Homemade Ricotta Cheese

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by Caroline


Years ago, the summer between Tony’s and my marriage and my first pregnancy, we travelled in Italy with good friends, gorging on art and wine and food.

In Bologna, we ate in a small restaurant that was dominated by a dark wood, marble-topped hutch. It held bowls of beautiful antipasti: roasted peppers, olives, ricotta cheese, and more. The waiter brought us a selection while we waited for our entrees, and we ate the sweet, creamy ricotta by the spoonful. It was unlike anything I’d ever had before; as similar to American grocery store ricotta as clotted cream is to Dannon yogurt.

Making it at home turns out to be so simple a child could do it (though my children don’t like the stuff, so they stay clear; all the more for me, I figure). And it only takes about ten minutes. Mine might not be quite as delicious as that Bologna ricotta, but that had a whole lot of atmosphere going for it that I can’t really reproduce at home. But still, I just find it incredibly satisfying to go from milk and cream to cheese in such a short period.

Last night, we ate it on pizza with caramelized onions and figs; tonight we’ll add it to our pasta; tomorrow I’ll spread it on my breakfast toast. How else do you eat fresh ricotta?

The recipe:
2 quarts whole milk
1 c cream
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp lemon juice (I just used the juice of one lemon)

Line a large sieve with a layer of cheesecloth or a thin dishtowel and place it over a large bowl.

Bring the milk, cream, and salt to a boil in a heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. The milk can go from nearly-boiling to boiling over very quickly, so don’t totally ignore it. Add the lemon juice and reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring constantly, until the mixture curdles. This only takes 2 or 3 minutes, but mine didn’t seem quite curdled enough at that point, so I simmered it for 4 or 5 minutes longer.

Now, pour the hot milk mixture into the lined sieve and let it drain for an hour. Serve as is, or cover and refrigerate.

(Save the milky liquid that’s strained off the curds and use it in your next batch of pancakes or bread).

Pear Blueberry Cobbler

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by Caroline

Last week’s CSA fruit share brought us pounds and pounds of Seckel pears, beautiful brown pears ranging in size from a large cherry to a more traditional fist of pear. I’ve never cooked with Seckel pears before and I found lots of recipes that feature them peeled, cored, poached and then crowning a tart, their stems poking up: gorgeous, but way too much effort for me right now.

I considered pear bread, but with my parents in town, I wanted to make something new. So, I poked around some more and eventually found this terrific cobbler recipe, which uses dried blueberries and cornmeal biscuits. A winner! The biscuits are so good, this recipe’s worth saving just for them, but the combination of crunchy cornmeal biscuit, sweet pear and tart dried blueberry is really fabulous.

For the biscuits:
1 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal (medium grind)
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2/3 cup chilled heavy whipping cream

Pear filling:
6 pounds firm but ripe Seckel pears, Taylor Gold pears, or Bosc pears, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch pieces (about 12 cups)
1 cup apple juice
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon (scant) coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced
1 1/2 cups dried wild blueberries (9 ounces)
Vanilla ice cream

For biscuits:
Whisk flour, cornmeal, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt in large bowl. Add chilled butter; rub in with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add cream; stir just until moistened. Gather dough together; form into 8-inch-long log. Cut log crosswise into eight 1-inch-thick rounds. Spread 3 tablespoons sugar on plate. Dip 1 cut side of each biscuit into melted butter, then dip buttered side in sugar. Place biscuits, sugared side up, on platter; sprinkle any remaining sugar over top. Cover and chill.

For pear filling:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Place pears in large bowl. Add next 5 ingredients; toss. Let stand 10 minutes, tossing occasionally.

Transfer pear filling to prepared dish. Dot with diced butter. Cover dish with foil. Bake until pears are almost tender, about 50 minutes. Remove dish from oven; stir dried blueberries into pear filling. Place biscuits atop filling. Continue to bake uncovered until filling is bubbling thickly, biscuits are pale golden, and tester inserted into biscuits comes out clean, about 35 minutes longer (biscuits may look cracked). Cool 30 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream.

Eating for Beginners: 2nd Chance Book Giveaway

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By Lisa

Like a lot of new parents, Melanie Rehak wanted to know more about the food she was cooking and serving her son. Unlike a lot of new parents, she went to work in the kitchen of applewood, an restaurant committed to local food, community, and fostering creativity among their staff–for a full year.  Along the way, she visited and worked on the farms, ranches, and cheesemaker who supplied the restaurant’s. She also was put to work at the salad station, the fish station, and the dessert station at applewood–during dinner service.   All of which helped her cope with feeding her son, who in the meantime, had become a very picky eater.

The answers she found on her journey about what to eat and why may not be unfamiliar to readers of contemporary books about food sourcing and sustainability, but the context of her quest–her family, the farmers, and staff and at applewood–is the stuff of great reading.  Rehak is an engaging narrator: open, honest, questioning, and often very funny.  She has great balance in her approach to feeding kids. She pursues her story of food sourcing and her education in the professional kitchen with persistence and such good humor and generosity that it’s hard not to love her. But it’s the people she meets and brings vividly to life that make the book truly compelling.

In fact, this book really doesn’t have much to do with eating for beginners. Although there are some great looking recipes (Pasta with Delicata Squash, Sage, and Pine Nuts, or Under the Bed Almond Cookies, for instance), it’s not a how-to.   It is about discovering who feeds us, how we can feed ourselves better, and how we can live in a more connected way.

