Eating Local: Day 1
June 28, 2009
7:33 am
Kris is in the kitchen. She has been searching through the pantry for 8 minutes.
I’m kidding. (There were, like, 2 people who got that BBUK joke.) Alright, I didn’t get up until 8:20. Which is when I jumped out of bed throwing my clothes on, stuffed a handful of almonds in my mouth and ran off to kettlebells.
Not a particularly auspicious start to my 100 days of eating, drinking and feeding my dog with local stuff.* First off, almonds aren’t grown locally and secondly it’s one of my normal breakfasts. I put exactly no thought into it. Might seem like I’m just going about life as usual rather than making a life changing decision to affect my life and body. But, for me, that’s sorta the point.
This dog has no idea the bone he’s enjoying with such fervor is from a local cow 20x his size. (Sorry about the focus – he moves about a lot.)
Hey! Look at us gettin’ all inspired.
June 24, 2009
I am probably the luckiest girl in the world. I don’t mean to be, I just am. I’m friends with several of the best chefs in Minnesota. Not only are they great cooks, but they have created philosophies and ways of doing thing which makes each them completely unique and wonderful. To top that off they even love to teach, which means that I get to call them up and say, “Hey, what’s on your mind? Anything you want to share with some of my favorite cooks?”
When I asked my friend Scott Graden, owner/chef of the award winning New Scenic Cafe in Duluth that question and he answered, “Inspiration is everywhere and it’s so much more important than recipes and ingredients. I’d like to talk about that.” In my head I shouted, “woo hoo!” Then we chatted and brainstormed on how to go about doing a workshop on inspiration, came up with a plan and that he promptly forgot.
I, however, did not. It turns out that the things that inspire him most are the people and the land around him. Hence, on our weekend in Duluth we got to meet with Stephen Dahl his herring fisherman and David Rogotzke his maple syrup maker and salmon fisherman.
It really was the best adult field trip for cooks ever.
We started off the day at the New Scenic Cafe where Scott was kind enough to talk to us about his experiences as a restaurant owner and chef. He went over where everything came from, how it happened and why he made the decisions he did. He gave us an amazing insight into the tenacity and drive he had to bring the Cafe to what it is today. (This included living in the garage for 5 years.)
Cheesecake Made from Homemade Cheese
April 26, 2009
When we were in Portugal we kept hearing about the local cheesecake that was made from fresh white cheese into small tarts with a pastry crust. Needless to say, this sounded like a good thing to me. However, we never ran across one. Boo!
Needless to say, the idea stuck with me. I had to try and make one up – even though I never tasted the one it was based on. I liked the notion of a cheesecake that was more like a cross between cheesecake and souffle. It sounded light and nice, not as heavy as what we consider cheesecake to be. That’s just what it turned out to be. Yea for us!
The most surprising thing about them is that, well, first, that they turned out well on the first try and second, how completely clean and fresh they tasted. The cheese was made on Sunday and the cheesecakes on Monday, so there wasn’t any shelf time between the time the cheese was made and turned into cheesecake. Nor was there any sort of processed commercial taste about them.
Another really nice thing about the cheesecakes was that they highlighted some really stellar Minnesota dairy products; milk from Cedar Summit Farm and butter from Hope Creamery. Each left it’s stamp on the finished product and we were very grateful.
I think you should try it yourself.
Made Up Cheesecake
Simple Fresh Cheese
1 gallon whole milk
1/4 c vinegar
1 t salt
cheese cloth
Cheese really couldn’t be any easier to make. Basically, you heat up the cheese and then add in an agent (i.e. vinegar) that helps the milk fats bind together to form cheese and separate from the liquid.
First you want to sterilize your equipment. Bring some water to boil in a pot big enough to hold a gallon of milk. Cover tightly and let boil for 15 minutes or so. Add in a scraper and a slotted spoon and boil them for 5 minutes or so. Empty out pan and return to stove.
Let cool for a minute or two and pour in milk. Heat milk over medium heat stirring regularly, so that you don’t scorch the bottom, until the the milk gets heated to 185°f. Add in vinegar a little at a time until milk starts to coagulate. (You will notice that this is happening when you see little linty bits of milk on the spoon you’re using.)
Scoop out curds with slotted spoon into colander lined with several layers of cheesecloth. Gather up the edges of the cloth and hang over sink until drained. Transfer to a container and eat or refrigerate.
