Doris and Jilly Cook » DIY

The Preservationists Vs. the Artisans

dorisandjilly — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:05:38 +0000

Sometimes the New York Times annoys me.

Yesterday—in case you missed it—the Dining and Wine section featured a “D.I.Y. Cooking Handbook.” For most of the day, at least until nuclear fears and March Madness pushed it down the page, the story held a coveted spot just to the left of the videos. Click through, and you encountered an invitation to make your own mustard, vinegar, kimchi, and even Nutella. But do not fear, apartment dwellers! The author assured readers that the recipes are not seasonal and that they would require neither canning nor freezing. “Before getting underway,” Julia Moskin writes, ” it’s not necessary to understand lactic fermentation, or to learn the difference between bacon and pancetta.”

ARRRRGH. Where to begin. Let’s start with this. Has the author tried freezing kale, which she mentions as a particularly terrifying activity? I’m wondering which part of blanching vegetables and sticking them in plastic bags is so complicated, especially compared to, say, making tesa, a kind of cold-cured pork belly? And how do you reconcile the line that “You can’t get more local than your own kitchen” (from the introduction) with recipes that involve hazelnuts and chocolate? Are there secret cocoa plantations hidden in the wilds of Long Island? And what’s with the random swipe at Charcutepalooza’s February challenge?

I was trying to figure out what, exactly, ticked me off about this article. To begin with, I have a knee-jerk reaction against reporting that presents knowledge as bad. As an editor, it makes no sense to me that the Times will front complicated diagrams of nuclear reactors, but somehow decide that explanations of canning, lactofermentation, and freezing (?!!) are beyond its readers. The piece was also sort of randomly researched. The bibliography includes some useful links, like the National Center for Home Food Preservation, Hank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardner Cook, Kate Payne’s The Hip Girls’ Guide to Homemaking, and Charcutepalooza (at which I seem to be 1 for 3, but that’s another story). But no Food in Jars? Seriously? And what about Punk Domestics, your one-stop-shop for kitchen DIY? No Canvolution? No smaller-but-just-as-brilliant blogs, like Hitchhiking to Heaven?

I recognize that I’m partially annoyed that the New York Times does not recognize the brilliance of my hard-working canning friends, without whom there would be no canning phenomenon to merit a backlash against. I’m biased. Fair enough.

But I think this is about something deeper. For me, this article highlighted the fundamental divide in the DIY food community between artisan production and resourcefulness. On the one hand, you’ve got what I would call the Artisanal Brooklyn Movement (or perhaps Moment)? These are the folks bringing you $9 pickles. It’s a movement fueled by a desire to achieve freedom from corporate producers and industrial food. (These are values I share, by the way.) It is not, however, a movement that’s about simplicity or locality. As the Artisanal Brooklyn Movement moves toward self-parody, it seems more and more like its proponents are suggesting that you continue to eat the stuff that you get at high-end restaurants and specialty groceries—but instead of purchasing them, they suggest that you learn to make them yourself. And this, my friends, is how you end up making your own maple vinegar.

The most avid proponents of local food preservation, on the other hand, push austerity and making do. How long can you push the harvest? What’s the maximum distance of your food shed? Do you find that blueberries in March are better dehydrated, frozen, or canned? Sometimes you sacrifice quality for the satisfaction of knowing where your food comes from. Rather than something to be worked around, seasonality is the point. In spring you plan and plant; in summer you eat from your garden; in fall you harvest and preserve; in winter you eat from your stores. It’s alternatively exhausting, exhilarating, and monotonous. And this, my friends, is how you end up eating frozen kale salads in March.

Don’t confuse DIY with food preservation. There’s something to be said for each. While I happen to find frozen kale delicious, I wouldn’t eat nearly so much of it if it didn’t keep so well. It’s not very exciting, and I doubt that I’m going to see it offered up in my local boutique grocery anytime soon. It is, however, extraordinarily dependable, and cheap. So, I’ll stick with it. At the same time, I recognize the joys to be had from homemade artisanal products made with specialty or imported ingredients. As I type this, I’m sipping organic coffee imported from Costa Rica, sweetened with sugar from God-only-knows where. My coffee would be even better accompanied by a fancy homemade cracker topped with homemade Nutella—maybe I’ll try my hand at it next week.

