Adventures in creating and exploration
30 Sep 2013 Leave a comment
I figured out what went wrong with the cider based ones, there are preservatives in the cider!
Now that I’ve added sugar I’m going to give them a few more days to see if the fruit and sugar are enough to overcome the preservatives, but I think mostly I’m going to try them again, with different cider!
29 Sep 2013 Leave a comment
in Potables Tags: Cider, fermenting, wine
So I’ve been diligently stirring them every day, and the ones where I added sugar seem to be progressing at a good place (the mead is bubbling a ton), but the cider and fruit ones don’t seem to be doing a whole lot, so I decided to add a quarter of a cup of turbino sugar to each of them, to see if that’ll kick start the bubbling.
26 Sep 2013 2 Comments
in Edibles Tags: beets, cider vinegar, eggs, farm fresh eggs, hardboiled eggs, pickled eggs, pickling
This is the second time I’ve made these. The first dozen, a few months ago, came out so well and so prettily that I couldn’t wait to make them again. But since we have the problem of hardboiled fresh eggs being terrible to peel, I had to wait until our next dozen eggs had aged a few weeks first (and even then, these were somewhat challenging to peel).
I based the recipe off of Emeril Lagasse’s but doubled it, reduced the sugar slightly, and added quite a lot more pickling spice than he suggested.
Cut off the beet greens (we had them for supper in a sausage bean soup) and scrub the beets clean. Wrap in tin foil and bake at 350º for an hour and a half.
While that is happening, hard-boil the eggs however you like. For me, I start with the eggs in a pot with cool water, then bring them to a boil over medium-high heat, boil for 6 minutes, then put into ice water until cool. Also during this time, put the vinegar, sugar, pickling spices, and peppercorns in a small pot and boil until the sugar is dissolved.
Peel the eggs and put into a large mixing bowl. When the beets are done and cool, peel them as well. Peeling beets is always fun.
Slice the beets and put them in the bowl with the peeled eggs. Add the sliced onions.
Pour the vinegar and spices over everything.
Transfer to a sealable container, with the eggs arranged such that they are all submerged. Store overnight. The next day, gently move things around so any eggs that were pressed against the side of the container get more exposure to the liquid.
The afternoon of that day, they are ready for eating. The longer you keep them in the liquid, the stronger they will taste. I imagine they should be eaten within a week, since the preservative pickling action doesn’t really penetrate to the center of the egg. They look prettiest when sliced thinly and fanned on a plate with a side of beets and onions (which are also quite tasty).
21 Sep 2013 1 Comment
in Potables Tags: apples, Cider, cordials, cranberries, fermenting, Mead, peaches, raspberries, wine
So I’ve been reading The Art of Fermentation and there’s a great deal in there about experimenting with small batches of fruit based alcohols. I also recently went to visit a friend of mine in Montreal who makes some delicious beverages that he calls “fruit cordials” and he had some suggestions for some directions to contemplate.
I had always thought that I couldn’t make ciders unless I could find unpasteurized apple cider or juice. And Peter thought he had been using some unpasteurized store bought apple juice, so we scoured the grocery stores looking for it, but it turns out what he has been using quite successfully was pasteurized! This opens up a lot of options as living in New England in the fall, I can barely step out of my door without tripping over apple cider.
What Peter calls fruit cordials, Sandor Katz (in the book mentioned above) calls farm wine or fruit wine. It’s basically fruit with some sugar added and spring water. You let it ferment using the yeasts that naturally occur in and on the fruits. The sugar provides extra food for the yeasts to produce a higher alcohol content. Most fruit left to themselves will ferment into alcohol, but at a pretty low level. (Remember trying that juice that you found in the back of the car that had been rolling around for a few weeks and went fizz when you open it? That’s the basis of this type of fermentation.)
While at the store I also saw a reasonably priced 16 oz container of buckwheat honey, and having recently gotten to that part of Sandor Katz’s book, I knew I needed 16 oz for my half gallon ball jars I bought last week for this purpose.
So I’ve got a few things brewing all at once, in small half gallon batches:
* Cranberry – Honey Crisp Apple Cider (1 cup of frozen cranberries, 1 large apple, rest cider)
* Ginger Gold Apple Cider (3 apples, cider)
* Honey Crisp Apple Cider (1 large apple, cider)
* Raspberry Peach wine (1 cup of fresh raspberries, 15 small, previously frozen peaches, 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar, spring water)
* Cranberry Peach wine (1 cup of frozen cranberries, 2 fresh peaches, 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar, spring water)
* Buckwheat Honey Mead (16 oz buckwheat honey, 48 oz spring water)
They all got a good stir and then covered with a paper towel and the ball jar ring. They should get stirred often. I’m hoping to do it in the morning, when I get home from work, and then also before bed.
About a week from now (probably Sunday night, maybe Monday,, could be up to 10 days) they should be mostly done bubbling and the fruit comes out. At this point there will be tasting and seeing how they are going, stirring a bit more, or putting them into grolsch bottles to age.
17 Sep 2013 3 Comments
in Edibles Tags: chinese 5 spice, eggs, farm fresh eggs, hard boiled eggs
I love tea eggs. They’re a great way to make hard-boiled eggs flavorful and interesting. They’re also very easy to make, though they do take some time. I like to make them when I can be home all day to let them simmer for hours, filling the house with the smell of Chinese 5 Spice. There are tons of slightly different recipes on the web (the most common variants use soy sauce and star anise), but I like this one.
The first step, if you have farm-fresh eggs, is to set them aside in the back of the fridge for 2-3 weeks. This is because hard-boiled farm-fresh eggs are an absolute nightmare to peel (the membrane between the shell and the white is very tenacious). If you get eggs from the store, they are probably fine to cook right away.
