Cook, Eat, Repeat.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Holy Goat Cheese!

Recently one of my best friends returned from North Carolina where she lives and we spent a lot of time together, we both enjoy cooking and she had been talking to me about making cheese. All the talk about curds and whey threw me off, I didnt know half of how to make any of that stuff and it sounded more complicated then I was ready to embark on. But the other day I was browsing the internet, as I do frequently, and I came across a step by step blog on how to make goat cheese. We LOVE goat cheese at the house so I figured it seemed simple enough and began my journey towards making cheese. Now, I went to a health food store to find goats milk, but I couldnt find any, so I reached out to my friends and was informed I could purchase some at Trader Joes (TJ's for short), so I had to wait another couple days to go get my milk! Finally I bought some and came home to begin my adventure. The first thing I had to do was heat the milk to 180 degrees so that it would be hot enough to curdle once I added in a 1/4 cup of lemon juice. Well... I added that in and it didnt seem to do much, so I added some more and it began to curdle a bit. I then strained it with cheese cloth and caught all of my curds!

I had to strain it a couple times to really get all of the curds.


Once all the curds were collected I had to tie up the cheese cloth and hang it so it would drain properly.

After I let it drain for an hour I mixed in some spices and put it on a cracker!

Hot damn that cheese was good.

Ingredients:
1 Quart goats milk
1/4 cup lemon juice (add more if curdle doesnt happen)


Instant Vanillia Pudding ChocolateChip Cookies & Greek Pasta

I feel like chocolate chip cookies are a staple in most peoples lives, whether your mom made them for you as a kid, or if you grew up and realized that making these babies was an easy out in a potluck. Anyways, I've put myself into a rut, in which the only way my chocolate chip cookies turn out fantastic is if I make them in bar form. I want to break out, I want to break freeeee from these god damn cookie bars that seem to be haunting me. So... I found a recipe, strange but reassuringly good that I was ready and destined to try. Now, I understand why my cookies suck unless in bar form, I'm impatient. Its because I dont soften the butter, I melt it. Sigh. I know, but we didnt have a microwave and it was me versus the stove. This time I bought the butter and never put it in the fridge so I wouldnt have to face this issue. If you cant solve it, work around it. So this recipe had one quirk which made it pop, instead of added in hella granulated sugar, you add in a packet of vanilla instant pudding (I was tempted to do chocolate but I stuck to the recipe, next time ladies and gents). I made the batter and instantly couldn't stop myself from eating it. It was so much better then any i'd tried before. So I started making the cookies, some small, some big, some firm some chewy. This recipe is fool proof to get you some of the best damn cookies you can make.

Vanilla Instant Pudding Chocolate Chip Cookies


Recipe:
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
2 1/4 cups flour
1 box (3.4 ounces) vanilla pudding
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Makes up to 44 cookies.

I recently got some pasta from Greece that my neighbor brought back with her and I couldnt wait to eat it! But alas, the woman who usually makes this for me is a skilled cook and I had large shoes to fill. So... I tried to make it my own. Didnt work. I put a lot of garlic and olive oil on it and... well it tasted terrible. So... I put the rest in my fridge to wait until I found the correct opportunity to eat it with. PESTO! Yesss, I went into this health food market looking for Goats milk and found some tasty other things, and one of them was pesto. So I made a cold pasta salad with it and then utilized the other things I bought, some Sicilian Hot sausage and my classic side dish of spinach and onions.

Greek Pasta with Spinach and Sausage




Friday, January 1, 2010

Carrots, Strawberry-Meyer Lemon Ice Cream and Green Beans

The holidays! Ooooh the Holidays, they were great, I got to spend time with my family, I drank copious amounts of wine and got so many good things to cook with. I know. Im excited too. I have not taken as much time to cook as I probably should have but I did create some strange things.

So I got home very late at night after being out with my friends and it was maybe 2 or 3 in the morning and I really wanted something to eat, but not because I was hungry, but just to eat. I scrounged around the fridge and discovered that there was barely any food for me to make. I found some random juices and baby carrot. So I got the idea to julian some carrots and just stir fry them around a little bit and maybe give them an Asian flare. So I threw them in a pan, added some minced garlic, garlic chilis, sriracha and some soy sauce. Im sure there were some other random things added in throughout the process but I cooked them carrots until they were a little tender and then started to munch! I had created a masterpiece! A fantastic little dish that had enough spice and the salty flare I was looking for. It will be a fantastic side dish to something I make!

Carrot Creation


Looks a bit strange but I promise it was delicious.

One of my gifts for Christmas was an ice cream maker! So I really wanted to make some ice cream, and at first I really wanted to make green tea ice cream. Then I decided I would make some strawberry ice cream! Part of the process of extracting the juices from the strawberries it that you have to put it in lemon juice and and it softened the strawberries and creates a syrup of sorts. But I really liked how it tasted with the lemon juice so I decided to make strawberry Meyer lemon ice cream instead! Promising I know. Now the recipe I was following didnt have any eggs in it, but a lot of the recipes for ice cream I've read about include some part of the eggs. So I researched what they did in the ice cream... and decided to throw one in. Why not?

I made the ice cream batch and then realized I needed to wait for the bowl in the ice cream maker to freeze. So... I hade to wait another 24 hours. But finally the next day I was able to make it! It kinda comes out like a thick soft serve and then you have to freeze it. It turned out SO GOOD. It was rich and creamy and the lemon gave it sort of a sorbet tang.

Strawberry-Meyer Lemon Ice Cream


I invited people over for a small ice cream party.


I've been cooking a lot with soy sauce because I really like how it sinks into whatever your cooking with it. I have some green beans and some shrimp and i decided to do sort of a stir fry with garlic and onions minced. I added in some soy sauce, sea salt, garlic powder, about half a cup of water and some brown sugar. It turned out really delicious, I couldnt stop eating it! I'm really starting to get this little flare down.

Stir Fried Green Beans and Shrimp


mmmmm


Overall some delicious treats.