Old-Fashioned Brandied Fruit

Brandied Fruit.

Memories of visiting my best friend back when we were ten or eleven washes over me as I think about the beautiful square glass jar that her mother Jane had on the kitchen counter. The glass jar was filled with the brightest, prettiest fruit cocktail; surrounding the fruit in that sparkly jar was a very sweet, brandied liquid that made everything seem somehow magical.

What it was, was brandied fruit! Of course, I didn't really know that it was alcoholic--just that it looked (and tasted, when Val and I would sneak a spoonful) so wonderful.

I was remembering that jar of fruit recently and decided to try to make some of my own. I had some peaches that had been soaked in vodka for about 4 months, which I was loathe to throw away. Instead I cut them up in small chunks, added a can of pineapple, a bit of nearly-dry orange pieces and three or so cups of sugar. Then I added some of the peach brandy we'd made--not a lot, just a little, to give the sugar something to melt into.

Since then, the quart jar I started with has grown to be almost a gallon. I've added another large can of fruit cocktail and another two cups of sugar, along with another cup or so of the peach liquor we made. I've let it set, undisturbed on a shadowed shelf in the pantry for a month or more and it is gorgeous! It doesn't taste too bad either!

I've been asked what this is good for, what its uses are. Well....

Ice cream topping. Ice cream smoothies or fruit smoothies (non-virgin, clearly). Coffee-cake mixer. Pancake topper. Snacking. Angel Food cake decor.

I could go on, but you get the point.

The sweet thing is, it'll keep going and going, as long as you replenish it with another can of fruit and another cup or so of sugar for each 2 cups you use up.

I've been told that this process of fruit preservation has been around for many, many ages. It seems so amazing that something good can come from NOT putting food under refrigeration, or adding chemical preservatives.

Artisan Cheesemaking: Crescenza

Today's homemade artisan cheese is:

Crescenza.

This is an Italian cheese that is eaten fresh, rather than aging it to obtain the flavor. It is very similar in most respects to the Ranchero-type of Mexican fresh cheese. It takes a few hours to make, most of which are just spent watching the whey drain off. It's a little more exciting than watching paint dry...

This is a white, softer cheese with a very creamy, slightly salted taste. It has a pretty high melting point, and is fantastic in Chile Rellenos. It's pretty easy, really, and doesn't require a whole lot of specialty stuff. Unless you count the Aroma B mesophilic culture, the calcium chloride and the rennet. ha ha. But seriously, this is very simple cheese to make, requiring little effort. Most of the time honestly is spent waiting while it drains.

This particular cheese process doesn't require the careful attention to temperature the way other cheeses do; except at the beginning, when you have to very slowly bring the temperature up to 90 degrees F. Add the culture, let it rest 30-40 minutes to ripen, then add the calcium chloride (diluted in a little non-chlorinated water), stir well, then the rennet (also diluted in a scant amount of non-chlorinated water). Let it set out at room temp for about an hour, then cut the curd (the milk has become a rather solid-looking mass that is floating on water) in 1" squares... let them rest a while, then stir them slowly for a couple of minutes. If you leave it be for a bit, the cut curds will sink to the bottom. Remove enough of the milky-clear whey liquid off the top so you can see the curds and then start packing them into your cloth-lined mold. Be sure you have that mold in a colander or on a rack with a good-sized dish beneath; a lot of whey (several cups worth) will be slowly draining/dripping out. Be sure that the cloth you line the mold with is damp before you put the curds in!

Wait about 3 hours. Lift the cloth with the partially-drained curds carefully out of the mold by picking up the four corners of the cloth and making it like a little sack. Set the sack of curds down and open it carefully. Flip the now semi-soft (almost squishy but not quite) molded curds gently, placing it back onto the cloth where it had been, then lift it and carefully put it back into the mold. Let it continue draining on this side for a further 3 hours.

Prepare salt brine, about 1 cup salt to 6 cups of very cool (not ice cold) spring or distilled water. NOT city water that has chlorine in it. Immerse your 6-hours drained, molded cheese curd into the salt brine. Leave it an hour, then flip it over gently. After another hour, take it out, setting it on a cheese mat. Pat it dry and let it rest for an hour or two to continue drying out. When it's dry to the touch, wrap it as air-tight as possible and put it in the refrigerator... or use it immediately. It keeps for up to a month if it's kept sealed tightly.

It is a lot of fun to make. It truly does seem like alchemy or magic or some great scientific skill to watch this white liquid we call milk turn into something solid and fragrant and useful. I can barely wait to try the next type of cheese... probably tomorrow!

Sourdough Starter and its Importance.

Sourdough.

Who doesn't like the smell of fresh bread or pizza baking in the oven? It brings up so many memories for me, of being with my grandma at her house while her every-other-day bread baking was going on. Delightful fragrance!

I've been working on a recipe for perfect, pizzeria-style pizza for well over a year. I got it to a spot where it tasted great, but it wasn't yet like the pizza I'd had at a little, family-owned pizzeria about 20 years or so ago. My crust tasted good, had nice texture, but...it still wasn't right. I finally found a website that gave really good, common-sense explanations for the hows, whys and wherefores of creating the perfect pizza crust. Now, I couldn't follow those instructions to the letter, but the spirit of the methodology, along with percentages of water vs flour, made the light of comprehension dawn. It was sort of like a big rock falling out of the sky and landing splat on my head. I finally realized what I was missing.

