The challenge this month was any potato salad. I'm not much of a potato eater. They are not bad or evil, merely not enough taste to be worth the starch. If I had to load them up to make them more interesting to me, then I'll eat the toppings.
Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!
My mom used to make a great potato salad. The right balance of onions, sweet pickles, mayo, mustard, hard-boiled eggs, a touch of this and that. Nothing fancy. Still good, though. Dad yearned for it in his later years but Mom had had enough of the kitchen after 50 years of married life, raising four kids, all that. If she made some, I sure would eat it. Enough about me.
I wanted to use those cute little fingerling potatoes, thinking they would be easy and fun to use. I found a 2-pound bag with two types in it. I had wanted a bag that included the little blues but, alas, not to be had when I was gathering supplies.
The challenge was to make any potato salad, hot or cold, and no required ingredients other than potatoes. I decided on something easy on me. Roasted potato salad with roasted asparagus and roasted red and yellow bell peppers. Because of the different densities of the vegetables I cooked them separately--though each one with olive oil, freshly ground gourmet peppers, and a bit of salt. After letting all that cool, and in the fridge over night, I added a bit of chopped Italian parsley. Nothing fancy. Still good, though.
Pretty, too.
Gumbo. Seafood gumbo is work but not on the order of cassoulet. Work but scrumptious. Glad my daughter was home to enjoy the work, and the fun of making it and then serving it to our friends from home church one lovely evening when we sat outside with a cool breeze to fan our fellowship. Our May hostess, Denise, of There's a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we'd need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew's Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh. Snag the pdf here: http://thedaringkitchen.co/sites/default/files/u11/25_Gumbo_-_DC_May_2011.pdf First you make the roux. Well, not really. First we made stock from the shrimp heads. I'm glad we had latex gloves in the house for detaching the heads from the bodies. If I had cats we'd not been able to pull them off our legs that afternoon.
Then we made the roux the next day.
This particular gumbo included blue crabs, lump crab meat, shrimp, oysters, okra, onions, smoked sausage, Creole spices (we made those) and another odd thing or two.
The only thing we'd have done differently was not include the blue crabs. It's a spoon-eating dish and then you've got to deal with pulling apart the crabs for that meat. With the canned lump crabmeat in the dish, the blue crabs won't be missed.
This is a fabulous recipe for seafood gumbo. Laissez les bons temps rouler, cher.
This month was edible containers. Very cool even though we didn't attempt anything complicated. You could even vote on some of them at the link below. You won't find mine there. I was in get-er-done mode. And behind. Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks' April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think "outside the plate" and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!
I chose to make bread cups for eggs. What a great breakfast idea. Dinner, too, which is when we ate them. Trimmed jalapeno cheese bread of its crusts, then jamming those squares of bread into muffin tins. Could have used little bowls of a sort but a tin it was for me.
bit of quark cheese and onion in the bottom of the bread, under the egg. Yum.
Very yum, heirloom tomatoes from the local farmers market to go along with them.
On to ceviche for March. We could have chosen to do papas rellenas, too, but I'm only managing one thing at a time at the moment. Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks' March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from "Peruvian Cooking - Basic Recipes" by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn's Spanish teacher, Mayra. My beautiful, wonderful daughter was home so we cooked March, April, and May challenges all during the week she was here. Makes being daring much more fun. We chose to use scallops for our ceviche, which is an easy dish. Onion, limes, seasoning. I bought a dried pepper when it ought to have been a fresh one. Oops.
The lime juice cooks the scallops in a few minutes. Fascinating.
We let it cook too long and thus the taste was a bit too limey. Still glad we made it though.
Where am I? Oh yes, now I remember it is mid May and I am catching up with my challenging cooks. My daughter was home for a week so we knew what we were having for dinner for several nights because of how far behind I am. I was, I mean, for I am caught up now. Can't even post May's yet but we've already cooked that challenge. Yum it was. February was a cold soba noodle salad. I didn't know what soba noodles were, actually. I'd say daring chefs is doing its intent which is trying new things. Soba noodles are buckwheat noodles. Pretty tasty though I'm not much of a pasta fan in any case. They are easy to cook and I added a few veggies and voila! The February 2011 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.
I'm glad they were not hard to find.
A few sweet onions, sweet peas, a bit of jicama hiding behind the peas. All good.
Oh, tempura was part of this challenge but I ended up not making that. No reason other than too much going on. I love fried food.
Worth the trouble? Maybe not. Couple weeks ago I cooked the January Daring Cooks dish. Yes, I am still behind.
Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.
Confit is a method of preserving food. This is what wikipedia.org says:
Confit (in English "con-fee") is a generic term for various kinds of food that have been immersed in a substance for both flavor and preservation. Sealed and stored in a cool place, confit can last for several months. Confit is one of the oldest ways to preserve food, and is a speciality of southwestern France.
Duck confit
Finding the duck was harder than the confit part. But local butcher Readfield's had duck leg quarters. Perfect. Plop in the pan, cover with fat. I didn't use duck fat but instead used lard and coconut oil. It is what I had on hand and improvisation was allowed in this dare.