Crust
1 packet graham crackers or equal amount of animal crackers
2 – 3 T butter close to melted
1/4 – 1/2 t cinnamon
Cheesecake Itself
3/4 of fresh cheese
4 oz goat cheese, softened
2 eggs
3 egg yolks
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cream
2 t really good vanilla or seeds from one bean
pinch or 3 of salt, depending on how salty your cheese ended up
Preheat oven to 350°f.
Process graham crackers or animal crackers until all crumbled up. Drizzle with 2 T of butter and cinnamon. Process until crackers stick together when pinched. If it doesn’t get there add in more butter in small increments until it does. Press crusts into the bottom of 3 small spring-form pans. Place on a jelly roll pan. Bake in oven for 10 minutes. Let out to cool.
In a food processor, process cheeses until smooth. Add in eggs and yolks one at a time, processing in between. Add in sugar, cream, vanilla and salt.
Pour into pans. Return to the oven and bake until firm in the middle about 30 – 40 minutes. Top with blackberry sauce or eat plain. Enjoy!
Blackberry Lovin’ (recipes for berry crumble\sauce)
April 23, 2009
I love blackberries. I’ve been a little bit obsessed by them since visiting Portland last summer and eating them growing wild straight off the bush. It was so perfect. (Insert big sigh here.)
It just so happens that I have some blackberries. I have quite a lot of them. Oh gosh, I get to play. Crumble. I want crumble. Doesn’t blackberry crumble just sound beautiful?
A funny thing happened while I was making the crumble though. At the time, I was also making cheese. I’d been wanting to make fresh cheese and turn it into cheesecake for awhile. I decided that now was the time. (That was a really awkward sentence. Sorry for inflicting that on you.) And really – if the blackberry crumble happened to be as good as it turned out to be then why not re-create it as a sauce for the cheesecakes? Oh many x yum.
So that’s what I did.
Blackberry Crumble
2 – 3 T butter, very soft
1/3 c flour
1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c oats
pinch salt
1 pt blackberries, room temp
1 t vanilla
1/3 c sugar
1/4 c wine jelly *
1 – 2 t corn starch
1/2 pt blackberries, frozen (keeps them whole through cooking)
vanilla ice cream
Preheat oven to 350°f.
Pinch together crumble ingredients with your fingers and set aside.
Mix together vanilla, sugar wine jelly and cor starch. Add to the berries and toss gently until berries are coated. Divide them into ramekins and top with the crumble.
Put them in the oven and bake for 25 – 35 minutes, until berry mixture is bubbling and topping is browned. Let cool for a few minutes, topped with some vanilla ice cream and enjoy the heck out of it.
Sauce Version
1 1/2 pt blackberries
1 t vanilla
1/3 c sugar
1/4 c wine jelly *
1 – 2 t corn starch
Combine all ingredients except blackberries in a saucepan over medium heat. Heat until all ingredients are liquid and combined. Lower heat and fold in blackberries. Let simmer gently until sauce thickens up. Cool and top something with it.
* Wine Jelly
4c wine
2c sugar
juice from one lemon
1 packet low sugar pectin
Cook sugar, lemon and wine together over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Add pectin and stir to dissolve. Ladle into jars, seal and refrigerate. (You can also prepare the jars for canning, but storing them in the refrigerator or freezer is just fine.)
As for the cheesecake, you’re just going to have to wait for that.
xoxo
- Kris
Cooking MN: It ain’t all hot dish and lutefisk up here.
March 10, 2009
Hi.
I’m so impressed with my cooks that I have to share. I’m sorry if you don’t care, but we are doing some good cookery up in this tundra, pardon-my-french, please.
First off, in case you don’t know, I have a group now. (Hello group!) They can cook. (I love that they can cook!) So I set them up with Scott Pampuch at Corner Table, who happens to be able to cook as well, in fact he’s a James Beard semi-finalist-for-best-chef-in-the-Midwest-cook. And then he and my cooks went to town making a really nice meal.
We divided them up – color circles on name tags mean something sometimes. They were given leaders and joined; team meat, team starch, team veggie, team dessert and team egg. (Once the people knew what was going on… they couldn’t help but make a team egg to be coached by Chef Pampuch. The man knows his way around an egg.)
And this is what happened (approximately) – recipes (not even close) for apple caramel bread pudding and eggs on toast to follow.
