Ricotta

By all reports, homemade ricotta tastes way better than the store-bought stuff that comes in those plastic yogurt containers. It didn't sound too hard to make, and I wanted to make a lasagne, so I needed ricotta, so I figured I'd give it a try. I used this recipe, but I used 1% milk and 1% yogurt, because if I'm going to be left with half a gallon of mile and 3 cups of yogurt, well gosh darn I want to have something that I like to drink. I should have used the cream, though, but I forgot to get it when I was at the store.

Anyway, low-fatness aside, the cheese-making worked. This is a new milestone, I've made my own cheese! Unfortunately, it tasted exactly the same as the stuff that comes in plastic tubs from the grocery store, and it was a lot more work. Probably because I wasn't using whole milk, I only ended up with about a cup's worth of cheese, so that was a lot of work for not much to show... Oh well.

So, use David Lebovitz's recipe for making this stuff, as using low fat milk and low fat yogurt results in a low fat tasting cheese. Which was perfectly fine in the lasagne, and frankly, I don't know what else you do with ricotta cheese, so no big deal.

First you put everything in a big pot. The vinegar sort of curdles the milk, but not really until it boils.

Here it is starting to boil. I have to admit, I let it boil for 4 minutes rather than 2... seemed ok. But what would I know...

Then you pour it into your cloth over the strainer. I should mention that I don't have any cheesecloth, but my dish towel worked just fine.

I actually had to transfer it to a second bowl and pour out the first bowlful of whey (I assume thats whats left over when you're just keeping the curds?), because 8 cups of milk is a lot of liquid. Anyway, this is what it looked like after 5 minutes or so of draining.

Then you squeeze it. It was still pretty hot at this point, but I don't think I have any permanent burns on my hands.

All that for about a cup's worth of cheese.

The lasagne! It got Ed's rating of approval. The bread crumbs on top were clutch.

Blackberry cobbler cupcakes

It is definitely blackberry season right now in VT, and I came home from the wedding's festivities with lots of blackberries. I wanted to do something with them, because I don't actually like blackberries as much as other berries for just eating, and I decided on a blackberry cobbler. However, what with Boston being so hot, I didn't want my oven on for as long as a cobbler would take, so I turned it into cupcakes. I think this would have worked better as one cake, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do when its 90 degrees and humid.

I got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman, just googling for the first blackberry cobbler recipe that would come up. It turns out that her recipe is essentially a whitney cake without the eggs, so I didn't look at the recipe much once I'd figured that out. They're not the prettiest cupcakes in the world, but the taste more than made up for the looks. I highly recommend these guys.



Blackberry Cobbler Cupcakes
Makes 12

1C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1C sugar
1/4-1/2C sugar for sprinkling
1/2C (1 stick) butter
1C milk
~2C blackberries (I used fresh, but I'm sure frozen would work too)

Preheat the oven to 350F, and grease a muffin tin. I recommend those little muffin tin liners, because the cupcakes will be fairly gooey when they come out of the oven.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a 2C measure, melt the butter in the microwave. Add the milk, and stir that around. Dump the wet into the dry, and fold until its combined. A couple lumps are just fine.

Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake molds, trying to not fill them too high - you need to fit blackberries in here too. Drop a bunch of blackberries into each cupcake, enough to bring the batter to the edge of the pan. Sprinkle sugar generously on top of each cupcake, and put them in the oven for about 30 minutes. Check them at 30 minutes, and if they're still too goopy, put them back in for another 5-10. Its hard to go wrong, just don't burn them. And then, try not to eat them all in one sitting, it'll make your stomach hurt.

Banana chocolate chip muffins

This week seems to be a little about cleaning out my fridge. I found a banana that was fully brown, but, it was still firm. As in, not rotting. But there was no way I'd be taking that thing out of the fridge to eat it. So, banana bread! My justification for turning this bread into muffins this time is that I didn't want my oven on for that long, and muffins cook faster than a loaf of bread. Plus then they're just so perfect and bite-sized...

Anyway, I sort of made up the recipe, but it seems to have worked. The picture isn't really much to look at... I suppose walnuts would have been a nice addition, but I was feeling lazy. They're not very sweet muffins, due to me not having any sugar, and not wanting to use up ALL of my honey. But they are good, in a not-too-sweet sort of way.

Banana chocolate chip muffins
Made 11. You would get 10 if you fill the muffin tins more fully
2 eggs
1/4C yogurt
2 tbs oil
1 ripe banana
1/4C honey
1/4C white flour
1C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4tsp salt
1/2C chocolate chips

Grease a muffin tin and preheat your oven to 400F. Mash up your banana with the yogurt, eggs, honey, and oil. Dump the flour on top of this, and the baking powder and salt on top of that. Lightly mix the flour with the salt and baking powder, without mixing it into the wet stuff. Once the dry is mostly combined, fold it into the wet. This makes a pretty sticky, thick batter. You could go with more yogurt or less flour to thin things out... but it works well enough as is. Fold the chocolate chips into the batter, and spoon it into the muffin tins. Once you put the muffins in the oven turn the temperature down to 350F. bake for 15-20 minutes.

Crab with mango-avocado salsa

Mango-avocado salsa is definitely one of my favorite things to eat. Especially in the summer when its really hot out, sort of like right now. I've probably mentioned that I can sit there and eat this with a spoon, but I thought I'd mix things up today. I'd add CRABMEAT! I don't know how appealing this sounds to you, but I thought it was a darn good idea.

