Kitchen happenins & other stuff

A recent procurement of 40 lbs of Jumani apples through Bountiful Baskets led to two long days of canning.  The majority of apples were made into applesauce but I wanted to have some other items to mix up our pantry lined with applesauce, peaches, & numerous jams.  I'm not much of a chutney fan but I liked the idea of a savory apple mixture to use with meals.  Unable to find specific recipes, most of my research was spent ensuring the ingredients were safe for water canning (& canning in general) - everything else was fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants & taste.  We split the rest of the batch into curry apples (chopped apples reduced down in Simply Apple juice & curry powder) & apple rum cinnamon sauce (chopped apples reduced down in Simply Apple juice, brown sugar, rum & cinnamon - idea from Ball peach rum sauce).

We opened a jar of the curry apples to have with pork chops - success!

 Apple rum cinnamon sauce - with ice cream, it's like a party in your mouth.

If you need a successful black bean burger recipe, check it out.  The secret ingredient to keep it all glued together?  Plaintains.  Who knew.  These are delicious dish.

 Homemade ranch dressing.  This stuff is the bomb dot com.  Never again will I be able to eat store-bought ranch dressing.  Ever.

Our local community college offers "community enrichment" classes - most are one-day & for a small fee, you can learn such items as baking, cooking, jewelry-making, soap-making, etc.  I took a ceramics class in high school & was hooked but never made much of an effort to pursue it after graduating.  Note: I didn't say I was good.  Just that I really enjoy making ceramics.  Fast forward post-college in Sheridan & I find out one of the local potters is offering a 10 week, Monday night ceramics class at the community college.  We don't have assignments but instead show up & for three hours, once per week, have complete access to the clay, wheels, glazes, & kilns (our pieces are fired with the college student pieces, which is a nice perk).  Since then, I have taken the class a handful of times the past few years & I decided to take it again this semester.  I'm finally noticing improvement.  Ceramics is an art form that most certainly takes a lot of practice - our instructor, who makes beautiful pottery, mentioned it took her ten years before she felt comfortable opening her own shop.  Of course, our house now has more damn bowls than I should admit, but I think I'm getting the hang of some other shapes.  :)

When life gives you leftover (home) canned peaches...

...make a quick peach crisp with whisky peach sauce  for Sunday breakfast.

I have a whey problem

Sounds nasty!

Not really.  As I continue experimenting with yogurt-making, my biggest issue has been runny yogurt.  I want thick yogurt, like Fage, a creamy delicious Greek strained-yogurt.  Key word: STRAINED.  The company's website has a short, fun cartoon explaining the process, found here.

Well duh, I haven't been straining my yogurt, so if I wanted similar results, I would need to strain the yogurt to reduce the whey.  I'll let Wikipedia explain whey.  I don't often resort to unconfirmed sources for explanation, but type "whey" into Google & you'll be inundated with body building websites.  So Wikipedia it is.

I grabbed a recent batch of homemade yogurt (made with 2% milk), poured it into a strainer lined with a clean white handkerchief & suspended over a bowl in the fridge for a few hours.  Ta-da!  Thick, creamy, just-how-I-like-it yogurt.  But then my health conscious mind went into overdrive...."I just got rid of whey!  Isn't whey supposed to be some super-healthy product?  Is my yogurt un-healthy now??"  Back to Google I went, trying to find an answer.  Yes and no.  I did strain out a lot of calcium, along with additional vitamins.  But I also concentrated the yogurt into a more protein-packed food.  See here.

Answers weren't very clear & I still am not sure just what I'm getting rid of.  Oprah  kind of gave me an ok to strain out whey.  But like Wikipedia, I take it with a grain of salt.

I found two variations that might assist in reducing the whey & allowing me to not strain nearly as much whey out of the yogurt - adding dry milk in addition to the liquid milk before heating it & scalding the milk for a longer period of time to really force the proteins to bind.

We'll see what happens.

Who cut the cheese?

We have several homebrews on tap (I'm a lucky gal) but one of the more popular is Steve's Cascadia, which is a black IPA.

Love this pint glass from a brewery in Utah...if you look closely, underneath the name, it says "Good for What Ales You."

We're continuing to experiment with cheese-making. We have yet to taste-test the final products, but currently a Farmhouse Cheddar & a Manchego are aging in our basement.

This morning I made crepes with a homemade mascarpone filling, topped with strawberries.

Homemade mascarpone is out-of-this-world delicious. So creamy. And so easy to make. Adding a bit of powdered sugar & almond extract, we had a crepe filling in a snap.

Tonight's menu includes a Cheddar-Ale soup with homemade Naan bread.

Before I finish breakfast, I'm already planning dinner. People wonder why I run so much.

Homemade Goodies

I don't have pictures, but Steve & I are still experimenting with homemade goodies - yogurt, mozarella, mascarpone (Italian "cream cheese"), etc.  Our go-to expertise source has been this website - so many things to try!  My favorite, by far, has been the mascarpone (recipe found here).  Mascarpone is the dreamier, creamier, tastier, smoother, yummier version of cream cheese (in my humble opinion).  And it's not cheap.  I think I can find an 8-oz tub in the grocery store for approximately $7-8.  You can use it as you would cream cheese, including cheesecake (yum yum YUM); be sure to find a recipe for mascarpone cheesecake, as I'm sure it has a different liquid/protein/fat content which might change the way it reacts when baking.  I've used a Giada de Laurentis recipe with great success.

And yes, we made homemade mascarpone.  With 16-oz half-and-half, 16-oz heavy whipping cream, & 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, we created an almost identical mascarpone to the store-bought version.  I have yet to use it in cheesecake, but I did use it in a cream cheese frosting & it was DE.LIC.IOUS.  The recipe is super easy & I highly recommend giving it a try.