Then, boil the eggs however you like to make hard-boiled eggs. For me, I cover the eggs with cold water, bring them to a boil over medium heat, and boil for 5 minutes or so.
Remove eggs with tongs and let them cool in a colander until they are comfortable to touch. Carefully crack them all over as if you were going to peel them, but leave the shell on. Try not to damage the egg underneath with over-exhuberant cracking.
Put a couple of inches of fresh water in the pot along with the black tea bags, chinese 5 spice powder, and salt. The powder will float on the surface of the water, so I whisk it in.
Gently put the eggs back into the water and bring it to a simmer. The water level should be slightly higher than the eggs; add more if necessary. Cover and simmer for 3+ hours, checking every now and then to make sure the water is still high enough.
Remove the eggs with tongs and let them cool. You can either peel all of them or store them as-is and peel before eating. If you find they are too salty for your liking, a quick rinse under the tap can temper it somewhat.
They should be stored in the fridge and probably eaten within a week.
09 Sep 2013 3 Comments
in Edibles Tags: Cheese, cheesemaking, romano
I used the recipe from Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making book with some minor modifications.
First, I gathered everything I thought I would use, put them into my cheese pot, and boiled them for sterilization. (Inevitably, I forget something. That’s what bleach spray is for.) This is a wooden spoon, wire basket, cheese mold & follower, cheese mat, butter muslin, a 1-cup measure, curd knife, and tongs.
While this was boiling, I cleaned the counters and put down paper towels to put all the clean stuff on when it came out of the pot.
Using other tongs, I extracted the sterile tongs. When the sterile tongs were cool, I used them to take out everything else. Then I emptied the nearly-boiling water out of the pot and waited for the pot to cool.
When it had, I added 2 gallons of good whole milk and stirred in 1/2 tablespoon of calcium chloride diluted in a half a cup of non-chlorinated water.
I heated the milk to 88º in a water bath, then sprinkled a packet of thermophilic culture on the surface, waited two minutes for it to rehydrate, and stirred it in. I covered and let the milk ‘ripen’ for 20 minutes. Then I added 1/2 tsp. of rennet diluted in 1/4 cup non-chlorinated water and stirred gently, covered and left it alone for 30 minutes. (There are no pictures of these steps because the visuals are really boring.)
Then, behold the magic of cheese with this clean break:
Here, the instructions said to cut the curds into 1/4″ cubes. This is pretty hard to do. I started with the knife and cut them up further with a silicone whisk (note to self: boil that next time). Here’s a picture with half of the pot cut and the other half whisked (soon to be entirely whisked):
Now, the exciting drama of very slow heating. The goal is to heat the curds slowly at first — 1º every two minutes. Eventually you want it to get to 116º at around the 45-minute mark. I tried not to stress about it too much, just set a countdown timer for 45 minutes and got a feel for whether it was heating too quickly or slowly to hit the desired temperature as time went on. The curds changed in appearance as they cooked, pulling apart and showing more whey between them:
The recipe didn’t mention stirring, but I stirred slowly most of the time to distribute the heat evenly and discourage clumping. And eventually, ta-da!
I lined my cheese mold with muslin and transferred the curds into it using a wire basket.
With previous cheeses, the curds first go into the muslin to drain for a period of time, then salt is added before they go into the mold. This type of cheese just goes directly into the mold — which means it is very wet and not at all compacted. I ended up packing the curds into the mold over the sink and pressing them in with my hands so they would all fit, while a lot of whey drained out.
Then I pressed the cheese with an increasing series of weights, eventually doing 40 lbs. overnight:
The next day, the cheese looked very different:
It was brining time. We already had a brine solution (essentially, non-chlorinated water saturated with cheese salt) so I boiled it to kill off any bacteria, then chilled it back down to fridge temperature before plopping the cheese into it.
After 12 hours in the brine, I took the cheese out and patted it dry.
Now it needs to be flipped every day for a few weeks and occasionally after that. In two months, it will get rubbed with olive oil. Then it should age 4 months or more before we try it. I can’t wait!
Here it is nestled in our tiny cheese fridge with Stephanie’s manchego:
09 Sep 2013 2 Comments
in Edibles Tags: jerky, meat preservation, penzeys, turkey
I decided I wanted to try making turkey jerky for the first time, so I looked up some recipes. A lot of them called for marinating overnight, and I didn’t want to wait that long. Then I found this recipe and decided to give it a shot. The final product was quite good, though it didn’t taste like Thanksgiving to me since I used a few different spices.
I also couldn’t find whole turkey breasts at the grocery store — they just had tenders and tenderloins. The latter seemed big enough, though not ideal, so I picked out a little over 3 lbs’ worth.
First, slice the turkey as thinly as possible (for me and my knife skills, anyway) against the grain:
Sprinkle spices on each side. I used Penzey’s Lemon Pepper Seasoning: salt, black pepper, citric acid, lemon peel, garlic, and onion.
Skewer the pieces with enough spacing such that they will hang off the oven rack like so:
A little over 3 lbs of turkey tenderloin filled a single oven rack with a little turkey left over that was too small to cut easily (that became tomorrow’s dinner).
9 hours at 200º with the oven door propped open about 1″ using a special tool:
And they were done!
I’m happy with how they came out. The flavors of the spices are not overwhelming, but enough to make it interesting. The texture is quite crunchy, but my guess is they would not last long if they still had enough moisture to be chewy, without preservatives. I would definitely make this again and maybe experiment with different spices.
Caitrin
Stephanie (Curiositykt)
dharvill
Painted wings and giant rings 
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