Bird and Little Bird

The Corn Tortilla Project.

As we have ventured farther down the road of gluten-free living, various little challenges have arisen.  No surprise there, I suppose.  However, it was a little unexpected when corn tortillas, generally a big time staple at our house, temporarily became a no-go.  Corn, being corn, is naturally gluten-free.  But, after being advised by various gastreonterologists about the importance of maintaining a strictly gluten-free environment for Mariam, we found ourselves needing to read labels on everything, even products that were seemingly safe.  And it turns out that a corn tortilla that is both semi-decent and guaranteed to be free from any and all traces of gluten is not to be found in the greater Burlington area.  Thus the humble brilliance of the tortilla press arrived at our house.

 

Making corn tortillas turns out to be surprisingly simple, which is a good thing, since we have been eating them like it is our job.  The biggest challenge in the whole operation was probably just assembling what we needed.  We couldn't get guaranteed gluten-free masa locally, so we had to order it online.  And the press came from Amazon as well, since none of our local kitchen shops had them in stock when we were looking.  We'd love to find a cast iron one, but apparently they are few and far between and so far, we haven't had much luck.

 

We've been using a combination of 2 cups masa, 1 1/2 cups of hot water and a teaspoon of salt for each batch of tortillas.  This seems to yield a dough that is stiff but still workable and that forms and presses well.  Letting it sit for an hour or more after mixing up the batter is important to getting good results, so I would definitely recommend doing that. 

 

The basic process goes something like this: mix up the dough in the proportions mentioned above.  Let it sit for an hour at room temperature. Then, make a golf ball sized ball of dough and place it between two sheets of wax paper in the center of the press.  Close the press and press down hard enough on the handle to really flatten out the dough.  Open it back up, peel off the top sheet of wax paper and then gently peel the tortilla off of the bottom sheet.  Toss the tortilla into a dry skillet and cook it over medium-low heat, turning once about half way through and taking it off when it begins to brown just slightly.  You can reuse the same wax paper to make the rest of the tortillas from your batch of dough.

 

And as always, easy and good continue to be a stellar combination.

Making Coconut Milk.

I use coconut milk often enough in baking and cooking that I try to always keep a can or three on hand.  Except that lately I've been forgetting to do that, and seem to find myself without it when I'd like to throw a bit into a batch of lentils or a pot of tofu curry.  Well, do you know what turns out to be remarkably fast and easy?  Making coconut milk from scratch.  I've been using the technique from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, but I've seen essentially the same recipe with the same proportions in a couple other books that I have hanging around the shelves, so I'm assuming this is pretty standard business.  Give it a try!

Coconut Milk

2 cups shredded, unsweetened coconut

2 cups water

Put the coconut into a blender.  Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the coconut.  Blend on a high speed for about thirty to forty seconds, then turn the blender off and let the mixture rest for ten minutes or more.  Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl or large liquid measuring cup, pressing down on the mixture with the back of a spoon to extract all of the liquid.  This should yield between one and half and two cups of coconut milk. 

Squash-Based Meal Planning.

I realize that there is plenty of talk around the interwebs right now about how fall is Apple Season.  This is, of course, more than true in Vermont where we have been eating apples at nearly every meal for the last few weeks.  I am unabashedly in love with all things apple, so this is a good, good thing.  However, fall is also the official season of another much beloved agricultural goodie; winter squash.  Winter squash, really, is an abbreviated term for "happiness with a peel on the outside."

We've been especially fond of delicata and butternut for the last few years, in part because they are both so adaptable and can be easily served so very many ways.  Annie 2.0 and I planted a ton of both varieties in our shared community garden plot this year, but alas, they were lost in the post-Irene flooding along with everything else.  Plus, our super wet spring and summer had already made the plants very tempremental.  So, we are dependent on the local produce aisles and farmer's market for fufillment of our fall squash needs this year.  Somehow, I think we'll make do.

