Yearly Resolutions: Cheesemaking

2014 will be the year of cheesemaking.  I love the idea of making food.  Not just cooking food, but actually making it.  I have a few friends who brew beer, but I have zero interest in doing that.  So I thought about where my interests are.  Wine and cheese!  I'm not going to attempt to make wine... well I'm saying that now.  Check back in a few years.  So the answer is cheese!  
 

There are so many online recipes and advice for people wanting to make their own cheese.  I have bookmarked lots of these pages and have scheduled once type of cheese to make each month.  I'm starting off easy with soft cheese that don't need any extra ingredients that aren't already in your kitchen.  Then I'll move onto hard cheese and trying to make my own cheese press.  That will be interesting.  

My first cheese was creme fraiche.  I know that isn't really a cheese, but I read that it was a great place to start.  I unfortunately forgot to take pictures.  I was way too excited about it!
 

My February cheese was queso blanco.   I found the recipe over here on Urban Cheesecraft.
 

I have always found queso blanco that you buy in stores to be pretty bland.  It works well on Mexican dishes, but doesn't really add anything to the flavors.  The most fascinating part of the cheese ended up being the flavor!  

 

You use vinegar or lemon/lime juice in the recipe, and it imparts some of its flavors onto the cheese!  I used apple cider vinegar and my queso blanco has a slight apply flavor.  It isn't much, but I find it way more interesting than store bought queso.   

Next up, I think I'm going to make another batch of this using lime juice and maybe I'll toss in some jalepenos!

Stay tuned for my March cheese: Ricotta.

Gourmet Bison Tacos with Cilantro Slaw

A few days ago I made the most impressive tacos to date and I mostly made up the recipes myself!  We bought a pound of  bison at Whole Foods, which was more than enough for my husband and I with all the other additions.  The recipes are all really easy, but you may end up with a lot of dirty bowls from preparation.

Bison Tacos

1 lb ground bison

Spices- onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper

Cook the bison in a skillet.  Add seasoning to your liking with 1/2-3/4 a cup of water.  I used about a teaspoon of everything, two of cumin, and a dash of cayenne.  There wasn't too much kick, so next time I'd add more spice.  Simmer until the liquid is absorbed.  Serve.

Red Tomato Salsa

1 jalapeño

3 cloves of garlic

1 (15-ounce) can tomatoes

2 Tablespoons lime juice

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1/4 cup onion

salt to taste

Roast jalapeño in oven on broil for 10-15 minutes until the outside is brown and splotchy.  Remove from oven and seed the chili.  Toss the rest of the ingredients into a blender except cilantro and onion.  Pulse until it is mostly a liquid.  Toss in the cilantro and onion.  Stir.  Serve and enjoy!

Cilantro Slaw

1 cup shredded cabbage

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/2 jalapeño, seeded and chopped

1 T lime juice

1 T honey

salt to taste

Mix everything together and serve.

Peppers and Onions

2 poblano peppers

1/2 an onion, sliced

Saute peppers and onions until soft.  Serve with everything else!

You can also add on some avocado and cheese (montery jack) like we did in the first photo!

How To: Pineapple Flowers!

This weekend is the Air and Water show in Chicago and we have a front row view!  Well... sort of... our windows face the area they turn around instead of the show itself... but they are still flying a couple hundred feet outside of our windows!

To watch the show, we've invited some friends over so I, of course, had to bake!  I thought pina colada cupcakes would be a nice summery treat for everyone.  And for decoration I made pineapple flowers.

All you need for this is a pineapple!  Nice and simple!

Next, you'll cut off the outside.  The holes in the pineapple below are there to get the last bit out so we have lots of usable pineapple.  (Did you know that you can plant the top of a pineapple and grow a new one too!  Just plant that top part of the pineapple and take care of it like a plant.  I guess it takes about 2 years to grow a new pineapple... mine is about 2 months in so it just looks like the top of an old pineapple.)