All of which is to say that maybe the DIY Cooking Handbook isn’t necessarily so awful. It’s just not talking to me. I’m trying to take this as a reminder that I want my own posts to be as inviting to those of you coming at this from the artisanal side as this piece was originally off-putting to me. And I offer my solemn promise that knowing how lactofermentation works won’t make your kimchi taste any more sour (unless you like it that way).

But enough of my grumpiness. What did you think? How’s that tomato chili jam?

How to Cure and Smoke Salmon

dorisandjilly — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:50:25 +0000

I have been blessed with a freezer full of sustainably harvested salmon. Unlike my venison, I’ve had to pay for it, but I couldn’t ask for better quality than the stuff that’s been arriving in our CSS (community supported seafood) subscription through Otolith. Being a Midwesterner, it’s taken me several months to get the hang of cooking fish. Even so, at some point in December, I decided I was ready for a new challenge: home-cured salmon.

Hence began my rapid descent into Mrs. Wheelbarrow and the Yummy Mummy‘s Charcuterie Challenge. It turns out that curing gravlax is just as easy as Mark Bittman says it is, and hot-smoking salmon isn’t much more difficult. It’s not something that you can rush, but if you have access to salt, sugar, a refrigerator, some rice or twigs, aluminum foil, and a wok, you can do this. Really you can. And, so I’ve been promised, if you can cure salmon, you can make charcuterie. We’ll see about that, but so far, so good.

Let’s start with the gravlax. For the recipe, I turned to Amanda Hesser’s new New York Times Cookbook. Her recipe is basically a repackaged version of a column Mark Bittman published in the Times in 1998. You can find many, many more variations online, but basically, it’s three steps:

1) Mix somewhere between a 1:1 and 3:2 ratio of salt and sugar.

2) Spread this all over a filet of salmon. Throw on some herbs or spices or even smoked tea, then wrap this whole thing up in plastic wrap. Transfer it to a container.

3) Place a weight on top of the fish and refrigerate for somewhere between 12 to 30 hours.

AND THAT’S IT. There’s debate online about whether the weight is really necessary; whether you should let the salmon sit at room temperature awhile before refrigerating it; whether you need Aquavit; whether you can really do it with one piece of salmon, or whether it requires two; but in all cases the basic idea is salt + sugar + salmon + time = gravlax.

I took two pieces of salmon, cut them each in half, and made two different versions. I used about 60% salt and 40% sugar (a combo of raw and regular) and skipped the counter time. One batch had cracked peppercorns; the other had lapsang souchong tea, in an attempt to achieve smokiness. Then, I took half of each batch and smoked it. Yes, really. Here’s the result of my 2 X 2 experiment:

From left to right, that’s the peppercorn gravlax, the lapsang souchong gravlax, smoked peppercorn, and smoked lapsang souchong. Technically, the gravlax is considered raw, while the smoked is considered cooked. Personally, I preferred the peppercorn gravlax, but all were very good.

Now, how do you smoke salmon without a fancy smoker? You rig up a wok, of course. Or, if you’re Alton Brown, you rig up a hot plate, a cardboard box, some sawdust, and a fan. Just watch:

You can also do this in a wok (though keep in mind that the heat may damage it beyond repair). Line an old wok with aluminum foil. Throw in some twigs or woodchips or sawdust or brown rice. Make some sort of drip pan from either more foil or a metal sheet, then put your fish on top of a rack. It should sit about an inch on top of the wood chips. Line the inside of the lid with more foil, then cover and seal up the edges. The idea is to keep the smoke inside the wok, not in your kitchen. Turn the heat onto high and watch what happens carefully. When you start to smell smoke, the salmon’s cooking. Let it cook for about 12 minutes, monitoring closely for smoke. (You can place a wet kitchen towel alongside the edge of the wok if smoke starts to escape.) When you think it’s done, turn off the heat and carefully carry the entire package outside. Open it up, and you’ll find an amazing home cooking project. The trick, of course, is to not set off the smoke detectors in the process. (Sorry about the lack of photos. I was so concerned about preventing smoke that it completely slipped my mind until it was too late.)