 

Carmelized Delicata Squash

One delicata squash

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon brown sugar

a pinch of salt

 

Rinse the squash and cut it in half lengthwise.  Scoop out the seeds and then cut each half of the squash into half-moon shaped pieces about 1/2 inch wide. Heat the olive oil over medium heat and then add the squash.  Let the squash cook in the oil, and every few minutes give it a stir to make sure that it is browning evenly.  About ten minutes in, add the brown sugar.  Continue cooking the squash until it is brown and a bit crunchy on the outside and the flesh and peel are soft.  

 

Possibly My Favorite Thing.

The other day someone asked me if I've been having any of those infamous pregnancy-induced food cravings.  I said that no, other than the fact that I no longer hate food with a white hot burning passion, there wasn't anything in particular that I found myself absolutely needing to eat.  Of course, I realized later that my answer was entirely dependent on my having forgotten about chickpeas.  Which, by the way, are the best thing that modern agriculture has to offer. Perhaps you were previously unaware of this fact? Not to worry.  I kind of was too.  But then I got pregnant and threw up for four months and when I stopped I realized that chickpeas were the key to making everything right once more.  

Mostly I've been making chickpea salads to eat with lettuce or wrapped up in a tortilla.  I'm a big fan of tomato/vinaigrette/chickpea combinations, but I'm kind of waiting for the garden to start producing tomatoes before I go after those recipes in earnest.  Today I did make a chickpea salad with a bit of tomato, but with more of a yogurt dressing and a few other things thrown in.  It's another modified Heidi Swanson recipe, this time from this book. Have I mentioned that I love her cookbooks?  Yeah, I thought that I had too.

I loved the look of her Chickpea Wraps recipe, but just like with the granola, I didn't have the ingredients for the actual recipe on hand, so I just kind of took the general concept and made changes to acommodate what I did have.  It goes like this:

 

Chickpea Salad with Yogurt Lemon Dressing

(based on Heidi Swanson's Chickpea Wraps from Supernatural Everyday)

3 cups cooked chickpeas

2 to 3 chopped celery stalks, diced

2 tablespoons stoneground mustard

2/3 cup plain yogurt

1/2 to 1 teaspoon sea salt (adjust to taste)

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 small tomatoes, chopped

2 teaspoon capers

mixed salad greens 

 

Whisk together the yogurt, mustard, lemon juice and salt in a small bowl.  Mix in the capers and then toss the dressing with the chickpeas, chopped tomatoes and diced celery.  Scoop a generous portion of chickpea mixture onto a bed of fresh leafy greens and enjoy!

 

More with the Berries (Plus Nut-Free Granola).

I'm really trying to resist the urge to do an entire week of posts about the intensity and depth of my love for blueberries.  But maybe you'll indulge me one more post?  Because it isn't really about blueberries, it's actually more about granola.  Which is also good and which I love almost as much as blueberries.

Because we are a very strictly treenut-free household and the granola bulk bins at the store are a hotbed of nut contamination potental, I generally have to make granola myself if I want to be able to eat it.  Danger everywhere, I tell you.  Of course, I always get myself thinking that making granola is so much harder than it actually is, so I don't make it as often as I should.  But really, it is very easy and takes such a short amount of time that I feel a little ridiculous for not just making it a part of my normal kitchen routine.  

Anyway, this particular batch of granola is based on Heidi Swanson's Grain-ola recipe from SuperNatural Cooking, a super stellar cookbook which you actually should own if you don't already.  Her recipe calls for using nuts, which of course I didn't, but also needed a couple of other ingredients which I just didn't have on hand.  So, I modified the recipe to fit my pantry and my husband's allergies, and this is what I came up with.  It is, I should say, stunningly good. Especially with...wait for it... blueberries.

 

Simple Nut-Free Granola

4 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup pepitas 

1 3/4 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

1 3/4 cups dried cranberries (or other dried fruits)

3/4 cup honey

1/4 coconut oil

Combine the honey and oil in a small saucepan over low heat and stir to combine.  Mix the oats, pepitas and coconut together in a large bowl.  Pour the honey/oil mixture over the oat mixture and stir to combine thoroughly and evenly.  Spread the mixture onto a lightly oiled baking sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes, stirring the mixture every ten or fifteen minutes during that time.  It should be uniformly golden brown when done.  Stir in the dried fruit and cool to room temperature before storing in an airtight container. 

