Thursday 26 July 2012

Dessert Pierogies: Schwarzwälder KirschPieroggen -- Black Forest Pierogies

Black Forest Pierogies

Friends, I have been continuing in my efforts to make mozzarella using culture, but I have come to the conclusion that the culture I am trying to use must be dead.  The ph of my whey just will not change.  Nevertheless, my most recent failure left me with a ton of fresh ricotta and that, just the day before we were to have a dozen family members over for dinner.  What does one do with half a kilo of fresh ricotta?  Why, make cannoli, obviously.  Except, I didn't have cannoli rollers.  So I did the next best thing, I made pierogies stuffed with a cannoli-style filling and I fried them crispy.

But while I was making the pierogies, didn't a murder of crows settle down over my parent's cherry orchard and start to lunch on the fruit?  Fresh cherries, I thinks, they will go mighty fine with my pierogies.  So cannoli-filling in pierogies I marry with cherry compote, whipping cream, and dark chocolate in an unholy alliance that brings together all the best of cannoli, all the best of Poland, and black forest cake: Schwarzwälder KirschPieroggen.  


Pierogi/Cannoli Filling

Zest of 2 lemons
400g of ricotta (homemade, but the equivalent of 2 containers of strained ricotta)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped dark chocolate
2 tbsps maple sugar (granulated)

Mix together, set aside.

Pierogi Dough


4 cups flour, plus extra for rolling dough
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 tbsp melted lard or oil (obviously I used lard)
1 cup hot water

Put your water on the boil.  Mix together the flour and salt.  Whip the egg together with the fat until emulsified.  Add the egg to the flour mixture and work in well.  Add water slowly, incorporating it slowly until you've a fine non-sticky ball of pastry.  Let sit 30 mins to relax.  

Roll, cut circles, stuff, fold into half-moons.  Don't forget to pinch and crimp the edges.  Just pressing them together is a good way to lose your filling.

Set them aside on parchment paper until you're ready to fry or boil them.
  

Cherries about to be lit on FIRE

Cherry Compote

2 cups fresh picked maraschino cherries
2 tbsp drambuie
6 tbsp kirsch
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp wild strawberry jam
2 tsp cornstarch

Flambe the cherries over a high-heat, add the sugar once the flames have subsided.  Mix in that wild strawberry jam, add cornstarch, whisk rapidly over a high heat for 5 mins and reduce to simmer for 5 more minutes.  

Finish with whipping and coarse chopped dark chocolate

Sunday 15 July 2012

Pizzas with Fresh Mozzarella

Prosciutto Arugula Pizza going in

Asparagus Prosciutto coming out

Grilled Portuguese Sardines


Sardines: The hot dogs of the ocean. Thanks ocean.

Sardines, what could be simpler and more delicious?  Salt them with a coarse salt (6 to a small handful).  Let them sit for to cure for a few hours, shake off some of the salt and grill them over a bbq.  Easy, right?  Don't put olive on them when they're over the coals, not unless you like the taste of burnt oil.  When they're well crisped over the coals, toss the olive oil on them, squeeze some lemon over them.  Coarse sea salt.  I love it.   Infinitely better than Portuguese Chicken.  Being from the coast?  Lord, it's the life.  Just brilliant, simple food.

The Whey of Cheese: Fresh Mozzarella (take 1)



Making Mozzarella


It has been 1 year since I've had a cheese press, necessary bacteria, plastic and cloth cheese clothing-- all of the trappings of a cheese-maker in training.  Honestly?  I've done very poorly at it.  Every. Single. Batch. Has. Failed.  It's been pretty depressing, so I haven't written about it.  Ashamed?  Maybe a bit.  Frustrated?  You betcha.  

Honestly though, it's not always easy to balance the acidity and temperature and figure out how to cure it all.  I'm not even trying to make a complicated cheese, but the easiest: mozzarella.  I blamed the stove, I blamed my mood, I blamed everything I possibly could.  Fact is, this cheese making, well it's a bit of a science and I'm used to fiddling and adjusting, which is not the proper approach when a few degrees centigrade can ruin your whole batch.  To-date the most frustrating part has been that I haven't really understood why the cheese failed.  So I will blog it, in an attempt to adopt a more scientific approach.  

Today I decided that I would cheap out a bit.  I'd make it easy.  I did the easy mozza recipe: milk, rennet, citric acid.  Normally-speaking, using citric acid is an anathema: the acid comes from the lactic acid produced by the bacteria, it's deep in the whey.  I opted out because I thought previous problems I had were culture-related acidity issues.  Today I knew the acidity would be correct and I could practice stretching the cheese.  What did I learn?  I learned that some of the other cheeses I made, they probably would have made the cut, but I didn't know what I was looking for.

The problems today resulted from never having used citric acid before and I think I added it too late.  I dropped the acid in around 90F and the milk went to curdle immediately before rennet was in.  So, it curdled, but the rennet couldn't coagulate half the batch.  Now, it could be that this was too little rennet, liquid was too warm, too little curing time, but the standing hypothesis shall be timing.


Here's what I did today:


12 liters of milk (3 gallons)
3/4 tsp rennet (not quite to top)
1.5 tbsps citric acid


I heated the milk to 90F (30C) and added the rennet and the acid.  It curdled, immediately.  After 30 minutes of the solution curing, I checked the temp and it had risen to 100F, which is far too hot for cheese at this early stage of the curing.  