Leftover Biscuit Pudding
December 8, 2008
It never happens. There are never leftover biscuits. Never. And yet there they are: stale biscuits. In my defense, I’ve been alone in the house, and really not home much so there were almost a dozen biscuits that went uneaten. I figured I’d just take them to my meetup group and something would happen to them then. But no. So they came back home with me. ”Screw it,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just make bread pudding with them.” By golly it was tasty.
It might even be worth, dare I say it, letting biscuits go stale. (Huh, lightning actually didn’t strike me dead just then.)
Biscuit Bread Pudding
9 small biscuits, broken up
1/3 c dried fruit – apricots, chopped or golden raisins (if you got them/want them)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c cream
2 c milk
1 T vanilla
2 T brandy
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 cream
1 1/2 T sugar
maple syrup
Preheat oven to 325°f.
Put biscuits with dried fruit mixed in in a loaf pan. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Pour over the biscuits and dunk down the pieces that are sticking up. Place pan into a larger pan. Put into oven, pour enough water into the larger pan to make it half way up the bread pan.
Cook for 45 min to 1 hour, pudding is done when liquid stuff has solidified and looses it’s shine. When it’s done, take bread pan out of the water and place it on a wire rack. Let cool for 30 minutes to an hour. Whip cream and sugar together until the cream stands in hard peaks. Slice up slices of the pudding, drizzle with maple syrup and dollop with whipped cream. Enjoy!
Love always,
MrsMarv
Jamnation: you too, can can.
October 10, 2008
I grew up in the age when Grandmas were magic.
You would travel great distances (any distance is great when you’re 4), then you get to play on tractors and sing to pigs (you were told to stay away from them because they were mean, so you would sing to them to try to make them happier so they wouldn’t be so mean) until cousins come to visit and made fun of you so you had to hide in the kitchen with Grandma. She’d give you a cookie or two in an empty bakelite powder case and you’d play a game of making up what magic potions could be in all the the different colored jars in the pantry and take little bites all the way around the cookie in a circle putting it back in the bakelite case after each bite all while humming to yourself and swinging your legs out as far as you could.
Well, maybe this was just me. Yeah, lets just say that was me. I sang to pigs. So…
Later, when I was a starving art student. I’d visit and as I was leaving Grandma’d grab me, take me down to the basement and load me up with frozen mini-loaves of quick breads and random other foods she had preserved and stashed away for later.
Putting up food. It’s such a good phrase. It means that starving art students get to eat. And frankly, bad economy or good, there’s few things cheerier in the middle of winter then opening up a can of something you made when there were big puffy clouds in a cyan blue sky. So yum!
Once again, sometimes the old ways are the best ways. It really just makes sense to make the most of the food you’ve grown yourself or bought locally from people who are growing really good stuff while it’s the best it can be. Enter the art of canning.
Canning – you probably have an opinion about it. Perhaps you love it. Or perhaps you think it’s too old fashioned, too much work or just too scary. Scary, it kinda is. If do something careless or are just plain old unlucky botulism can occur. Now to put those chances into perspective, Wikipedia says that in the US there is, “An average of 110 cases of botulism are reported each year in the United States. Of these, approximately, 72% are infant botulism, and 3% are wound botulism.” This means that there are 28 cases a year in adults who aren’t black tar heroin users. (I’m just going to assume you aren’t.) It goes on to say that the mortality rate is now down 2%. (It does have to be treated though, or you’re more likely to die than live.)
So, there are rules. There are always rules. It happens. Rule #1: pay attention to your ph level! Things that are higher in acid don’t need to be canned with as stringent resources as those that aren’t. (For a little fun fact, pumpkins vary in ph level from pumpkin to pumpkin so you won’t find people willing to tell you that you can can it safely.) Never fear, there is a guide, a book, promptly dubbed the ‘blue ball book’ in my house has a chart (I’m sure you can also find them online) of what foods have a higher ph level than others. Things like lemons, rhubarb and plums have a high ph level and need less help in keeping bad bacteria out.
Rule #2: practice safe can! Clean your cans and then submerge them in simmering water until you use them. This has the benefit of warming up cans so that a warm liquid won’t crack them and killing of little bacterium.