Not Just Good.

I feel like it's time to talk about the making of pasta.  Have we done this before?  I kind of think we haven't.  At least not to the extent that is so obviously necessary.  Because making pasta is both easy and amazing, and there are not all that many things that can own both of those adjectives simultaneously.  

I use my kitchen-aid stand mixer to make my pasta dough, and this has always worked really well.  The recipe that I use is from Alice Water's book, The Art of Simple Food, but I have seen the same recipe other places as well, so I think it is pretty standard.  It goes like this:

Homemade Pasta

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

2 cups flour

 

Combine the ingredients in the bowl of a stand-mixer and mix using the paddle attachment until you have a well blended and fairly stiff ball of dough.  Add small amounts of water (a tablespoon at a time) if needed to get the dough to come together.  Remove from the mixer and knead a bit by hand to get a nice even ball of dough.  Wrap in plastic wrap (or some such thing- is there an earth friendly alternative that wouldn't stick??) and set aside for at least an hour. 

To prepare the pasta for cooking, I usually cut the ball of dough in half, and then roll each half out on a lightly floured cutting board.  You want to get the sheet of dough to be as thin as possible, because it will thicken up quite a bit when you cook it.  When you have it about as thin as you can get it, use a sharp knife or pizza wheel to cut the pasta into strips. Again, keep in mind that the dough swell when it cooks, so don't make your strips too fat.  I often take my strips and lay them out in a single layer on a baking sheet when my cutting board gets too crowded.  

Set a good-sized pot of water on the stove to boil.  I usually put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and some salt into the water.  The water should be salty; that is where a lot of the flavor of the finished pasta comes from.  When the water is at a hard boil, add the pasta and cook until the noodles are tender.  This is likely to take a little longer than you think; it isn't quite like making ravoili or gnocchi.  

And, that's it.  Because fresh pasta is so much better than dry, you don't have to do a whole lot to make it into a pretty servicable meal.  It is very good with the most basic of sauces, or even just with some butter and good quality parmesan or romano.  We often have it with a really basic parmesan bechamel and roasted brussels sprouts on the side.  

Is it dinner time yet? 

Too Many Cookies?

We don't make peanut butter cookies all that often at our house.  Dan isn't allergic to peanuts (since they aren't really nuts, but legumes), only tree nuts.  But, it is pretty hard to find peanut butter that is guaranteed to be free of cross contamination, so Dan is generally not a fan.  Every so often, however, I need peanut butter cookies and make a batch anyway.  Yesterday was one of those days, and I mixed up a batch of my favorite peanut butter cookies. And then ate about one hundered of them.  

What I'm trying to say is that these are good.  So, so good.  I would guess that they are really just a very standard peanut butter cookie; there are probably a thousand similar recipes floating around the interwebs.  But this is probably because a good standard is just that; something that you can go back to again and again, expecting to get reliable results.

This recipe makes a dozen cookies.  You could easily double it, but keep in mind that you will then have twice as many cookies. And you will eat all of them.  So, you know, make informed decisions.  That's all. 

 

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 stick of butter, softened

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tspn vanilla

1 1/4 cups flour, spooned and leveled

1 tspn baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

3/4 tspn baking soda 

 

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream together the peanut butter and butter in the bowl of a standard mixer.  Add in sugars and blend until fluffy.  Then add in the egg and vanilla and mix until well blended.  Mix dry ingredients and add them to the peanut butter mixture, stirring until the batter is stiff but smooth.  Refrigerate the batter for about forty-five minutes, until it is firm.  Roll spoonfuls of batter into twelve equal sized balls and place on a cookie sheet.  Press the cookies flat-ish using the back of a fork.  Bake for eight to ten minutes, until the cookies begin to brown.  

Good Soup for Cold Days.

