I realized the other day while making paté that my KitchenAid mixer turned 35 this year — thirty five years this yellow baby has been churning out egg whites and cookie dough and cake batter. The last couple of years it’s repetoire has expanded to include pasta dough and grinding meat — it’s a...
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Look what I made this morning — ricotta cheese! On toast, with a little parsley/basil oil I put up this summer, some salt, some pepper — yum. My milk delivery is on Tuesdays, so it looks like Wednesdays are becoming Cheese Day. I like to let the gallon jar sit in the fridge overnight...
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Ever since I bought Pork and Sons last spring, I’ve been wanting to make the Terrine Jacquy — whenever I’ve been in France I’ve been fascinated by the sheer variety of potted terrines — they’re everywhere in a million variations. The last couple of years I’ve been doing food baskets for Christmas presents —...
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It was a gorgeous weekend here — blue skies, yellow leaves falling off trees, sunshine, snow on the peaks. It was so gorgeous that even though we’d done a nice hike early in the day, I couldn’t stay home yesterday afternoon so I took Raymond for a little bike ride. It’s our newest trick...
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I don’t have any photos because my little camera isn’t really good enough to show the progress of the pancetta, but I can assure you that it is a much happier piece of raw meat since I’ve been running the swamp cooler to up the humidity down there. Ruhlman’s recipe says that the drying...
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What a surprise — I know she’s been shortlisted forever, but it never occurred to me that they’d actually give it to her — but then again, the Nobel committee seems to like decidedly odd writers — and Lessing is certainly odd. I can’t overstate how important The Golden Notebook was to me in...
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The Ameya Preserve folks have done it again — they’ve listed property in their development in the Fantasy Gifts section of the 2007 Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. I can’t get a direct link to the page, but if you scroll through, you’ll find it — there’s a photo from the Ameya website on page...
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There it is — five pounds of cured, rolled, raw pork belly hanging in my basement — it’s a tiny bit freaky, but three days into it, I’m sort of used to my little meat project. The basement smells lovely — all that nutmeg in Ruhlman’s cure plus a nice porky smell. My big...
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Yup — although it sounded like rain outside my window all night — look what I found when the sun came up this morning — let’s hope what’s left of the tomatoes are okay under that plastic. Oh, and maybe it’s time to put the folding chairs and the outdoor cushions away for the...
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Here it is, my first cheese. It’s a Queso Fresco — a very simple simple cheese made by heating the milk to between 185 and 190 degrees, then adding a little bit of apple cider vinegar and continuing to heat until the curd has precipitated out, and the whey is clear. Then you drain...
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