If the weather keeps up this wacked out pattern, it will be berry season in two weeks. So, in order to prepare you for the possible early bounty of climate change, let’s make some mascarpone to go with those early season berries!
We are not experts, this is just what we did and we liked the result. It’s one of the easiest cheeses to make as long as you get the right ingredients.
1 Quart of half and half or other light cream…Pasteurized is fine, but NOT ultra-pasteurized. If it’s UP, it will say so on the bottle/carton. I found some at Fresh Market, I’m sure Whole Foods has it, and if you have a raw milk source…I’m sure that would be amazing..haven’t tried it yet. For the record, we did make a batch with half ultra-pasteurized whipping cream and half regular pasteurized milk, and it worked, but didn’t perform as well.
1/4 teaspoon of Tartaric Acid…NOT Cream of Tartar. Locally, I’ve been told All Seasons Gardening and Brewing carries it. We got ours from a cheesemaking kit we had forgotten about! Some people like to make it with lemon juice, but we decided to stick with what our cheesemaking book told us.
So don’t you like how both of the ingredients involve me getting all bossy about what NOT to get? Do you know how easy it is to typo MasCRAPone? Yeah, I thought so. Moving on…..
Get a double boiler going and heat the cream until the temperature reaches 185°. Add your Tartaric Acid, whisk, remove from the heat and pour into a sieve topped with moistened layers of fine cheesecloth or butter muslin. Let cool, and refrigerate covered for about 12 hours. Best used within a week…Enjoy!!
Yum. I added fresh mint to one batch and it was nice, but not as minty as I was expecting. The cheese overwhelmed it a bit. (Yes, I actually have mint right now..crazy). Experiment with flavors you like and have fun.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving…we did, and we’ve been too tired to even THINK about gearing up for Christmas around this house. Our neighbors were putting up their Christmas Tree yesterday (Friday) and all around town I see cars with trees on top and we’re still scrubbing out the turkey fryer.
I must rally, but it just seems too soon. I know December is NEXT week…late Thanksgivings always make me think I have more time than I do….
Blurry phone pic of Turkey Day dessert….flourless chocolate cake. Onward to Christmas…..
Gloomy, rainy Sundays are made for cooking, so we decided this particular weekend, we would dive into the world of home made sausage. I will warn you now that there is some graphic content, so unless you want to have “the talk” with the wee ones, read this all by your lonely.
Because we are nerds, I got something very exciting (to me) for my birthday awhile back. A meat grinding attachment and a sausage stuffing attachment for the stand mixer. I know, some gals get excited about a pair of Louboutins for their birthday, and I get excited about meat processing. We are a high class crew over here.
Modern Thrifter sent me this apropos vid that I had forgotten about completely. Perfecto! If I can only have Kramer’s flair whilst grinding meat, I will have achieved great success in life.
I’m a Ruhlman fan, so there wasn’t any way I wanted to tackle my first snausage without his input. While we didn’t have the fancy commercial gear he has, we soldiered on. He’s got more about it here. The second book is also highly recommended and it’s pretty serious. Meat dudes in the know. The CC is suitably impressed with them and their scientific approach.
BTW, you can’t work in volume for this stuff, you’ll need to have a scale to measure ingredients by weight. Sausage making and pastry actually have more in common than you’d think.
For our first attempt, we decided on a pork and sage pesto sausage. In looking at recipe ideas, a classic pork/sage sausage and a simple garlic sausage recipe were combined by using my sage pesto which has garlic, sage, almond and salt.
Everything we’d read told us how incredibly important it is to keep the ingredients cold. We chilled the garlic and pesto and chopped the meat while a tad bit frozen, and then returned to the freezer for further chilling. The white wine stayed chilled before adding as well.
While the seasoned meat was chilling, we had our casings soaking (these were hog). Then we rinsed them through.
Then we ground the meat into a chilled bowl. Despite attempts to remove sinew while chopping, we had to stop and clean the blade about 4 times to remove the clogging sinew. Maybe there’s an art to avoiding the issue we rookies need to look into.
Then the ground meat is mixed with the paddle blade of the stand mixer and put back to chill. Once chilled, add your liquid (we used sauvingnon blanc) and chill again. Then it’s time to stuff! Beware: the following photos can be offensive.
Food Porn!! I did warn you.
My camera battery started to wane so I used the phone to finish up the process.
We sauteed one to see how it would hold up (raining out, so no grilling).
That is one. ugly. chubby.
But, a tasty one! The Things loved it too, so we cooked up some more for dinner!
While these were not perfect, we felt good about our first try. I think I could get more aggressive with the other seasonings, but the salt ratio was perfect. Our snags were a bit chubby, which is a common rookie thing, so we’ll have to get the hang of feeding through a slimmer sausage. When they are overstuffed, the skins don’t hold up to cooking so well, obvs. But the freshness and smooth texture was unlike anything we’ve ever bought. No more crumbly, dry sausage! I wonder how they will hold up to freezing. Time will tell.
I can’t wait to make all sorts of other varieties. Next up, I’ve promised the things an apple and maple breakfast sausage. We reserved some of the sausage un-stuffed to use for our Thanksgiving dressing. I’m thinking of adapting the Pioneer Woman’s dressing using our sausage in place of the Italian sausage.
Lots to cook this week for the holiday, so if I don’t make it back…Happy Thanksgiving!
To quote my new best friend Lance at the Genius Bar, I need a “bigger house” since I’ve outgrown mine. New hard drive and RAM are on the way and, fingers crossed, I should be back in bidness.
As I was feeling very frustrated, and a tiny bit sad that summer is over, I did what all normal people do. Excercise, Mediate, Garden Fry up something that will likely kill me. Isn’t that how everyone rolls? No?! Hunh.
It’s probably been 5 years since I ate one of these things, but when you get that wild haired craving, sometimes you just have to give in.
We made a freaking onion blossom….and it was delicious in all its greasy glory.
We followed this recipe pretty closely and it came out great. We opted for a chipotle sauce rather than a ranch style one. The Things, who are normally onion averse, loved it and demanded we make it more often. The old batter and fry trick works every time.
After recovering from greasapalooza, I hit an estate sale and found this little bit of fun….
I’m trying to decide what to name it…Crazy Clara (clarinet), or perhaps (H)oboe? This abstract reed instrument seems to need a name….we must think….
I know….some of you can excuse yourselves to go throw up while I discuss my metamorphosis into a Trendy Mindy. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.
Still here? OK, well last year’s CSA gave us fresh eggs on a weekly basis, and we desperately miss them. We opted against the CSA this year after our 9th week in a row of zucchini exclusive boxes brought the entire family to tears. The Things were begging for it to STOP. “Can’t we just compost them? I can’t eat them anymore!!! I’m even sick of the fritters!!” I digress….
Eggs. We can go to the farmers market and get them, but some weeks I just can’t get there. We’ve got a few friends who have been keeping them and we are fascinated. Replacing our beloved pooch doesn’t seem likely, and a pet with such a tasty habit might be nice?
So many beautifully designed coops out there! If money were no object and we weren’t planning to build it ourselves…then these might dot our landscape.
So why am I talking about chickens anyway?! Don’t I have the interior of a treehouse to paint now that the temps are cooling? Why, yes. But finishing up pesky details isn’t nearly as much fun as planning something new, that may, or may not, ever happen.
August 24 UPDATE: Oh my GAWD..I just saw Karen’s coop over at The Art of Doing Stuff…and that is the mac damn daddy of all coops…..go check it here!