 

Minestrone is, in my humble opinion, kind of perfect food.  My family isn't always quite as enthusiastic as I am, neither Dan or Mariam are big soup people.  But I do all the cooking, so this soup is one that gets made a lot.  

Before I share the recipe, I should add one caveat.  I am definitely a "kitchen sink" variety of soup maker.  Meaning, I throw in anything and everything that seems like it might work okay.  So, this recipe is more conceptual than anything.  I'll give you the basic idea; you fill in the blanks.  Here goes:

Minestrone Soup 

What you will need:

1 medium sized yellow or red onion

3 medium to large carrots, peeled and diced

3 stalks celery, diced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

olive oil

sea salt

1 parmesan rind*

water or stock

1 cup crushed or finely diced tomatoes

2 cups cooked cannelini beans

1/4 pound pasta (optional)

various vegetables (think green beans, potatoes, parsnips, turnips- whatever you've got handy)

parsley

* A parmesan rind is the hard bit left over when you've grated the parmesan down as far as you are able to.  I always save them for soup making!

What you will do:

Warm a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots and celery and sautee until they are brown.  Add the garlic and sautee just a bit longer, and then add six cups of water or stock.  Add in the tomatoes, the parmesan rind, and any other vegetables that need to cook for a longer period of time (roots especially).  When the rind has melted into the soup and the vegetables are cooked through, add the pasta.  When the pasta is soft, add in any vegetables that you want to retain their color (green beans, for example) and then add in the cannelini beans.  Chop up a few tablespoons of parsley and throw that in just before serving. Season with sea salt as needed, garnish with grated parmesan.   

Coconut Oatmeal Pancakes for You!

There is a great local restaurant in Burlington that makes excellent oatmeal pancakes that you can customize with things like chocolate chips and various bits of delicious ripe fruit.  Our favorite are the oatmeal coconut pancakes, and Mariam and I both woke up with a craving for them this morning.  We didn't have quite enough time before violin lessons to go out for breakfast, so although I could only assume we might not be able to truly replicate the pancakes in our own kitchen, I thought I might give it a go all the same.  I used Deborah Madison's Oatmeal Pancake recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (great cookbook, by the way!) as my jumping off point, but ended up with something quite different from her original recipe.  I think we were all pleasantly surprised by how well these turned out; a perfect combination of delicate coconut flavor and chewy oat goodness.  Definitely a keeper and super good with a dollop of blueberry jam or a nice puddle of maple syrup. 

Coconut Oatmeal Pancakes

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup coconut

2 cups milk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup flour

Mix the oats, coconut and milk together in a bowl and set them aside for about twenty minutes to soften up a bit.  Beat the eggs, vanilla, brown sugar and oil together and stir this mixture into the oats.  Combine the flour, salt and baking soda and add them to the oat/coconut mixture.  The batter will be slightly runnier than you might normally associate with pancakes, but this is fine.  Pour 1/3 cup batter into a hot skillet and let cook until bubbles appear in the top of the pancake batter.  Flip and cook the other side of the cake.  Serve hot with maple syrup, fruit jam or a dollop of vanilla whipped cream. 

Cheesemaking 101.

On Sunday afternoon, feeling a bit adventurous (early spring sunshine will do that to a girl), I decided to try my hand at a bit of cheese-making.  I am extraordinarily pleased (and more than a little relieved) to report that the project was a rousing success.  And, better yet, it was really pretty easy.  So, in the event that you or someone you know has been itching to know how one makes mozzarella in their own kitchen in under an hour, here it is:

I started out with this cheese-making kit from Urban Cheesecraft.  It has a thermometer, citric acid, vegetable rennet, cheese cloth, cheese salt and a couple of recipes.  Pretty handy.  You can also find what you need here.  

I chose to use a different recipe from the one that came with the kit but since the ingredients themselves were all the same, I still used the individual components of the kit, albeit in a slightly different way than I would have had I used the kit recipe.

We get our milk locally, from a farm that sells raw milk from their very small herd of cows (I believe they milk about five at any given time).  The recipe that I used comes from the farm as well.  You don't need to use raw milk for this cheese, just don't use ultra-pasteurized.