Now you have a few different choices of how technical you would like to get in your canning. You can refrigerate, freeze or seal your cans. If you refrigerate, just stick your stuff in a prepared can (you really should clean and simmer) seal them up – your jam should last a few weeks. Freezer jam is just what you think it is, fill up a container and stick it in the freezer, when you want to use it just defrost it.
For more information on canning just go to freshpreserving.com and they’ll hook you up.
That’s about it. The only other technical thing you need to know (for jams only) is about pectin (as well as the whole canning process thing.) Pectin is a naturally occurring chemical in most plants. It’s a fibrous part of the cell walls which helps bind cells together and regulate water. Most commercially available pectins are derived from orange peels and apple skins. You can find pectin in the canning section of grocery stores. I’m still playing with pectin in my jam recipes to figure out just how solid I want to make the, hence the pectin I’m saying to put in is super subjective and you might want to play on your own.
Spring & Fall Applesauce
Lemon Blueberry Bubble Bread
June 30, 2008
I love creating something out of nothing. It’s funny, because one could reasonably argue that my life is about creating nothing out of nothing. When the power goes out, my work no longer exists. Perhaps that’s why I’m so partial to baking bread. It’s something out of nothing – that brings people joy. You don’t need much in the way of resources. Bit of flour, water, heat and time and you’re good to go. I’m convinced that if you have a warm loaf of bread all is right with the world.
It’s love… really.
Um, yeah. This worked quite well.
So, perhaps my work is not nothing out of nothing. If (by incredibly abstract extension from bread-making) it’s love, then it transcends medium. A case that may prove this point is Figs With Bri creator and author, Bri Brownlow. She is one of the many kindly people who has invited the world into her life through the words that she writes and the food that she eats. The grateful people who read what she writes have answered back. When Bri wrote about her recurrence of cancer they arose out of the nothing to help. Which means that, while all is not right with the world, it’s not crap either.
Along with the fundraiser there’s a CLICK photo contest, in honor of Bri. Photos are to feature the color yellow which made me think of my chubble bread. Bri made this recipe of mine (with her own modifications) a few months ago and talked about making a sweet version. I’ve thought about this as well and while a most appropriate version would have featured figs and brie, I chose to go with lemon, blueberry, pecan and mascarpone cheese. (It’s decidedly lighter and healthier than it’s predecessor.)
CLICK – that’s the zest. Zest is good.
The bread worked well. When it was done, we (Marv and I) decided it was good, but needed a bit of glaze to polish it off. Yeah… that was more good.
Please, join me in sending your best wishes to Bri and eating good bread.
Love, always.
MrsMarv
That’s right, when life gives you lemons – make bread.
Sponge:
1 t active dry yeast
1/2 c warm water 105°f to 115°f
3/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a large bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until very bubbly and doubled, about 45 minutes.
Dough:
1 t active dry yeast
1 c warm water, 105°f to 115°f
3 T olive oil
Sponge, above
1/4 c honey
1/4 c dried milk
3 1/2 – 3 3/4 c unbleached all purpose flour
2 t kosher salt
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a small bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 5 to 10 minutes. Using a heavy-duty mixer, add the dissolved yeast, honey, dried milk and olive oil to the sponge in the mixer bowl; mix in with the paddle attachment until well blended. Add in salt. Add in flour 1/4 c at a time – when you get to 3 cups add flour slower checking it until dough stops being very sticky and is only slightly sticky.
Change to the dough hook and knead at medium speed until the dough is soft, velvety and slightly sticky, 3 to 4 minutes. At this point you will be able to pull the dough up into peaks with your fingers. Finish by sprinkling 1 T of flour on your work surface and kneading the dough briefly. Transfer to a bowl lightly coated with olive oil and cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled 1 1/2 hours, or so.
Stuffs:
6 oz marscapone cheese, frozen then cut into small chunks
1 c pecans
1c blueberries
1/3 c sugar
zest from 2 – 3 lemons
3 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
Just before the rise is done, prep and toss together all stuffs ingredients in a large bowl. Coat the mixture with oil.
Stuffs & Second Rise:
Put a coating of stuffs in an empty wide bowl. Empty out bread on a non-sick surface. Shape into an flat rectangle, approximately 1/2″ – 1″ thick. Using a pizza wheel, cut loaf into inch wide strips. They do not need to be uniform. Then cut off one inch ends and put them into the stuffs bowl. Toss dough cubes into the stuffs mixture and gently coat them. Add in more stuffs periodically so that they stay separate.