Would I do this again? Totally. I’ve been told that cured and smoked salmon freezes well, so next time I might even do more, just to save myself the effort later. And, of course, I’m now hooked on preserving meat. Stay tuned for duck prosciutto next week!

Saving Seeds

dorisandjilly — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:29:21 +0000

Harvest season is winding down—within a month or so we’ll be posting on what we did with all that food we canned, instead of how to can it. Meanwhile, it’s our last chance to squirrel away some seeds for next year. This is my first time attempting to save seeds, so I’m winging it. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Beans: Let them hang on the plants for a very, very long time, ideally until the pods are brown. You probably won’t want to do this during the middle of the growing season, as it will discourage further bean production. Unless, of course, you’re trying to discourage bean production.

Tomatoes: The jury’s out on whether or not your plants will cross-pollinate. The internets tell me that tomatoes planted close together mostly self-pollinate, but that you should expect a cross-pollination of 5 to 10%. Also, remember that seeds from hybrid plants will not breed true. It’s only worth saving the seeds from heirloom tomatoes. Tomato seeds are encased in a protective coating that needs to be removed before you save the seeds. To do this, squeeze the seeds and pulp into a jar with some water and let it sit a few days. When it’s foamy and smells nasty, you’re done. Pour off the tomato bits and any seeds that float, rinse the remaining seeds in a few washes of water, and transfer them to a plate to dry.

Peppers: Alas, peppers are promiscuous. If you’re growing a bunch of peppers together, or if you garden in a community garden, chances are that your plants have cross-pollinated and the seeds will not breed true. Of course, if you’re interested in hobby plant breeding, save away! Just cut out the seeds and let them dry.

Cukes, zukes, and melons: No idea if they cross-pollinate, since mine almost always die. I did, however, get one gorgeous melon. Melon seeds also benefit from fermentation. Just treat them like tomatoes. Who knows what will sprout from those seeds next year?

Lettuces, arugula, spinach, basil, etc.: Just let them go to seed and collect the dried flowers.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes: Set a few aside for next year.

Flowers: Cut off the heads of some you like and dry them.

These are the only things that I’ve tried, but I’m curious to hear your experiences. Any words or caution or wisdom?

Canning Tomatoes (the basics)

dorisgoat — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:55:35 +0000

As you might have guessed given my giant pile of tomatoes, my next few posts will be all about things you can do with them: roasted tomatoes, roasted tomato salsa, tomato sauce, and mixed pepper sales. But first, let’s do the basics. How do you can tomatoes?

Tomatoes are an interesting case because they straddle the line of low-acid/high-acid food. Technically a fruit, we typically think of them as vegetables. Like most other fruits, however, they are sufficiently acidic that you can can them in a water-bath…but this is where it gets tricky. The USDA recommends that you add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per pint, just to make sure that the acid levels are high enough. They also recommend that you process them for 40 minutes, which is much longer than I like to cook my tomatoes. The 40-minute recommendation actually came as a shock to me because for years I’ve been working with instructions that say that you only need 15 minutes for a hot pack (more on that below). Apparently, the USDA updated its guidelines in 1989 to reflect growing concerns about food-borne illness. In the case of tomatoes, the biggest concern is salmonella, not botulism.

Personally, I think this is ridiculous. I have been eating 15-minute processed tomatoes my whole life, to no dire effects. Of course, the canned tomatoes that I eat were usually either grown by someone I know or purchased at a local farmer’s market—not conditions likely to breed salmonella. If you decide to go the 15-minute route, you are doing so at your own risk (I assume no liability for your canning choices). I’m just saying that you should use common sense. Wash your hands, wash your food, remove tomato skins, and don’t purchase industrial produce. If you want to be extra-cautious, you can boil your canned tomatoes for 10 minutes when you open the jars. Or you could just follow the USDA’s advice and process them for 40 minutes.