Cut the pineapple into strips as thin as possible.  I got about 2 1/2 dozen slices out of my pineapple and all I had was a sharp knife.

You can skip this step if you want.  I put my pineapple slices into food coloring to make different colored flowers.  Just soak for a few minutes.

Pat the slices dry and lay out the pineapple slices on parchment paper.  Excess moisture will just make this whole process take longer.  Heat in the oven at about 225 degrees in 30 minute spans.  Flip them and cook for another 30 minutes.  You'll do this a couple times until they are mostly dried out (mine didn't completely dry out) and the edges are crispy and a bit curly.

You can dry them flat or you can put them into cupcake tins make more of a flower shape.  I used mini cupcake pans to get the shape I wanted.

And the end product on my pina colada cupcakes!  Some people may not like the texture of them, but they remind me of thick fruit roll up.  Kind of chewy with a good pineapple flavor.

New Challenge

This year I'm trying to make my cooking prettier.  I can make really good tasting food, but not very pretty food.  I tried my hand this weekend at cupcakes.  I made simple yellow cupcakes and buttercream icing with a little grapefruit juice added to the icing and brushed on top of the finished cupcake.  My decoration was supposed to look close to this...

But it instead turned out like this.  My icing was too soft so it kind of collapsed.  It tasted fine, but didn't look too good. 

Hopefully next time will work better... I'm making a cake for a Valentine's Day party, so let's cross our fingers!

Cooking Fail

Here is today's cooking fail.  I was making short ribs for the first time.  I've seared the beef and the recipe says to pour a bottle of wine into the dish next.  As I am pouring (hot dish, room temperature wine), the dish explodes.  Glass everywhere.  It made it all the way across the apartment.  

The short ribs... that looked so good!!!

And the glass aftermath... 

What is your worst cooking failure?

Day 19- For Yourself

After crafting something for someone else yesterday, today your get to make something just for you!  What have you been wanting?  Go out and make it!

Day 18- For Someone Else

I had an idea of what I was going to craft for today, but I couldn't get the supplies in time for it.  And I can't really say what it is in case that person reads this blog...  So I worked on another Christmas gift!  Fruit infused alcohol!

I've got clementine and raspberry rum, pomegranate and blueberry vodka, and cranberry and poblano whiskey.  These have to sit for another week or so to be done, but they look pretty in the mean time!

Halloween!

I finally have a computer back after being without one for the past month!!!  Yeah!!  So I can start posting with all those photos that I've been wanting to do for so long.  I'm starting it off with a post about Halloween... it's a little late, but I had lots of crafting for it this year!

To start this off, I am not a big fan of Halloween.  I haven't really enjoyed it since I was in elementary school since I've since always thought I was too old for it.  But this year we were throwing a Halloween party so I went all out.

I baked pumpkin spice latte cupcakes to snack on... they look good... yum....

I also decorated a pumpkin this year.  I had a great time doing this.  I found a template online for a Doctor Who pumpkin, but instead of cutting everything out like the design wanted me to do, I only cut out the parts of the Tardis and carved the outside layers of the pumpkin off for the Doctor.

And then there was my costume.  I didn't want to put a lot of money or work into it, and neither did my husband.  I had been rewatching Doctor Who episodes and realized that Alex could dress like Rory with stuff just in his closet.  I had been planning on doing the Silence hash marks, but I upped it by dressing like Amy Pond.

My inspiration

Alex's inspiration

And of course we couldn't leave the dog out of it, so we found a bow tie for her and she got to be the Doctor.  I wanted to find a big haired wig to make her River Song, but I don't think she would have been a fan of that...

And here's the party!!!  I'm hanging out with Meg the Grand!

Day 5- Keep Yourself Organized

On day 5 we get to get ourselves organized.  If you're like me, there is always something in the apartment that is messy.  No matter how much I organize, I always find a new spot where I can't find what I need.  So for today we get to craft to organize a place.  It can be something to help you stay organized, or it could just be cleaning up an area that has long needed it.  Have fun!

