CITP - Brindisi

Another cheese courtesy of the Cheese Cave (we're trying to eat them all before we have to move!).  This is a Brindisi Fontina-style cheese from a cheesemaker in Oregon that we got to pair with our salami.  It's a semi-hard cow's milk cheese, which is a range we feel pretty at home with.  It has little holes throughout (not sure why, I need to learn more about the cheese-making process I imagine), has a sharp pasture taste at first and leaves a nice, mellow aftertaste in the back of your throat.  I think I'm going to try it on some bruschetta-esque appetizers next.

CITP - Cana de Oveja

CITP, by the way, is shorthand for Cheese of the Indeterminate Time Period.  It just has the right ring to it, so I'm settled.  Now on to the cheese.

We made our second trip to the Cheese Cave in Claremont this week.  We love it; we want our own cheese cave.  We were looking for a soft cheese to pair with our Creminelli salami, and they recommended the Cana de Oveja.

A new addition to our cheese-tasting adventures

The Cana is a soft sheep's milk cheese with three distinct layers...a brie-esque (for lack of a more precise term) rind, then a creamy ring, then a more chalky center.  The center doesn't taste dry, but it certainly has the dry texture, and as the cheese ages this chalky center gets smaller.  Our specimen was aged about 3-4 weeks.  It was a great cheese to pair with our salami and French honey balsamic mustard.  My favorite thing about it was how the three layers combined to give you three variations on the same flavor as you ate it.

Whipped Cream

So funny story.  When Raelene and I first got married she was making whipped cream and I asked what she was doing.  "Making whipped cream."  "Hmpf.  How do you make whipped cream?" "Uh, by whipping the cream."  This may all seem rather intuitive, but I would like to think that the complexities of the English language and the fact that in my whole life I'd only ever had whipped cream from a can would excuse me.  But in reality, I was an idiot.  In any case, I've learned my lesson now and proper whipped cream is heavenly.  We had some fresh strawberries, some cream left over from making ice cream, and suddenly - breakfast!

somebody has been eating my whipped cream!

Whipped Cream:
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons powdered sugar

Start whipping the cream in your Kitchenaid or other blender.  Once it begins to set up an get fluffy, add the vanilla and sugar.  Don't put the sugar in too early or it won't set up...and be careful - if you whip it too long, you'll end up with vanilla butter (hey, I should try that).  I would never drink a cup of heavy cream, but eating it like this is sooooo easy, and yummy. Enjoy.

In Case of Emergency - Parisian Moutarde

Last summer, as we were wrapping up our month in Paris, we stock-piled some goodies to break out when we got home.  We've been waiting to break into our multi-flavored mustard collection for a variety of reasons, but now that we're truely homesick for France, it's time.  Tonight we opened the Moutarde de Dijon au Miel et Vinaigre Balsamique (Dijon Mustard with honey and balsamic vinegar); Raelene immediatley started throwing out French words faster than I could keep up - it was that good.  Sweet, with a stronger than subtle mustard burn in the back of your throat.  mmmmmmmm.  I'll post more as we work through each of these mouthwatering little jars of mustard gold.

Salami al Tartufo - Truffle Salami

I like truffles.  Not the chocolate kind,  the wake-up-the-pig-and-root-through-the-forest-for-'em kind.  The truffle taste in this salami isn't strong, but the aroma is just right - just enough to tease your senses and fill your nose without losing the taste of the salami.

Desserts Under Construction

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (courtesy of Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc) and Chocolate/Hazelnut Bombe (literally bombs, but more like fritters...but not quite fritelle) (adapted from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano).  I'm practicing basic ice cream bases so I can start experimenting, and practicing different dough recipes to find the right mix for a gianduia dessert I have in mind (I'm still not getting the dough as fluffy as I'm imagining).  No matter - the imperfections are still delicious!

Apple Rosemary Honey Turnovers

Here's another gem from Sara Kate at the Kitchn (follow the link for the recipe).  She puts my "I made it with what I had lying around" skills to shame.  Her recipe only says "apple," so I made two batches, one with a Golden Delicious and another with a Granny Smith.  I figured the Granny Smith would be too tart to work with the rosemary, but instead it turned out perfect.  The Golden Delicious actually came out a little bitter, so I think in the future I'll either add more sugar to see if that compensates, or go in a caramel-apple turnover direction instead.  In any case, these are great and you should give them a try.

Charcutepalooza? I'm in.

I just stumbled across this last week and I think I'm going to be ambitious and go for the main challenge and skip the apprentice stuff (I've actually done it before).  Here goes nothing!

http://www.mrswheelbarrow.com/2011/02/charcutepalooza-march-challenge-brining/

Blueberry Pancakes

Raelene recently introduced me to Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan at thekitchn.  Well, more precisely, she introduced me to her weekly emails.  I'm now completely jealous, and more importantly, excited to try some of her recipes.  The most recent comes from a kitchen tour of Chef Laurent Tourondel's country house - check out the full kitchen tour here.