Caroline wrote a full review last summer & I’ll be reviewing the paperback for Literary Mama later this year. But for now…I have one hardcover copy to give away.   Leave your comments by the end of day on next Friday,  10/14.

We’d love to know:

Do you have a favorite farm story?

OR

What station would you pick if you had to work in a professional restaurant

Pumpkin Coconut Milk Curry

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by Caroline

My parents are visiting this week (on the California leg of my Dad’s book tour) — and that means I am experimenting with recipes I wouldn’t make for just the four of us.

My parents (unlike my children) are eager and adventurous eaters, and while the food here ultimately matters less to them, I think, than the company (grandchildren!), they’re happy to eat just about whatever Tony or I feels like cooking. They like to cook, but I know it’s a nice break for them to be catered to; they have a great store of homegrown produce in their root cellar and freezer, but I know that what looked like an appealing bounty in August can start to feel a tiresome burden in October. Because everyone, not just the parents of young and picky eaters, gets into food ruts. Whatever breaks you out of a routine — houseguests, the change in seasons, a new recipe — is a blessing. Right now, we’ve got all three working for us, and I’m grateful.

I spotted this curry recipe a couple weeks ago, just before the first pumpkin arrived in our CSA, and have been saving it for my parents, though it’s a mild enough curry that your kids may like it, too (mine tasted it, and then ate rice with plain tofu). I’ve linked to the original and will paste in the recipe as I made it.

1 1/2 quarts peeled pumpkin or other orange-fleshed squash, chopped into 1 1/2″ chunks (from a 3-lb. squash)
About 1 tsp. kosher salt, divided
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 onion, halved and cut into half-moons
1 or 2 red or green serrano chiles, minced (adjust to taste)
1 cinnamon stick
20 fresh curry leaves (the original recipe suggests you can substitue bay leaves but I wouldn’t recommend it; just leave the curry leaves out if you can’t find them)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 can (14.5 oz.) coconut milk
1/2 lb tofu, cut into chunks (not in the original recipe, but added for extra protein)
1 cup salted roasted cashews (I happened only to have peanuts, which were fine; toasted pumpkin seeds would be nice, too)
1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice (or, in my case, as much juice as you can squeeze from half a lime)

Preparation

1. Sprinkle pumpkin chunks with 1/2 tsp. salt. Heat 1 tbsp. oil in a large nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat. Brown half the pumpkin in oil, turning once, 6 to 8 minutes; reduce heat if pumpkin starts getting dark. Transfer to a bowl and repeat with 1 tbsp. oil and remaining pumpkin. Set all the pumpkin aside in a bowl.

2. Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 tbsp. oil in another large frying pan over medium heat. Cook onion, stirring occasionally, until deep golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer half to the pumpkin- frying pan and reserve other half in a bowl.

3. Add chiles, cinnamon, and curry leaves to onion in pan. Cook, stirring often, until curry leaves are very fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add turmeric, cumin, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt and cook, stirring, until spices are fragrant, about 1 minute.

4. Return pumpkin to the pan with the onion and spices and add the coconut milk and tofu. Bring to a boil over high heat, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer until pumpkin is tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in lemon or lime juice, and add more salt to taste. Top curry with nuts and reserved onion and serve over rice.

Fall Food

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By Lisa

And just like that, summer is over. We knew it was coming, but that definitive moment, when you look at a tomato and think, I’ve had enough had not yet come. But it always comes.  At the height of summer, I think I can never get enough tomatoes, and then one day, I have.  It has something to do with a turn in the weather, being saturated by a particular food, and the fact that all food has a peak time for eating.

On Sunday night, I served the kids gazpacho, the soup they could not get enough of all summer long, and they took one slurp, made that face, and rejected it. It didn’t taste right, they said. And they were right. Though still abundant, the tomatoes are no longer at their peak, and there’s something less satisfying about facing them on a cool fall night.   There is no longer harmony between the things of summer and our table.  Then, yesterday, there was the matter of the peaches, which were still in the market on Sunday, and I sampled them, but the ones I brought home, though ripe, were dry. I tried to bake them with amaretti cookies, brown sugar, and butter, but even then, the texture was mealy.

Yesterday, it rained, soccer was canceled, and while the kids built things, I roasted: tomatoes (to freeze) , squash, carrots, fennel, raddichio, a pork tenderloin.  Today it’s sunny; tomorrow it will rain again. Bracketed by this damp weather, I’m thinking about transition food.  It’s the food that takes us into the heart of winter. It’s warm and comforting, but is just shy of the roasts and stews and gravys that we eat when it’s really cold (okay, cold for me). I’m thinking warm and colorful; earthy but not too bright; satisfying but not too heavy.  In other words, not unlike my fall sweaters.

To wit, I have on hand apples and sausages, beef for the likely return of picadillo, a bin full of leafy greens to sautee and cream, carrots, fennel, chops, makings for quiche, roasted tomatoes, roasted peppers, winter squash, fixings for warm soups, and pastas.

Tonight I plan to pull out the rest of the pork tenderloin (which was marinated in mustard, red wine vinegar, honey, and fennel), chop it roughly and serve it in warm flatbread, maybe with some roasted peppers, kale crisps, and butternut squash on the side.

In other words, we’re getting ready. But since I generally find transitions unsettling, I’d love to know: What are your favorite fall dishes, and how do you welcome the cool weather to your table?


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