The idea took shape a couple weeks (months?) ago, when I bought some crabmeat. It was frozen, so I didn't think much about putting it in my freezer, but then I realized that it was still in my freezer, and its not like it gets any better the longer I leave it there. So, I decided that now was the time to thaw it out and see if it was worth paying eight times (I kid you not) per pound what you pay for the imitation stuff. I wasn't sure if it were cooked, I sniffed it and it smelled a little fishy, so I figured I'd saute it a while in some butter. Because that makes most things taste better. After a couple minutes in the pan with butter, salt, pepper, and a little lime juice, it smelled much more appetizing, and it tasted good too. Lets talk about the taste for a minute. When I took my first bite, I was like, "wow. This is good". I slowly savored that mouthful, and then took another one. This time, I was thinking more "this is good. But its not really $30/lb good". I have had softshell crabs before, and those are totally worth the price. I'll be going that route from now on. Anyway, my point is that this real crab stuff was good, but definitely not worth the cost to me.

Not one to be discouraged, I figured I'd forge ahead and just not think about how much every bite was costing me. There was also the fact that I'd bought the avocado from Whole Foods, so it was a $2.29 avocado, which is about $1.69 more than I'd like to pay. I stood there for a solid two minutes agonizing about buying this avocado. In the end, it was worth it, because it was a delicious avocado. But boy. This was an expensive one.

Price aside, I totally recommend this dish. I could see it being a really good appetizer type thing. I ate it for lunch, but I also sometimes eat leftover salad for breakfast, so I'm no standard to live by. I had leftover tortillas in my fridge, the big burrito kind, that were definitely on the hard side of things. So, I cut them into wedges and pan-fried them until they were crispy and golden. That went really well with my crab-avocado-mango salsa. I cooked one side in the oil, then when that side was golden, I flipped them and salted the other side. It took about four minutes per batch.


You can get the recipe for the salsa here, so I won't write it again. Except this time I used an entire lime and only one mango. Just mix in some crabmeat, and then if you want it to look pretty, pack it into a bowl, and invert the bowl on a plate.

Cooked Endives

We've been cooking endives this way for a while, but I think we eat them too fast for me to take a picture of them. Basically, it takes a slightly bitter lettuce (if they're even lettuces) and slowly cooks them until they're sweet and salty and delicious. What I love is that although you don't add much oil, they taste incredibly rich. This is definitely one of my favorite ways to eat a vegetable.



We changed things up this time 'round and added some cheese, which was good, but I think I like these guys just the way they are, with a little salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Cut the endives in half, lengthwise. Put a little olive oil in a pan that has a fitting lid, and put the endives cut-side down in the pan. Sprinkle some kosher salt and pepper on top of the endive, turn the pan to medium-low, cover, and let it cook for 5-10 minutes. Check it occasionally, but it shouldn't be burning. Once the bottom is looking pretty golden, flip them over and cook for another five minutes or so. I don't know how Ed got the cheese on top, but I think he just left them cut-side down and put the cheese on top. He might have put them in the oven to get the cheese brown? That sounds like too much work though.

With or without the cheese, these little guys are GOOD! Don't hesitate to expand your endive horizons... they're good for more than salads!

Pasta in a brown butter sage sauce*

*with roasted cauliflower, caramelized onions, and chickpeas



There is no point to listing out all the ingredients for a pasta dish in the title, because it just makes the title really, really, long. Hence the asterisk. This was another one of those pasta dishes where everything in the fridge gets cooked and put on the pasta. I thought it was good, the butter tasted nutty, in a good way (although can anything be nutty in a bad way? I love nuts). I think I'm slowly learning to enjoy butter. I still won't dip artichokes or lobster in it, but if you use it to cook mushrooms or to brown and put on pasta, its alright. I've always liked it in cookies, no issue there...

Not much by way of explanation here. Give yourself at least 20 minutes for caramelizing the onions and roasting the cauliflower, but those are the only long parts. The chickpeas aren't really necessary, they didn't add much, but I like chickpeas, and they were in my fridge, and needed eating. The pasta used here was whole wheat, hence its dark color. And the onion was a red onion, which is what those purple things are.



Pasta in a brown butter sage sauce
Serves two relatively hungry people

1/2 box pasta
1 cauliflower, any color works, but the carnival cauliflowers are more colorful (purple, green, yellow)
1 onion
1-2 tbs butter
olive oil
1/2C chickpeas
3 tsp dried sage (fresh would work too if you had it)
salt to taste

Preheat your oven to 400F. Thinly slice the onions, so that they make long strips. Put the onion and some olive oil in a frying pan, and add a generous amount of salt. Stir it around so that everything is coated (add more oil as needed), and cook on medium low for about 20 minutes, until the onion is soft and starting to brown. If you taste it, it should be sweet.

Meanwhile, slice your cauliflower and let it crumble into little pieces. Toss the cauliflower with some oil, then spread it on a baking sheet. Sprinkle some salt and about a teaspoon of dried sage on top. Put this in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the cauliflower is cooked through and a little brown on the bottom.

After you've popped the cauliflower in the oven, get a pot of water boiling. Once it boils, dump in the pasta and cook it until its just a little crunchy. You don't want it fully cooked since you'll finish it in the pan with the butter. As its cooking, make the brown butter sage sauce - I used the same pan as the onions pan. Melt 1-2 tbs of butter, and once its melted add the dried sage. Cook this for a couple minutes (should take about as long as the pasta), and take it off the heat when the butter starts to turn just a little tiny bit brown. You don't want burned butter... you want browned butter.

Once the pasta is at the barely-crunchy stage, drain it, reserving a little liquid just in case you don't have enough butter for your sauce. Add the pasta to the pan with the butter and the onions. Add the chickpeas, and toss everything around. Sautee this stuff until the pasta tastes done - you'll have to keep tasting. Mix in the cauliflower and a bunch of salt (to taste) and you're good to go.

Aaaaand another pasta dish in the books... =)