For one gallon of milk I used:

1 teaspoon citric acid crystals (apparently you can substitute 2 tablespoons vinegar here)

1 cup cool water (I boiled it and then cooled it in the fridge to get rid of any chlorine)

1/4 tablet rennet (I used vegetable rennet, either would work fine)

Salt

Start out by setting out three glass or ceramic bowls and a large cooking pot.  Don't use aluminum or cast iron for this.  I used glass bowls and a stainless steel pot.  In one bowl, make an ice bath/brine for the finished cheese by mixing ice, water and a few tablespoons of salt together.  You'll add a bit of whey to this later as well.  In the second bowl dissolve the 1 teaspoon of citric acid in 1/2 cup cool water.  In the third, dissolve the 1/4 tablet of rennet in 1/2 cool water.  Measure out both the rennet and the citric acid very carefully. 

Pour the cold milk into your pot and gently stir in the citric acid mixture.  With the stove on medium-low, slowly heat the milk mixture to 90 degrees Fahrenheit (use a cooking thermometer to carefully monitor the temperature as it rises).  When the mixture is at 90 degrees, remove it from the heat and gently stir in the rennet.

Let the milk mixture sit undisturbed for ten minutes.  It should start to solidify and take on a look like soft but firm custard.  At the end of ten minutes, press gently with a spoon to make sure that your liquid has become a mass of soft curd that will break cleanly if cut with a knife. 

Because cutting it with a knife is exactly what you are going to do next.  Take a long knife and cut the curds into cubes, about one inch square.  Begin to heat the pot back up, gently stirring the curds as you do so.  

Continue stirring the curds gently as you monitor the temperature of the liquid in the pot.  As the pot heats up, the curds will begin to change texture and stick to themselves.  It is kind of remarkable actually; it's almost as if they are magnetically drawn to each other.  When the curds reach a temperature between 130 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, they will become gooey, stretchy and will be stuck together in one big mass.  At this point, throw on a pair of rubber gloves and reach into the pot and pull the mass of curds (which is basically now cheese!) out.

A word about the gloves:  At this moment, we are dealing with a 140 degree mass of gooey cheese, so they are undoubtedly necessary for safety and comfort.  That being said, you aren't going to be cooking this cheese any more before finishing it off, so I'm thinking that using your dishwashing and or housecleaning gloves for this would be bad form.  I bought a new pair of gloves for this project (expecting that I'll be doing this more than once) and I might suggest that you do the same.  Just a thought.

Once you have removed the mass of curds from the pot of (what is now) whey, gently and briefly stretch them out and work them a bit.  A bit being operative here, folks.  Ten seconds or less is plenty of time if you want unrubbery cheese.  No, "unrubbery" is not really a word.

If you want to work in any cheese salt, now would be the time.  I did fold in about a teaspoon, but I think that in the future I might leave it out and just rely on the brine to salt the cheese for me.

Form the stretched curds into a ball and cut the ball into two equal sized pieces (or as many as suits your fancy).  Form the pieces into oval-shaped balls.  Measure out a few tablespoons of the whey and mix it into your cold brine mixture.  Drop your mozzarella balls into the brine.

And done!

A couple of notes: 

I've heard that the mozzarella is supposedly best if you eat it right away but I was much, much happier with it after it had soaked in the brine overnight.  Immediately upon finishing it I felt like it was a little dry and maybe even rubbery.  However, after a soak in the brine, it was absolutely perfect the next day.  Like, best cheese ever. 

I did feel like one night in the brine was plenty.  I don't have any proof, but it does seem like if I left it in longer than that, the cheese might have gotten overly soft and gooey on the outside.  I was not into that idea at all, so I took it out of the brine and wrapped it up tightly with a bit of plastic wrap.  There might be a better storage method than this and depending on how dry your cheese turns out, leaving it in the brine might well be fine.

Here is the finished product with a bit of olive oil and balsamic on a bed of pea greens and some toasted squash cornmeal bread.  Ridiculous.