Now: my flip attitude toward the 40-minute rule is only for hot-packed tomatoes. When you can tomatoes, as when you can most fruit, you have a choice. In a cold or raw pack, you put raw fruit in jars and cover them with some sort of boiling liquid. In a hot pack, you bring the fruit to a boil with the liquid, then transfer them to the jars. If you’re using a raw pack, you need to process your tomatoes for 40 minutes. Period. I find that I get better results with a hot pack when I process in a water-bath canner. Fruit shrinks when you heat it. If you’re doing a raw pack, it shrinks in the jars, meaning that you’ll end up with a lot less fruit than you anticipated. When you hot pack, the fruit shrinks before you put it in the jars, which means that you can use fewer jars for the same amount of produce. And, of course, if you’re worried about salmonella, boiling the tomatoes before you can them should help with that.

The alternative is to process your tomatoes in a pressure cooker. This has been my choice lately, both because it uses less energy and because the heat of the pressure cooker will kill just about anything. You can also skip the lemon juice. The catch is that some people feel that the texture of the tomatoes suffer from the heat of the process. I haven’t found that to be the case, but there is an aesthetic issue. Pressure canning usually results in a significant loss of liquid. That’s what’s going on the photos pictured at the top of this post. The jars were full, with only 1/2″ headspace when I put them in the canner, but a week later, they’ve shrunk. Cold vs. hot pack doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, so I don’t bother with heating up the tomatoes first. This is a perfectly normal side-effect of pressure canning and doesn’t affect the safety of the contents, but it freaks some people out. I wouldn’t necessarily give them as gifts. If you’re comfortable with a pressure cooker, though, this is by far the easiest and fasted method.

Long story short: You’ve got 3 basic options for canning tomatoes in water:

Water-bath raw pack: 40 minutes for pints, 45 minutes for quarts, be sure to add lemon juice
Water-bath hot pack: USDA recommends same time as for raw pack. Older instructions say 15 minutes for pints, 20 minutes for quarts. Use lemon juice.
Pressure-canned, hot or raw: USDA recommends 10 minutes at 10 pounds pressure for pints or quarts. Older instructions (use at your own risk) say 0 minutes for pints, 5 minutes for quarts (“0 minutes” simply means bring it to pressure, then turn off the heat).

You’ll need to process them longer if you’re canning in tomato juice. You can find more details and instructions at the National Center for Home Food Preservation. And if all else fails and you have a big freezer, you can just toss peeled tomatoes in freezer bags and call it a day. If you have strong opinions about tomato processing times, please leave your comments below.

The Cheapskate's Guide to Food Preservation

dorisandjilly — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:55:28 +0000

I’ve had a lot of questions lately about the economics of food preservation. If you have to buy 20 pounds of tomatoes to make it worth your while, and farmer’s market tomatoes cost $3 a pound, how can you afford it? And if you can only afford to can/freeze/dehydrate supermarket tomatoes, why bother? This is an excellent question—it’s also come up in the national media, like this article in Salon by someone who tried to “save money” by making strawberry jam with Union Square Greenmarket berries.

So let’s talk about it.

First, it’s true that, traditionally, food preservation was the province of people who grew their own food. Canning and freezing have long been the default choices of cash-poor farmers with lots of land and time on their hands. This description no longer fits most people who can, but it remains true that the cheapest way to preserve food is to grow it yourself.

Unless you’re living on a small-scale organic farm, though, this isn’t helpful advice. Fortunately, there are other options for city and suburban folks. In order of frugality, your best options are:

1) Pick your own. Prices at Mood’s, my favorite U-pick in South Jersey, range from $0.85 for peaches to $1.15 for blueberries. Hard to beat, but you do need time. And a car.

