February 15th, 2010
Cate
Mise en place
I made these cookies just about a year ago for my sister Leah’s birthday. I saw the recipe in Bon Appetit and decided to undertake the project because Leah likes anise and black licorice flavor. It was a labor of love as anything reminiscent of licorice makes me nauseous. This also happens with pistachio and presents an interesting challenge of baking without tasting. For this reason I didn’t variate from the published recipe at all.
I did get more creative in the packaging! I used up extra anise seeds that I didn’t need for baking and tried to pull color inspiration from the other ingredients, as well as my sister’s favorite color, lime green.
Pretty packaging
What's in the box?
Obviously I didn’t try them, but Leah and Logan said they were good. Good enough to bring to a party to share with others. So if you like anise seed and chocolate then try them out.
February 15th, 2010
Cate
Nummy Cow
I’ve gotten interested in raw milk lately, since it was added to the product list of my meat & dairy buying club. I’ve found a lot of interesting articles on the topic and I feel very comfortable with the ‘risk’ involved. I will add a quick caveat here to say that all my supplier sell me clearly labeled milk that is for pet food consumption only. If I decide to do rogue things (like drinking it) once I get home, that is on my head. Once I decided to make it a permanent staple of my diet, I started searching for local, cheap(ish) milk that would be available on a fairly regular basis. The Weston Price Foundation provided me with the first few resources, but the more I searched the more local resources I found. Polk County has a lot of agriculture so Tampa Bay is lucky in that regard. Below is a map with some of the sources I’ve found. Because some of the groups are relatively private I have listed general locations. If you’d like more details, get in touch with me.
View Tampa Bay Raw Milk in a larger map
I asked Jeanell, who used to work on a raw dairy farm, what I should do with the raw milk. Whenever I get a real high quality product I want to *make* something with it. But part of the beauty of raw, grass-fed milk is that it’s delicious in its pure form. And if you use it for baking then it’s probably no longer raw (depending on the heat). None the less, she came up with a great post on what to do with it and sent me a couple auxiliary links on what to do with raw milk and also what to do when it sours.
I made my favorite pancakes with soured milk instead of buttermilk this weekend. I thought the sour taste was a bit strong, especially as I often eat them without any syrup on weekdays. I think next time I would mix in more fresh with the sour. I expect there’s enough acid to react with the baking powder even if I add fresh. I’m currently soaking rolled oats in the rest of my sour milk to make another kind of pancake in the morning, and after that I’d like to try this one from the NY Times.
Sour milk with whey seperated out
December 21st, 2009
Cate
Why yes I did. I can now upload images.
But apparently this theme has a hard time with short posts. Hm…thank god I’m often long-winded.
December 14th, 2009
Cate
Everyone knows: “read the recipe all the way through” or “read all the instructions before you assemble that blasted IKEA furniture.” But who ever does that? So when I went into Phase II of Brioche Mousseline that I found via Bread Baking Babes I said “zut alors!” and whacked myself in the head for not putting out the eggs and butter to room temperaturize while I had been making the starter, Merlin’s Magic Sourdough sponge and Sourdough Popovers (not to mention chili for dinner or putting the cannellini beans out to soak). Hurry up and wait. The brioche is on its first rise in the fridge, but I just had to stop and snap a picture before I started kneading.
Mousseline dough before kneading
This dough represents everything that I think is good and fun about making bread. I am about to knead together a squishy soft buttery dough and a poufy light starter sponge and…it’s just all good. No-knead bread baking seems to be all the rage in the bread baking book section these days, but I for one enjoy some recreational kneading.
Now onto the main event:
Last week I woke up my poor starter Joshua, gave him a mix of white and white wheat flours to nom on and decided to try two different King Arthur recipes. One is Merlin’s Magic Sourdough – which was worth making again a week later – and Extra-Tangy Sourdough, which was not. I’m willing to take some of the blame and say my dough was too wet, but here were the results, judge for yourself:
Extra-Tangy Sourdough - Try 1
Merlin Magic Sourdough
The Merlin isn’t a “typical” sourdough. It has a much denser crumb without the big holes characteristic of sourdough. Add to this the fact that I made it 1/2 whole white wheat and 1/2 all-purpose and it definitely had some heft, but in a good way. It fell apart fairly easily but makes a pretty serious sandwich with PB&J or even cheese and tomato. The batch that is rising right now is 4 cups WWW to 2 cups all-purpose and if everything continues as planned the next batch will be 100% WWW. I need to do some more research for whole wheat sourdough recipes as I think I’ve exhausted the recipes I’m interested in at KAF. To use up a bit more sourdough I tried the popovers (see above) also with 1/2 WWW flour. They were decent, but I took them out of the oven too soon and they collapsed. Between the healthy fibery goodness of Merlin and the tantalizing butter/egg overload of the brioche I think the popovers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I try popovers again I’ll make a flavored version, probably something savory.
December 8th, 2009
Cate
It’s probably odd that my reaction to dinner was, “this doesn’t suck” but I’d had low expectations that were more than blown away. I found Epicurious’ recipe for Quinoa Cakes with Eggplant Ragu and Smoked Mozzarella while searching for something to do with eggplant and parsley. With this week’s haul from my local produce club and Leo’s organic produce club I’m trying to be proactive on finding recipes and cooking strategically rather than turning them into side dishes or worse — letting something go bad. Definitely read the recipe reviews and follow the advice (extra egg, more herbs…) but this recipe is very much worth the time. The quinoa cakes are nice and crispy and I will probably use this technique with future recipes.
I also baked two batches of sourdough bread and something out of my new cookbook but I will split those into separate posts.
The last update is happy news from the wonderful world of dairy. The Whole Foods in Tampa is now stocking Dakin Dairy milk! They are a family-owned/run dairy in Myakka City (Manatee Cnty) that uses sustainable farming practices. While I support organic in most cases, I think that the real concept behind it has gotten watered down as conventional companies see that meeting the legal requirements of organic (if not the spirit) is a great way to mark up prices and convert customers from other brands. I recently read the excellent Cornucopia Institute Dairy Report and Scorecard. I don’t buy Horizon (one of the worst fakes) because I don’t like the taste, but I do like Publix brand because it comes in gallon size. The report wasn’t able to get enough data on private label distributors like Publix to show whether they’re following “real” organic practices or not, but it doesn’t look likely. On the other hand, I feel like buying from them shows that there is a market demand. So while Dakin isn’t organic, they are local (which means both job and low carbon footprint) and are involved in some sustainable agriculture practices. They are having some on-site events this month and I may try and talk the kids into going so I can learn a little bit more about it.
The other good news came from our third buying club, the Meat & Dairy Buying Club arm of Geraldson Community Farm. Cognito Farms has a new Jersey cow named Blondie and they’re going to be distributing her milk raw (labeled as not for human consumption, of course). I don’t have a particular opinion on raw vs pasteurized milk…I’ve had raw milk in California and it was decent. I’m actually the most excited about skimming the cream off and making something, perhaps ricotta? I’ll have to look up some recipes and find something exciting to do with it. I’m sure Leo, with all his experience at Tropicana, will be horrified at both that and the raw orange juice available this month but I figure I’m young and healthy and worse case scenario I get dysentery and drop 5 lbs. Worth the risk, in my opinion.
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