A new project...

I am not going to lie the highlight of my weekend was making ricotta in my kitchen.  The cheese and the pizza it went on turned out fabulous and now I am all about making the cheese!  I think I would like to try the ricotta again but infuse it with basil and see what happens.  But what really is at the forefront of my mind in mozzarella.  I found a recipe at www.afullbelly.com that I am going to try and I do believe I will be taking my lunch today at the bookstore where I will find a cheese making book, because I simply have too.  I am so excited.  Look forward to many cheese posting to come!

Beating the Heat!

Ladies and Gentlemen it is HOT in the bay area, I mean seriously hot for the folks here.  You know we don't have air conditioning because we do not usually get heat like this.  So I needed a solution to my overheating issue that went beyond laying if front of my fan all day.  While at the farmers' market genius hit in the form of beautiful blackberries, I bought myself a basket and headed home where I proceeded to make lemon-limeade and fresh blackberry popsicles.  The recipe is as follows, it is tart but I like it that way, if you don't use more sugar!

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

Make simple syrup and cool.

Juice from 3 lemons

Juice from 4 limes

Mix together with simple syrup.

Drop 4-5 fresh blackberries into your popsicle mold.  If you don't have one you can use dixi cups and popsicle sticks (totally work I swear!).  Then pour your lemon-limeade over blackberries, pop in the sticks and freeze.  In a couple of hours you will have a cool refreshing treat!

In other news I just finished making homemade ricotta for the first time and I am going use it on my pizza tonight (the recipe via smittenkitchen, though I am not using the meat and adding olives and arugula salad as a topper).  

Hope the heat isn't keeping you out of the kitchen!  Remember you can always take a break with a popsicle!

A few things...

First I bought the silicone egg poaching cups.  I will let you know how that goes.

Second I LOVE this website:  www.tastespotting.com

Third I just found out my uncle has a Meyer Lemon tree in his back yard.  Looks like someone will be preserving lemons very soon! 

That is all

Muffin Madness

So if you are like me you start your morning off with a nice fresh brewed pot of coffee, neatly dispensed to you in a white paper cup by a not so happy caffeine professional. You also have a little bit a self control problem and when faced with the glass case full of pastries the apple you had for breakfast doesn’t feel quite like enough. One of my all time favorites is the blackberry hazelnut muffin.  
Now mind you I actually get up and make a fresh pot of coffee to have after my shower and before I brush my teeth and simply feel like I need another by the time I make it to work. In an attempt to cut back on the spending I am trying to make a couple more cups in my pot in the morning and cut the caffeine professional out of my morning routine once and for all. But what about the muffins you might ask? I surely did. Then I realized I am a woman who bakes, likes it, finds it cathartic even. I can make that damn muffin for myself and it will not be the size of my head. And it will not be overly sweet. And and and...I can actually feel good about my muffin consumption (God only knows how many calories I have been consuming all in the name of muffins).

My first attempt last night went pretty well but there will need to be some tweaking before posting the recipe.  I took the sour cream muffin recipe from my joy of cooking and substituted half the flour with ground hazelnuts (yummy) and then added frozen blackberries.  I know frozen you say, but the thing is I like to keep an item in my freezer that I can easily turn into dessert (you never know when people will stop by) and lately that dessert is berry cobbler.  So I had the berries already, thus making it a must make last night.  Anywhoo, the base recipe called for 4 tablespoons of sugar and I upped it to half a cup, and yet it was still not enough.  I want them to be slightly less sweet than the store bought ones, but a little sweeter than I made them.  I think next week I will make them with a cup or maybe 3/4 cup sugar and see how they turn out.  I also got a little lazy with the second batch of hazelnuts I ground (in my trusty dusty mini prep food processor) and I will not do that next time.  I was wrong a chunk of nut or two does in fact have a negative effect on the muffin.  I think I will be most excited when I get them right. Come on can you blame me, imagine it a muffin that tastes good, is made at home and is not the size of my head. I can use that, add in the stress reducing factor that baking brings on and you have a win win situation.  Only down side I can see is I am still trying to get the berry stain off my hands. Yes I washed them, more than once, sheesh!  Even with shampooing my hair in the shower this morning there is still stain under the nail.  Oh well it is all in pursuit of the perfect morning muffin, I will soldier on.

Spring is Here

Marmalade, originally uploaded by poormetal.