Today, I did not achieve a clean break on the curd, not even close.  And, that clean break is an essential step in curd development..  I was ready to toss the whole batch, had my hands on the handles, but when I reached down a bit further in the pot, I discovered that some of the curd had developed deeper down in the cheese (which is partially why I think it might be attributable to quantities.  I heated the curd, however, in the microwave (god forbid, right?  But, I had to try something).  I heated in in 30 second intervals, allowing the curd to divest itself of excess whey that was part of the coagulation problem.  After multiple heatings and kneadings, the curd began to stretch and I was able to knead it until it formed shiny elastic balls of mozzarella.  Stretchiness was a problem in previous batched, and is attributable to a lack or overabundance of acidity (issues I could not have identified earlier without the PH meter) or, I suspect, that I was not aware of how much kneading might be necessary.

Stretching the cheese, however, was an entirely new adventure (one that I thought previously would be the most difficult part of the process).  Once the cheese was hot enough it became malleable.  Today I learned that losing some of the whey makes it easier to stretch the cheese.  So, lesson #2: wear rubber gloves.  $#!t is hot.  Press the ball up through an open fist, letting it balloon out the top and pinch it closed on the back end.  If you pinched off a tiny piece, just bust it up and put it into the next ball.  Float them in a brine immediately after shaping.  If you place them on the counter, they will flatten out.

Today, it stretched enough from the microwave with the cheap-arse citric acid method.  Hot-water and bacterial culture methods to come later this summer.  

Caprese: Tomatoes and Basil from the Garden, hand-made Mozzarella, Olive Oil


Sunday 8 July 2012

Sour Fish Curry

The greatest endorsement for this dish comes from my daughter, who had already consumed a full dinner and clamored for a second dinner of curry and rice.  Not bad, old boy, I says to myself.  You know it's good when a stuffed 1 year old is screaming for your curry like it was ice cream.  Right?  



Serves 4-6


1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 tsps chopped ginger
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 golf-ball-sized chunk of tamarind (2 tbsps-ish)
1/2 cup tomato sauce (preferably a good homemade sauce)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
2-4 red birds-eye chilies, sliced (to taste)
1 can coconut 
2 tbsps chopped coriander (leaves and stems)
2 tbsps Vietnamese basil
1 sprig tarragon

2 fillets of turbot

butter (preferably ghee)

Garnish with lime, roasted cashews, julienned fresh ginger, Vietnamese basil

Dry roast your cumin and coriander separately in a pan on the stove and grind them in a mortar and pestle. 

Sweat the onion on a low medium heat in butter, in a covered pan, until it softens.  Toss in the spices, the garlic, the chilies, and the ginger, crank the heat up to high, and keep the mess in motion with a spoon; non-stop stirring it until the onion carmelize.

Pulverize the tamarind with a hand blender into the coconut milk and add it to the carmelized onions as well as the tomato sauce.  When the sauce is aboil, reduce to a medium and let simmer.  The sauce will be finished when it is a uniformly thick consistency, it should all hold together. 

Separately fry the fish in a high heat, also in butter, brown it off on either side -- don't worry about it breaking up, I usually cube it with the spatula.  Slip it to the sauce when the sauce it along with the herbs (saving some for the garnish).  

Garnish. Serve with rice.

Part of me wants to add fish sauce (and maybe even sesame oil) to this dish and make it more of an Indonesian massaman curry.

Monday 2 July 2012

Spanish-Inspired Clam Rice; Arroz con Almejas

Soccer Soccer Soccer

Every time I watch a soccer game, I'm taken back to the weeks Mer and I spent in Madrid during the last world cup tournament.  We watched every single game with friendly strangers from all over Europe.  Oh, and we ate.  Boy, did we eat (I gained 15lbs).

So?  Euro Cup this weekend right?  Spain won again.  And, as I did in Spain, I watched this weekend's game on a terrace drinking beer and eating olives.

So when grocery time rolled around today, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and my pregnant wife was craving seafood, which gave me an idea; a vision.  This was the vision:


It was our first day in Madrid and we went to Mercado San Miguel in search of breakfast.  What we found was this lovely clam rice dish that was the Spanish version of risotto.  We also found the motherload of cured hams, shrimp, oysters, and every manner of delicious creature, but that's a story for another day.

My version of this dish is hardly Spanish, because I can't imagine clams without dashi and miso.  Still, the flavour was similar to the dish we had in Spain, it's just that the dashi is swapped in instead of fumet and sake  is there instead of white wine; it's just a bit more subtle; a bit sweeter; earthier; truer to the clam.



Spanish-Inspired Clam Rice


Serves 2 (the recipe scales well)


1/2 White Onion (the sweeter the better); about 1 cup, chopped small
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup canaroli rice (arborio or even sushi rice will substitute)
1/4 cup cooking sake
1.5 tsps shiro miso
1.5 cups dashi
Butter

Clam Broth
1/2 cup dashi
12 clams

Finish with
3 tbsps cream
2 tbsps fresh chopped herbs (I went parsley, thyme, oregano; heavier on the parsley)
Dabs of Butter

First, add the clams and the dashi to a pot and heat until the clams open, set aside.

Sweat the onions and the garlic until soft.  Mix in the rice, sake, and miso, stirring until the miso is fully incorporated.  Add the dashi, clams and broth, cover and cook until the rice is a bit chewy.  

Finish with cream and herbs

Mercado San Miguel