The concept of making cheese has always fascinated me, the idea that you can take milk and add a little acid (or rennet) to magically separate it into curds and whey. Milk seems like such a stable liquid, a wholesome elixir of childhood, but with a little citric acid, lemon juice, yogurt, or rennet it completely de-stabalizes into thin, watery whey and fat chunks of curd.
What you do with t...
This one has a happy ending. Unlike my previous attempt where I failed once and then crashed and burned in such an epic fashion that I never wanted make yogurt again, this one has a neat little recipe at the end. I'm happy. When I started this crazy business I had expected to knock off a bunch of yogurt and be done with it. To be honest, I’d never really thought much about...
Before I start detailing this ridiculous project, I’d like to point out that I fail in the end. There is no great yogurt recipe hidden in here, no surprising technique that changes everything. I tried some methods, some reasonable and some quite stupid, and none of them worked. I just want to make some respectable yogurt at home, and I’m hoping some of you can help.
I thought this would...
After I miraculously created a ball of mozzarella from a gallon of milk and some powdery substances, I declared it a miracle and couldn’t wait to do it again. And true to my plan, I tried to make it twice since that date and failed bitterly both times. Much could have gone wrong. I believe the first failure happened because I used cheese salt instead of citric acid at a crucial ste...
I had read about making cheese--like a lot of people, I assume--in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle . It had never really occurred to me that cheese could be made easily at home, but once I read the passage where they made mozzarella in 30 minutes, I rashly bought the recommended kit . And a three days later I had a bright yellow box from the New England Cheesemaking...
It came to us late in the evening some time in early September. A few bottles of wine down and numerous beers under our belt, we decided that we would try to eat all locally for a month. While not exactly a novel concept, it felt noble. We’d help Ohio farmers and eat well in the process. We toasted to the prospect and ceremoniously wrote the rules out on a paper plate.
Those rules and r...
I’ve been gathering cook books by whatever method I can...and beggers usually can’t be choosers. I borrow nearly anything I can lay my hands on. I owe lots of money to the library. And whenever I get to head home I usually make it out with an armful books my mom hoarded over the years ( I promise I’ll return them!). One of those was The Louisville Courier-Journal Cookbook. By a...
Ever since I started reading about "raw" milk, I've wanted to try it. Illegal in New York and most states, raw milk has a strange mystique about it: proponents claim that unpasteurized milk has remarkable health benefits , is drinkable by even the most lactose intolerant people , and tastes twice as good as the milk you're used to. Once you drink your milk raw, they say, you'll begi...
Is there anything my cast iron skillet can't do? Whether it's steaks , peppers , or even pizza , the big hunk of metal is good for most of my high heat needs. But for bread? I'd never really done that before. Neither, for that matter, had I ever really wanted to make cornbread before.
I have no real love of this southern staple. I don't really have any fond memories o...
I’ve already done my public fawning over Thomas Keller’s cookbooks. The absurd attention to details, the flowery short essays about “the importance of onion soup” in the philosophy of bistro cooking, the potential of preparing-ahead the “building blocks” of cooking (like soffrito and aioli ) that allow you to continue preparing uncomplicated dishes with simple, inspired combin...
