate our little crops each year and that was the plan for the leeks and onions.  Mother Nature had other plans as one bunching onion plant is regrowing and some seeds that didn’t sprout last year are coming up now.  Which is pretty cool but that bed is staying the same as last year.

For the leeks I dig out two small trenches to plant them in and mix in organic compost and fertilizer.  A lot of gardeners will bury the leek as it grows to blanch it.  I only do that a little bit until the leeks are pretty sturdy as I like the dark green.  More flavour.

I plant them carefully and they are so delicate at this point.  Hard to believe they can get up to 5 feet long and you can use them as bats. 

The bunching onions are much easier.  After mixing in the compost I just plug them in willy nilly.  I left space to plant more seeds in a few weeks to stagger the harvest.

Our garden is well on it’s way now with the bulbs and flowers starting to grow.  The peas are poking through and I think spring is finally here to stay!