30 Minute Mozzarella

On Friday we made 30 minute mozzarella (recipe available from New England Cheesemaking).  It was really fun to make and it tasted so good!  For dinner we had a caprese salad and pizza.  Mark made the dough, and we layered pesto, tomatoes, homemade mozzarella, green peppers and Italian sausage on top.  All local and completely delicious!

Potato Kohlrabi Salad

Potato Kohlrabi Salad

2 Kohlrabi cut into little pieces

12 medium sized potatoes, peeled and boiled

2 hard boiled eggs, cut into small pieces

Handful of dill (diced)

Handful of parsley (diced)

1 1/2 cups of homemade mayonnaise (see Local Lunch post for the recipe)

Mix and enjoy!

Local Lunch

For lunch I made egg salad sandwiches with onions and radishes with homemade mayonnaise on homemade multi-grain bread.  It was my best batch of homemade mayonnaise yet!  Here's the recipe:

Mayonnaise

1 garlic clove

1 whole fresh egg

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp powdered mustard

1 tsp lemon juice

3/4 cup olive oil

Add the garlic, egg, cayenne, mustard  and lemon juice to a cup.  Then slowly layer on the olive oil.  Use a hand blender to quickly mix the ingredients.  (Warning: using raw eggs does come with the risk of salmonella).

Making Cheese

Making soft cheeses is surprisingly easy.  I've found that it's not really cost effective to make it compared to buying it, but it's fun and I really enjoy the satisfaction of eating the cheese I made.  I've had a lot of questions about how cheese is made.  The details are different for different types of cheese, but the basics are the same.  A starter bacteria culture is added to milk which starts to separate the curds and whey.  Some cheese also require the addition of rennet; an enzyme that further separates the curds and whey and makes a harder cheese.  I like to make chevre, which is a soft goat cheese (about the texture of whipped cream cheese).  It only has two ingredients, and it's very simple.

Chevre (soft goat cheese) 

(steps shown below)

Ingredients: 

1 gallon of goat's milk (I've tried cow's milk but the result is a cheese that tastes like sour cream)

1 packet of chevre starter culture (available from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company)

1. Heat the milk to 86 degrees F

2. Stir in chevre starter culture

3. Let sit for 12 hours (or overnight) at a temperature of at least 72 degrees F

4. Ladle curds into a colander lined with butter muslin

5. Allow whey to drain by hanging the butter muslin filled with cheese for 6-12 hours (depending on desired consistency)

The cheese can be kept in the refrigerator for a week or it can be frozen for a long time.  It freezes really well.

Beautiful day in Pittsburgh!

Today was a beautiful toasty day in Pittsburgh.  I had a wonderful time picking raspberries from my neighbor's raspberry bushes this afternoon.  I found it so satisfying to harvest fruit while enjoying its deliciousness on a hot summer day.  While I was picking, my multi-grain bread was rising in the kitchen.  Later I made flax-seed crackers so they could share the oven with the bread.  Finally I started making some chevre cheese with the goat's milk I bought at the farmers market.  It was a bountiful day!

Kohlrabi is back

When I get ingredients that I'm not sure what to do with, I like to serve them on pasta.  Here's the kohlrabi pasta recipe I tried:

Vegetarian Kohlrabi and Mushroom Pasta
Servings: 4
Total time required: 25 minutes

1 tbsp. butter (or olive oil)
2 kohlrabi peeled and cut into quartered slices
10 mushrooms sliced
6 small green onions diced
3 garlic scapes cut into little pieces (regular garlic could substitute)
Herbs (I used oregano from the garden)
1/2 cup white wine
1/3 cup cream
4 servings of pasta
Sprinkling of fresh grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Bring a stockpot of water to boil, then add sliced kohlrabi and cook for a total of 12 minutes (cook pasta in the same pot, so add it in before the 12 minutes is done, so the pasta and kohlrabi will be done at the same time).  While kohlrabi is cooking, saute mushrooms and onions in butter for a few minutes, then add scapes and herbs.  Saute for a few more minutes then add white wine.  When white wine reduces, add cream and simmer.  When pasta and kohlrabi are finished, drain water and add to a large bowl and put sauce on top.  Mix well and sprinkle with Parmesan or Romano cheese.

Local Salad

Here's a salad I made with local lettuce, spinach, raspberries, snap peas, goat cheese (that I made), and non-local walnuts.  