Sara Kate raved about the pancakes they ate - "the best pancakes of my life" - so I figured I'd give our bag of Krusteaz mix a break and try out her recipe.  I make some mean crepes from scratch, but I've never made pancakes from scratch before. 

My 3 year old son was cooking with me and didn't see me flip
the pancakes. Once he saw them he yelled, in his panicked little
voice, "OH NO DADDY, all the blueberries disappeared!"

I adapted the recipe slightly (I didn't have orange blossom water to mix with the maple syrup, and I didn't use the 3 tablespoons of butter for cooking as some minuscule silly health-conscience assuaging concession.)  I found that the recipe itself had enough butter in it to cook without any problems, though the few I cooked with some butter to see the difference did spread out a little flatter and gained a nice, crispy texture.  You can see the whole blueberry pancake recipe here, but the most important part is not to overmix the batter as you add the wet ingredients to the dry.  I didn't understand what she meant when she warned, "[b]e careful not to overmix or the batter will break," but you'll see as it comes together.  This batter won't look like normal pancake batter, but I had no problems mixing it at all.  Here's the recipe:

1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
4 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 oz. blueberries
Makes 12 pancakes

Here are Sara Kate's directions: "Whisk the milk, eggs, and oil in a medium bowl to blend. Slowly whisk in the melted butter, making sure not to cook the eggs. Whisk the our, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk the egg mixture into the our until just combined. Be careful not to overmix or the batter will break.

"Heat a griddle or large nonstick pan over medium heat and brush the surface with 1 tablespoon of the softened butter. Using 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake, ladle the batter onto the griddle. Cook for 2 minutes. Sprinkle some of the blueberries evenly over the pancakes, then flip the pancakes over.

"Cook until the pancakes are brown on the bottom and cooked through, about 2 minutes. Repeat with the remaining butter, batter, and blueberries."

They were very delicious pancakes and they'll definitely be making encore appearances.

A Messy Kitchen is a Happy Kitchen

bwahahahahahaha!

Fritatte di Pere e di Mele

I was experimenting with some different fritter recipes trying to find the perfect one and these turned out quite nice.  Still not perfect, but I was only able to get a picture of these four before they, like their predecessors, were devoured.  Once I get the batter right I'll post my recipe.

Casalingo Salami and Gruyere

Snack time done right. 

The casalingo salami has a robust traditional flavor and the perfect texture (casalingo means "down-home," domestic, or homemade), and rightly so, as the Creminelli website says it's their family specialty.  The gruyere, our cheese of the indeterminate time period, is an outstanding compliment.  This particular edition was aged over 150 days and was sweet and buttery.  The more aged versions are less sweet, which I often prefer, but here it was the perfect snack.

If you're looking for big name cheeses, like this gruyere, or brie, parmaggiano, pecorino, etc, then Costco is a good place to look as they often have quality imports.  Also, it's been quite sometime since I had proper salami (excluding the one we had in Paris, six years or so) and I forgot that it's much easier to peel it before you slice it than afterwards.  So score the section you are going to slice up (we usually do 1/3 at a time), peel it, then slice it.  You'll enjoy your delicious meatiness much more.

Risotto ai Funghi and Salsiccia ai Porcini

I forgot to mention that I also bought several pounds of porcini sausage while I was impulse shopping the Creminelli website.  I made some risotto with porchini and shitake mushrooms to compliment the sausage and it was a very good meal.  The sausage was packed with flavor and very moist.  I'm still working on the risotto recipe though, so nothing else to share right now.

Soy Milk Pudding?

In short, no.  Raelene has been having some on-and-off dairy issues over the years and we're back into an on again, time to drink soy milk period.  She was craving pudding so we tried to make some with her Silk soy milk and it just wouldn't set up and frankly got more nasty the longer we left it (I'm talking hours, not days).  So let's hope our learning experience saves you from some terrible pudding.

Meat Heaven

I love meat.  Growing up that love found it's form in blow-your-mind-family-recipe flank steak and rebelling against my mother's vegetable lasagna.  While living in Italy that love found many new objects of affection - oh Italian deli cases!  The cured meats there were simply amazing, but unfortunately I failed to find any parallel here in the States (save some imported prosciutto crudo) and salami, et al remained my lost European tastebud lovers.  Until now - I hope.

a mouth-watering Italian deli - source: Creminelli fb photos

I came across a Creminelli fine meats ad on facebook the other day and was very intrigued (as a small business owner my primary interest in ads is seeing others' marketing techniques and wondering how much it cost...I can't remember the last time I bought something because of an ad).  And after visiting their site I couldn't resist, so I bought some (the Traditional Artisan and Gourmet Artisan packages).  Fast shipping, classy packaging, and the closest thing to authentic salami I've seen in the States. 

I'm in meat heaven, and I'll do some more posts as I eat my way out.

Schiacciata - Take 1

I took my first crack at schiacciata with rosemary and sage last night (actually over the last two days) and while it wasn't amazing, it wasn't inedible, which for bread and me is progress.  I just ordered a couple bread books off of amazon so hopefully I'll be able to report some serious progress over the next couple months.