To honor this season I made orange marmalade, using the fruit from my parents orange tree, the recipe is as follows:

Six navel oranges (if your parents a have tree take take'm)

Three meyer lemons

Ten cups water

Nine and a quarter cups sugar

Two teaspoons cardamon

One teaspoon ginger

This recipe takes me three days to make, though it can be done in two.  The first day is very easy, stick your fruit in the freezer.  Freezing the fruit makes it easy to get thin slices the next day and you don't have the oozing juice mess you get when you have fresh fruit, more juice in the jam just makes it tastier.  Once the fruit is frozen, slice in halve then slice in very thin (almost paper thin) halve moon slices.  Set aside and let thaw (this will not take very long due to the thinness of the slices).  In a large stock pot add your fruit and your water and bring to a boil.  While boiling mix sugar and spices together.  When your water has come to a rapid boil remove from heat and stir in sugar and spice mixture.  Stir until sugar is completely dissolved.  Cover and set out over night to allow mixture to cool to room temperature.  The next day bring the mixture up to a low boil on medium low heat and let it cook (simmering) for two hours, stirring occasionally to make sure it does not burn and stick to the bottom of your pot.  Bring your heat up top medium and let boil for twenty minutes, your candy thermometer should register 220.  A good way to check to see if it is ready is to let some cool in the fridge (so it is at room temp. basically).  If it is at the perfect place between runny and thick then you are good to go.  If it is runny cook more, if it is really thick add some water.  Once your marmalade is ready, do the canning thing.

This recipe was adapted from 'The Barefoot Contessa at Home'. I played with the sugar quantity (less than the original recipe called for) and added spices.  

Apple Cheddar Salad

My mother and I went to Eccolo in Berkeley on Saturday for lunch.  It was all and all delightful.  We ordered an entree salad to share to start with.  This salad was so lovely that I went out and bought all the ingrediants and I have been making it pretty much every day for lunch since then.  After we finished the salad (not a single piece of lettuce remained) and our drinks (pink slipper for me, coffee for mom) we dug into our burgers.  Now the burgers are a little pricey 12.50 for a burger, but good.  Cooked to perfection with caramelized onions on top.  The edges where rolled in salt I believe which I could have done without.   It left you with every other bite being a bit to salty, that would be my only complaint. Which places this burger at good and not yummy or scrumptious or well...GREAT.  We had a little moment when we thought "man I miss the burgers at the balboa cafe" but it passed, for the enjoyment that the salad brought us far out weigh the extra salt on the burgers.

Apple Chedder Salad thing (as close as I could get it to Eccolo's)

1 Pink Lady Apple

1/2 cup cubed or crumbled Aged white cheddar (English style)

1/2 cup candied walnuts

Mixed greens

Good olive oil, and balsamic with a little dijon mustard to emulsify (for the dressing)

So good and I will have it for lunch today again.  There is enough here for a large entree salad or a salad to share.  

Side note, my mother and I often when lunching end up ordering burgers.  I can't quite place my figure on why, we love many foods and burgers always seem so...basic.  No matter who nice a place it is, when it is just the two of us we always default to the burger.  This of course makes us quite the critic, and the above mentioned burgers at the Balboa Cafe are some of our favorites. Eccolo's came with homemade bread and butter pickles, I, not being pickle person, could not tell you how they stacked up.  For that you will have to go to my mom.   I guess this is why we have my dad, for some reason his presence brakes the magic burger spell and we start ordering things like the duck confit salad when he is around.

Things I don't really need but kind of want....

So I was walking around Sur la table yesterday at lunch looking for bottles to jar my ginger sweet and sour mixer in (can you say happy holidays!) and finding nothing that struck my fancy in that department.  I did find these...silicone egg poaching cups, that I totally do NOT need, but kind of want.  You see, i love a good poached eggs and have yet to find a egg poaching device that really works for me.  Usually after using it once I toss the device thinking "what's the point?" I've been just throwing the egg straight into the water and you know it works if you don't mind fishing out the whites that have separated from the rest of the egg.  Good enough for myself in the morning on some toast, not good enough to serve guests.  So every time I see a new device I am overcome with the urge to buy.  I resisted yesterday but they are only 9.95 for a set of two and they ARE very pretty shades of green so who knows how long my will power will last.  The other thing I found and resisted, was these lovely french canning jars.  They where the perfect size for the marmalade I am planning on making, nicely shaped with glass lids.  Now they are not the kind that the lid is hinged with a metal contraption.  No the glass lid just sit on top, dipping down inside the jar slightly.  Very pretty and very functional and very expensive.  I thought long and hard about how much I really like the people who would be receiving the marmalade and then decided they could do with good ol' bell jars, and I could save myself roughly 2 buck a jar that way.  35 dollars (ish I don't really remember but the exact cost and they are not on Sur la tables web site, so I can not fact check while pretending to be working if you know what I mean) for 12 jars just seemed a little pricey for me.  Pretty though and when I actually get serious enough to start really putting together little homemade holiday packages (I plan on it every year and it NEVER happens, so don't put to much stock in serious nature of the above mentioned "mixer bottle search") then maybe I will invest in some pretty jars.  Until then you will take your homemade marmalade in the type of canning jar your grandmother used and you'll like it!