Local Popcorn

This weekend while I was visiting my parents in Buffalo, NY we went to the farmers market and I found local popcorn!  I love homemade popcorn, so I was really excited to find this stuff.  Plus it was only $1 per pound and the kernels are really unusual colors like red and black.  It was super tasty with some melted local Amish butter on top!  If you're still eating microwave popcorn, you're missing out!  I use a Whirley Pop popcorn popper, you can get your own here:

http://www.popcornpopper.com/

First 100% Local Meal

This was my first 100% local meal (I'm a few days late in posting it- I made it on 6/6/10).  It was an omlette with spinach, onion, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese.  It was super tasty, and it felt great knowing that all of the ingredients were from nearby farmers!

Bad feelings about baking

In an effort to maximize the local ingredients in the food we eat, I made crackers and bread this weekend.  I must admit I was reluctant to do all this baking.  First of all baking is a lot like science, and of course I love science, but when I get home from the lab, I'm usually ready to do something less exact, like cooking.  Secondly, I've had some bad baking experiences.  For example, making Mark's birthday cake this year.  In the process of mixing ingredients I accidentally dumped a bunch of flour in the toaster (which still smells like burnt flour when we use it).  Then I discovered that our oven is uneven, so each of the three layers had one side that was thicker than the other.  Despite my best efforts at leveling it, the top of the cake started sliding off, so I had to stick a skewer in it to keep it on.  Needless to say, I was not too eager to start baking again.  I've managed to convince Mark to do some baking ("baking is so much fun, you'll love it!"), but this weekend he was very busy studying so I was on my own.  Lucky for me both the crackers and bread making went smoothly, tasted great, and made the house smell fantastic (the finished products shown to the right).

Sweetbreads... not sweet or bread?

For last nights "bizarre foods- locavore edition" I cooked up some sweetbreads and lamb tongue for dinner with friends.    Personally, sweetbreads are my favorite kind of meat.  I'd rather have sweetbreads than a steak any day, hands down.  Unfortunately they're rather hard to find.  Luckily I've found a local source.  I was a little nervous that my friends might not like them as much as I do, but they were a big hit!  For those of you who are wondering what the bizarre thing pictured to the right actually is (besides being a "sweetbread"), it is the thymus gland of a young cow.  It has a very mild flavor, and a fantastic texture; it almost melts in your mouth.  The lamb tongue was also quite good; it was much more tender than I expected, with a little bit of iron flavor, but not nearly as potent as liver.  I'm looking forward to getting more "variety meats" from local farmers!

Grass fed lamb... the evidence is on the tongue

Turns out I had some local lamb tongue in my freezer.  It was definitely grass fed... as indicated by the grass stains on the tongue.  We're having friends over for dinner tonight, and little do they know we're having Bizarre Foods- locavore style (if you're reading this- don't worry we'll have normal food too).  I'll keep you posted on how it all turns out.

The local food adventure begins!

Tonight is the start of our local food year!  We got our farm share this evening, which included spinach, lettuce, onions, asparagus, eggs, bread, jam, and a basil plant.  For our first meal I made a sauce of local spinach, homemade chevre (goat cheese), onions, and butter, served on top of homemade pasta, that I made with local eggs.  The only non-local ingredients were a little bit of chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, italian herb seasoning, and the flour to make the pasta dough.  I had frozen the pasta from a large batch I made a few weeks ago- so the meal only took me about 20 minutes to make.  So far eating local is easy and tasty!

Local Vinegar!

Today was the first day of the Farmer's Market at Phipps Conservatory.  I love this market because it has a great variety of meats, cheese, honey, eggs, and veggies.  And today I discovered another special item: local vinegar!  Not only was it local, it was the best vinegar Mark or I have ever had!  It was made by Sonshine Farm.  The farmer said the secret was the "mother".  I had no idea what she meant, and I didn't want to sound like I didn't know anything about where my food comes from, so I just asked wikipedia:


Mother of vinegar is a substance composed of a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids, which turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen in the air.  It is added to wine, cider or other alcoholic liquids to produce vinegar.


I'm very excited to be learning more about where (and how) food is made.  And I've got some fantastic local vinegar!

Rabbit rabbit rabbit!

Rabbit rabbit rabbit! I have been told that if you say that on the morning of the first of the month, before you say anything else, you'll have good luck for the rest of the month. According to Wikipedia, the origins of the tradition are unknown but "some have also believed it is representing a jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness". This morning was a rare morning in which Mark and I remembered. I suppose that's a good omen for the local-food year kick off, which is not today. We decided to make it the first day after we recieve our first farm share, so we will start this Friday, June 4th. There is still a fair amount of non-local food in the house, so unfotunately the transition won't be as dramatic as I was hoping for, but all of the perishable items (fruit, veggies, dairy, eggs) will be local starting Friday.