Divide mixture into your baking pans. I generally do two pie plates but you can do loaves, cake pans or even muffin tins. Once you have dough in pans cover with plastic wrap and leave for second rise in a warm area. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Baking:
Preheat oven to 400°f. Brush top with olive oil and bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. (If top starts to brown too much, place on top shelf of your oven.
Glaze
1/4 c powdered sugar
2 oz marscapone cheese, melted
1 T lemon juice
Whisk all together and drizzle over bread. Enjoy!
Makin’ Other People’s Stuff
May 28, 2008
Several weeks ago, Marv made the observation that we never had a wedding cake. I really couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember the cake that he made, considering I clearly remember looking up to see the top layers slowly gaining speed as they slid off their base. Doing the whole wedding reception ourselves had seemed like a good idea. (We tend to do things like this.) For some reason, we also wanted to have it where we lived, in an illegal loft space in ghetto central, with bullet holes through the windows, prostitutes on the street and whatnot. We even briefly considered having a bbq out on the roof but there was no telling who or what would be wandering through the alley so we decided to have Sunday brunch inside. (Prostitutes, pushers and pimps generally sleep in on Sundays. Preachers have somewhere else to be. The street would be relatively hassle free for our people.)
Yep, this sign was in the alley. It is my all time favorite handmade sign. (This one is a close second.)
Regardless of our highly questionable logic, we did have the skills to pull this off. Marv had recently retired (at age 27) from being a chef. At his last cooking job he worked 80 – 100 hour weeks for almost a year at a bakery/cafe and had proven that he could cook brunch in his sleep – with a crazy woman screaming at him if need be. But not this crazy woman. I was running around getting everything else but food done. Oh, and it was 105°f out. I was having problems just wearing clothes, therefore generating more heat by screaming was absolutely out of the question.
Marv was a rock. Not only did he crank out a half dozen different kinds of muffins, several salads and sandwiches (on bread he baked, of course) but he also took on making a flourless almond cake he was going to make for a wedding while at the bakery. The wedding got called off, so he never made it and when we decided to do the reception ourselves, he said he wanted to make the cake that got away. My response was, “Dude, you’re doing the baking, make what you want.” Little did I know that chocolate ganache + 105°f = very slidey cake.
Hunka Hunka Burning Love Cookies
February 10, 2008
I don’t really do the Christmas cookie thing. I make a couple of things that couldn’t even remotely be considered cookies for Christmas but that’s about it. I’ve always been mildly in awe of people who really go out and do a whole production line of cookies and send them off around the globe. Kyndell, my favorite black belt, does. A week before Christmas I got to watch as she did her her cookie thing. She made her two staples, Chocolate Toffee Cookies and Eggnog Kringela as well as some Gingerbread Cookies and my Amaretti Divine. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the opportunity to post before Christmas. Well, would have been unfortunate but I just can never leave well enough alone, anyway.
Kyndell wields whisk with kung fu grip!
My boy loves the heat. He can’t eat a damn thing with out some heat in it. He kills everything from perfectly excellent cream sauces to hash browns with tobasco sauce. I haven’t had a breakfast with him in almost 20 years where I haven’t felt like I was swimming in tobasco. I say you need to be a bit more judicious with your heat; add it to things to make them taste better, not just cover them up.
Especially if you’re mixing in some heat in with the chocolate. Oh, what a heavenly combination that is. I start to tear up just thinking about it. Yum. Yum. Yum.
Flash forward to Kyndell’s cookie marathon. Every year we receive Chocolate Toffee Cookies from Kyndell. And every year, I’m not that interested. They’re good, but they’ve never made me want to cry. Then I tried them straight from the oven. They are, bar none, the best cookies I’ve ever tasted straight from the oven. They’re like fresh baked brownies with a perfect crispy edge. They’re warm and gooey and rich and…. deadly. So, why not make them even better by jacking them up with some smoky hot chili powders and chocolate chips? I’m thinking they might make my boy some seriously happy for valentines day. (If the boy is happy, everybody’s happy. Yea!)
My guess would be that these are not everyone’s cup of tea so below is the original recipe from Bon Appetit with Kyndell’s corrections in parenthesis. And then below that, I’ve put my hijacked version. (It has pictures!)
Feed me! 