Day 4- Inspiration from a Photo
I took a bit of leeway on this day of crafting.  On Thursday we are going to a friend's birthday party and I wanted to cook something for it.  So the overlap of the two was a necessity unless I wanted my head to explode.  She is a big Doctor Who fan, so I tried to think of something to make relating to that.  Foodgawker came to the rescue!  Someone had created a dessert version of fish fingers and custard!  Here's the video for those of you who are confused...

So my photo I guess is of the Doctor eating some fish fingers and custard.  I also now want to call fish sticks fish fingers from now on...

The original recipe wasn't creative enough so I changed up a few things, including doing a completely different form of custard.  What I made was a white chocolate pot de creme for the custard and vanilla cookies covered in graham crackers.  The ones I'm bringing to the party are in chocolate crust shells also, but I forgot to take photos of that.  Here is my final product!  Also, sorry that I don't have photos during the process... I'm still without a computer so I can't hook up my camera yet.  I also wish my i-pod took better photos, because I'm saddened by the loss of quality when I upload them.

This recipe is definitely a keeper!  It is so good and it really does look like fish fingers and custard!!!  Allons-y!!!

Roasted Red Peppers... Yum!

First off I have to say how much I love using roasted red peppers.  They are so good!  I have a bunch of recipes that I’ve wanted to use them for but haven’t had a food processor so they got put on a back burner.  But this isn’t one of them!  This one comes out of my Italian cookbook (though it’s BH&G so I’m not sure how true it is).  I don’t feel like copying the recipe now, but if you want it let me know!

Work Cake!

I got a cake at work last week... (I'm posting now because I already had other posts written to post over the past week...)  A bunch of women in the office have gotten married this year and our pastry department made each of us a cake.  I got to take home the mystery cake.  There was a chocolate covered cheesecake, a red velvet cake, a chocolate cake, a lemon and berry cake, and a mystery cake.  They couldn't remember what it was.  Haha!  I decided to be up for the surprise and it was a nice thick chocolate cake.  They must have made two of them... but I don't care, it's still yummy.

I didn't take photos until I got home so it sort of lost some icing on the way... oops!

I ate a piece and then froze the rest to wait for my fiance to get back from his bachelor party road trip.  But I made sure to take some photos of it.  Doesn't it look so good!  I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Mexican Night

I love making salsa.  I particularly love making my recipe of salsa.  It is my favorite since it is nice and light (not like the thick liquidy stuff you get at the grocery store). 

My fiancé and I love pretty much anything with the Frontera name on it.  We haven’t been able to go to any of the sit down restaurants yet, but we’ve been to the cafeteria style one in the Macy’s downtown.  But we love the tortilla chips, salsa, seasoning mixes, etc.  We paired our homemade salsa with one of the Frontera seasoning mixes for dinner.  It was yummy.

Rainbow in a Jar!

I first saw a photo of this on Foodgawker.com and though it was one of the coolest things ever.  I have a friend who loves everything rainbow (hence the rainbow corset from an earlier post…) so it immediately went into my personal cookbook.  It is now a few months later and I still haven’t been able to find a reason to break out the recipe. 

It’s a really easy recipe.  I just bought some store white cake mix.  In case you didn’t know this, I can’t make store bought cakes.  They always fall apart on me.  But I thought since this doesn’t have to come out of the pan I should be fine.  I also was on a limited time constraint as I wanted to finish quickly.

After making the batter, I tinted each section with food coloring and layered them into the mason jars.  I only filled them about ½ full so they could rise and still have room for frosting.

Here they are ready to cook…

And the end product! 

I made frosting from scratch though and tossed some sprinkles on it. 

I then packed up a few jars to send out in the mail to a really great friend of mine who is going through some tough times.  Hopefully they will find her well and still intact!