A sourdough starter!

So, I researched and checked, read about many different schools of thought for creating a sourdough starter, and ended up trying it over a few weeks to get it how I thought it tasted right. Let me also say that I'm not a big fan of sourdough bread (as in the sliced, grocery-store kind used for sandwiches). I don't hate it, I just don't love it. But somehow I knew, that was the missing ingredient in my pizza dough.

Sourdough starter isn't just for pizza, though. I remember seeing my grandma using a cup or so of sourdough starter, right out of the refrigerator, in her pancake batter. She used it in lots of things, in fact. But it hadn't ever really clicked in my head that it might be a great little boost for making perfect breads.

Pizza dough, by my definition, should be able to be thin or thick. If thin, it should be flexible but not tough or rubbery; tender yet able to support the weight of the sauce and toppings. That was a hard balance. I discovered that if I let my bread dough rest between steps, it helped hugely with the flexibility. If I made the dough and refrigerated it BEFORE it would rise--and left it in there, in a tightly-covered dish for a couple or three days before I needed it--it was FANTASTIC. Perfect. All the flavors combined--just flour, water, yeast and salt--to create this old-style pizzeria crust that is incredible.

But I digress. The starter is the heart and soul of it all.

I know there are those who disagree with certain methods of creating your first "mother" starter but I tried a few and this worked best for me.

3 cups white flour

3 cups water, room temperature

1 scant teaspoon dry yeast

1 teaspoon honey

Combine all four ingredients in a glass container and stir thoroughly. Cover with plastic wrap and set the covered bowl on a cookie sheet on the counter. The cookie sheet is to keep any overflow, should that happen, from making a big mess. If your starter rises up, just stir it down. Leave it on the counter for 2-3 days, in a cool but not cold location. The flour and water may separate (mine do) but you just stir it up again to use it. Bubbles will form on the top sometimes; that's normal and part of the fermentation process.

To use it, just add a cup of your starter to your bread mixture as you're making the dough. I didn't do anything really fancy to make my pizza dough, I just added the starter along with the water and yeast, stirred it up, then added the flour and salt in small amounts until the dough was less like heavy bread dough and more like a very thick batter. VERY thick batter. Then I just let my mixer do its thing for 7 minutes or so. I dump it out onto a floured counter and knead in just enough flour to be able to handle the dough without it sticking to everything. Then I let it rest for 10 minutes or so before cutting it into three or four pieces (WET pieces) and storing them in individual plastic bowls with lids and placing them in the refrigerator until I'm ready to make pizza or bread or whatever bread I'm wanting that day. I use the refrigerated dough within a week at most because I'm not all that fond of extremely fermented sourdough.

I'm convinced that the starter I use makes all the difference in the taste, texture and final outcome.

One thing: Be sure you add another cup of flour and 1/2 to 3/4 cup of water (more water if you want) to the "mother" starter you used from, just to keep her going. Store in the refrigerator between uses. Stir it every day or two (some people disagree with that but...).

Use your imagination to create all kinds of special foods with your starter. My grandma's pancakes were the best, ever. I'm going to try making some pancakes with it tomorrow, myself!

Happy Baking!

Artisan Cheesemaking: Irish Cheddar

Cheesemaking.

The word evokes images of an old-fashioned kitchen, a wood-fired cookstove and big, steaming pots of milk. For me, "cheddar" has always been big bricks of yellow-orange with the name "Tillamook" printed on the side of them (at least for me), or of the slightly tangy, creamy scent of a gourmet cheese display in a high-end grocery store. Either way, cheese, for most Americans, is a part of daily life.

Like homemade bread or wine (among other fermented delights), cheese can be made at home, artisan-style, with some effort (at times a great DEAL of effort). I started thinking about cheese making and the idea took root. I did not start with cheese, however, but simple, American-style yogurt, graduating to Greek yogurt within a couple or three weeks. That naturally got me thinking: Why not cheese? So, after a brief trip surfing that oracle of note we call the Internet, I saw it was indeed possible to make the kind of stuff I adore. A good cheddar (of course...I am an American, after all), Brie, Bleu...and of course Asiago (!!!). There are so many cheeses, so little time.

Irish Cheddar with Brew Rind

Yesterday, I made an Irish Cheddar. Today it's in its drying phase, on the counter in its round, flat whiteness, the rind drying for a day or two to prepare it for waxing. Then it'll sit in its cave (a dark, cool spot in the basement that I call a root-cellar) for a couple months at about 55-56 degrees. I did not use annatto to color it as is traditional (that cheddar-orange coloring), but left it natural white. I really am trying to eliminate all unnecessary colorings, additives, etc., so white cheese it is. The wax is the only colored thing that will go on my cheese! I got a nice, bright Arkansas-Razorbacks RED cheese wax. (Go Hogs!) After 24-48 hours, my wheel of cheddar will be ready to paint with wax.

When the ripening phase is complete, I will update the results, so keep an eye out!














After a couple or three weeks, we decided to cut the cheese to see how it was faring. After all, this was our first cheese and we wanted to see it! We did rewax the cut portion so it can continue ripening (did some research on that and most say it's fine to do it).

Here is what it looks like. And the taste? Considering how young it is, the taste was amazing. A slight hint of the beer and whisky, but mostly just a very creamy, very cheddar-y taste. It'll only get better with time.