Bake it a bit in the oven. Let it cool. Voila, confit! I put in the refrigerator but it ought not to be have been needed because the point of confit is preservation for use a later day. Still. I'm all Americanized.
The cassoulet
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Wiki says: Cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked bean stew or casserole originating in the south of France, containing meat (typically pork sausages, pork, goose, duck and sometimes mutton), pork skin (couennes) and white haricot beans.
The dish is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round, earthenware pot with slanting sides.
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After making one, I can safely attest that cassoulet is a meat dish with some beans thrown in. Duck, pork in various forms, and beans.
Any white beans would do for this dish. I found a bag of flageolet beans at my grocer's. They are a French bean, "the caviar of beans", and getting them here from France made them very expensive. For a daring French dish? Yes, this once. One does the regular thing one does with dry beans. Then proceed the following day. Instead of the pork belly originally called for in the recipe, I substituted pork shoulder as allowed. Here you see it, in the bean pot with the beans, ready for cooking.
The next pork called for was pork sausages. I had to substitute brats because everything else in the grocer's was smoked. I hadn't noticed how much smoked sausage there was in this small, non-big-box grocer's I shop at. I figured the the brats would do. I didn't buy the ones with the beer in them.
All browned up.
The French women of old must have been concerned there wouldn't be enough pork in this dish because now we line the cooking dish with pork rind. Thankfully, I could use bacon for that instead of attempting to find pork rind. I did see pig feet in my grocer's. If there is a daring pig's feet one month, I'm passing on that one.
The pan above and the pan below are two different pans I lined because this particular recipe was enough to feed Napoleon's army. The upper one has a 12" diameter and is 2" deep. The one below has a 10" diameter and is 3" deep. Yes I could feed many French men. Hungry men.
Below is the cooked pork shoulder shredded chopped and the brats browned.
Oh, perhaps we ought to have another vegetable. Hmmm. Yes onions, caramelized in oil. Cook very slowly until done. By this time I was at about day 3. If I'd planned better I could have started earlier in the week but I was having my sister and mom over for dinner, I was feeling the pressure of finishing. Caramelizing onions seemed particularly slow at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
I am somewhat impervious to mess but even I was nearly undone by what was happening when I started assembling all the pieces. You see the pile of food about to go into the cassoulet The duck, pork shoulder, brats, beans, caramelized onions. You can see the cheese wax clinging the backsplash behind the stove. That was from the cheese making adventure.
The recipe calls for pureeing the onions before assembling and my mind went to skipping that part using the justification that those French women didn't have the equipment and probably wouldn't have bothered, what with all the pork the army would be munching on.
The two pans were barely, and I mean barely, big enough to hold it all.
While writing this post several weeks later, I wonder why I bothered taking photos about 2/3rds through the baking. Ah, I forgot. Take the cassoulet out, let it cool, then refrigerate it. It was looking good though.
The recipe called for bread on top. I didn't do that either. I don't buy bread to keep in the house and there no way to buy a little for this. So I didn't.
This cassoulet was very tasty. We might have eaten a couple of cups of it between the three of us, what with the cheese cutting and the glass of wine. Happily, thankfully, the cassoulet freezes well so that when the French army shows up I'll be ready.
I had occasion to speak with a family friend who has enjoyed cooking and the social aspect of it as long as I've known her....she's the age of my mom. And this friend can spend hours in the kitchen on the simplest of meals. When I was visiting with her by phone a week after the daring cassoulet, I mentioned that I had made one. She laughed and said that she'd only made it once in her life because it was too much trouble. Ooo-la-la. Might be a one-timer for me, too. It taught me, though, that if I am ever served cassoulet, I will know to thank the cook profusely for all the time they put in it.
My mom and big sister were here this past weekend and we cut the cheese. My first ever cheddar. It's a farmhouse cheddar and I have no idea what that is supposed to taste like. Mine was tangy, much like sharp cheddar and dry-ish--somewhat crumbly. I suspect that this isn't the correct texture but I don't care. A good time was had by all. Yep. I'll be making cheese again.
Eggs are great in my opinion. One of God's perfect foods. I like them all which-a-ways, including poached though I don't do that often. Daring Cooks challenge for December 2010 is poaching an egg. Yes, I am behind. Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num. January is my month to wrestle my weight back to pre-holiday numbers. Without guests in the house to feed, I chose a scaled down poached egg. Nothing fancy this go round. But, oh, eggs benedict or some variation does sound fabulous. Good thing I've already made and eaten what I made. I have a well-loved, falling apart cookbook that I use. I ought to send it off to a bindery to be put back together. I would have to have it out of my house though and I don't like that. I also have a Bible in similar condition. They both work as they ought. Nevermind. I looked up poached eggs.
The water is salted, a teense of vinegar, bring to simmer.
You slip the egg into the water, instead of dropping it in from the shell like a kid doing a cannonball.
Put the lid on, let it cook 3-5 minutes. I choose to put my poached egg on a bed of chopped, cooked spinach. I love cooked spinach. Lots of freshly ground pepper on the top. A side of grapefruit. Oh yeah, righteous food. ';)
I was preparing the bed of spinach and cutting out the grapefruit sections, while the egg was poaching. Upon cutting it, I see that I would not cook it so long next time. I like my yolk a little runnier than that. Still, it was good.
But not on cheese.
In my make-do-ness, instead of waxing the cheese I tried wrapping the cheese in plastic wrap. I would have waxed the cheese but it isn't available locally and it costs three times the cost of the wax to ship it; even more if I wanted it quick. The result? Not good. Mold in or on cheese isn't necessarily bad, especially if that is your plan. Not my plan. Hmmmm. Time for wax. I found cheese wax at a place over in Austin and the best-big-sister-ever made the run for me and we exchanged it on a meet-up halfway between us. Using vinegar to rub most of the mold off, and a knife for the rest, I cleaned and rinsed the cheese. Much better.
Waxing the cheese happens in a double boiler, or if I had a crockpot to dedicate to this that would work. I stuck a pottery bowl on top of a pot with boiling water. I was thinking I could dip the cheese some, brushing on the rest.
I had read that dipping the cheese takes several times more wax than brushing it on. I didn't realize that it was from when you drop the cheese into the wax and it splashes all over the kitchen.
I did eventually get the cheese waxed and I work slowly on removing the wax from surfaces in my kitchen. You know how Easter basket grass is often found a year later? It'll be like that. I'm on the hunt for a used dorm size refrigerator or wine cooler that has a thermostat I can set to 50-55 degrees. In the meantime, the cheese sits in a cooler in the kitchen. I keep changing the ice out to keep it below 60 degrees.
I'm planning a cut-the-cheese party in later February. Everyone will be required to scrape a tiny bit of wax off the black brick-tile behind the stove. Wanna come?
I've had this plan to attempt making cheddar cheese for a bit. Months. The stars aligned and it has happened. Today. A cheese press I've cobbled together and am going to attempt keeping it at the proper temperature while aging in a very inexpensive, high-fail probability way. Still, I didn't want to invest a bunch o' money not ever having made it. I scored a free, big enough, stainless steel pot from friend Sandy who gave it to me 'cause she wasn't using it and she's nice that way.
The kit also came with the needed starter (mesophilic), rennet, butter muslin, and a dairy thermometer. I've made ricotta, cream cheese, and plain curds and whey already. This is my attempt at a hard cheese. In this case it is farmhouse cheddar, a trainer hard cheese. Only one month to age....though I guess it could go longer.
What an adventure! And some kind of make-a-mess-in-the-kitchen, too.
First you make the roux. Oh wait, that's from Justin Wilson on Cajun cooking.
Couple gallons of farm fresh cow milk. Yum.
A dairy thermometer has a low range on it. Needed in cheesemaking.
when it gets to the right temp and ripens, things begin to happen.
There's much hanging around while this is all going on so I had to figure out how to improvise a cheese press. I went to a local grocery open on New Year's Day and snagged these batter bowls (total $3). I'm thinking that because they nest, a suitable, though imperfect press could be made.
One of them holds the cheese and there must be a way for the whey that is being pressed out to escape. I used my handy dandy, one-of-the-best-Christmas-presents ever to accomplish that task.
Hmm. I didn't take a photo of the drained cheese wrapped in its cheesecloth. It is in the bottom bowl of the following picture. The bottom bowl has the holes and the cheese in it. The first press is for 10 minutes with 10 pounds. I used a couple of 5 pound handweights I have about.
That arrangement fell over, so I tried a bigger cutting board to balance the weights on it. That worked.
Once done, you fiddle with the cheese a little and then press again with 20 pounds. This is 21 pounds because that's the weights I have. I figure it wouldn't hurt, but what do I know? Nada about this but I perservere.
While that is pressing I've got to find stuff that weighs about 50 pounds. No small child about, but even if one was available they wouldn't sit still for 12 hours. Yep, 12 hours on this next one. I managed a conglomeration of stones from outside and the hand weights for about 50 pounds. You see my cheese press creation after I've managed to wedge stuff around in it in the sink to keep it from falling over, which it did several times. It's loud when rocks and weights clang down in your stainless sink.
It worked through the night! This is the cheese unwrapped but still in its cheesecloth. Because my follower (in my case the batter bowl on the top) wasn't flat, the cheese has that curved up edge.
The cheese turned over and out of its cheesecloth.
The next thing that happens is it sits naked on a board 2-4 days drying out a bit before it goes into storage for aging. I put it under a colander and onto the kitchen bookshelf. See the little fondue pot? That's a family treasure not used much anymore but oh what fun!
After all that, and last night too, I made ricotta from the whey that was left from the cheddar process. Maybe 1/2 pound? The cheddar reportedly makes 2 pounds. The whey has many uses but I'm not doing that this time. Out it will go on the compost pile.
I would do this again, assuming that the cheese comes out well enough which won't be known for at least a month. Definitely, definitely would do a more regular cheese press. Suzanne at Chickens in the Road has a super post on building one. And I would much prefer if Baby Girl was home to share in the fun. Maybe I can get her back when the cheese cutting takes place.
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