2) Buy seconds. “Seconds” are fruits or vegetables that aren’t quite perfect. You have to be careful—sometimes seconds are actively gross. Mostly, though, they’re perfectly serviceable. This photograph shows what someone at my local farmer’s market sold me when I asked her for $20 worth of seconds. She gave me about 57 pounds of slightly cracked (look carefully at the bowl on the left) but otherwise beautiful tomatoes—a steal at about $.40 a pound. If you don’t see any on display, ask. Often a farmer will have bushels of seconds stashed until a table or in a truck, just waiting for someone to ask for them. Other tips: show up early (beat the other canners!) and build a relationship.

3) Buy in bulk. If seconds aren’t an option, at least ask for a discount. To your left, check out the 50 ears of corn I lugged home last weekend. Ordinarily, corn sells at our market for the premium of $0.50 an ear. For a farm girl, this is borderline extortion. So, I simply asked: how much of a discount would you give me for 50 ears? The price dropped to $0.40/ear. Still pricey, but 20% less than advertised (and, incidentally, cheaper than at my grocery store). You can improve your odds by showing up toward the end of the market, especially on rainy days. Look around for whoever has lots of produce left, and make them an offer.

And remember, you don’t need to invest in fancy equipment. If you’ve already got a chest freezer, you’ll only need to invest in a solid stash of freezer bags. If you’d rather can, Mason jars and lids are all you’ll need. Once you’ve bought the jars and rings, you can reuse them indefinitely. You do need to buy new lids every time, but that will only put you back about $2 per dozen lids.

Now, what did I do with my 57 pounds of tomatoes and 50 ears of corn? A dozen pints of canned tomatoes, 9 pints of tomato sauce, 3 pints of roasted tomatoes, 6 half-pints and one pint of roasted tomato salsa, 6 pints of tomato-pepper salsa, 7 pints of corn relish, and about 15 quart bags of corn for the freezer. Not bad for $41.

Homemade Hummus = (almost) Free Food

dorisgoat — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:04:11 +0000

Commercial hummus makes me crazy. It’s expensive, chalky, and usually tastes of neither tahini nor chickpeas. So, I make my own. You can too, for about a third of the price of prepared hummus.

Basic Homemade Hummus

1 1/2 c. dried chickpeas (about $0.70 if you buy in bulk)
3 T or so tahini, to taste (about $0.25, depending on the brand of your tahini)
1 lemon (let’s say the lemons are 3/$1)
1 clove garlic (a generous $0.10?)
salt
small handful of parsley, chopped (hard to say: $0.25?)
smidgen of olive oil (depends on whether you have champagne tastes. Let’s say $0.10)

1) Cook the chickpeas in the pressure cooker: about 12 minutes at 15 pounds pressure, if pre-soaked; 15 minutes if not. (For a refresher on using the pressure cooker, click here.)

2) Drain the chickpeas, keeping some of the liquid to thin the hummus.

3) Combine the chickpeas, garlic, tahini, and maybe 3 T of water in a food processor. It should look pretty close to hummus. Add some lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, then taste it and adjust the flavors accordingly. It’s nice to serve it with a little bit more olive oil and paprika (or better: smoked paprika).

You’ll end up with about 3 cups, or 24 ozs., for about $1.73, or about 7 cents an ounce. The best storebought version that I’ve found (outside of Lebanese restaurants, of course!) is Whole Foods’ version, currently on sale for $3.49 for 13 oz., or 28 cents an ounce.

So think about it, no?

Vinegar Update

dorisgoat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:50:41 +0000

Loyal readers may recall that one of our earliest posts dealt with making your own vinegar. I have been remiss in posting the promised update. As you can see, the gallon jug on the left contains a slightly opaque substance that used to be apple cider. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there’s a thin layer of bacteria about the thickness of a sheet of plastic wrap floating on top of the liquid. This is the mother: a thin layer of bacteria that eat alcohol and produce acetic acid, or vinegar, as a byproduct. It’s starting to smell a lot like vinegar, but the taste test says that it’s not quite there yet. I must confess that tasting it was a leap of faith, but I am happy to report that it tasted actually tasted pretty good—just like a sip of hard apple cider seasoned with some vinegar. Give it another couple of weeks, and we’ll have vinegar.

Now, the jar on the right is a true experiment, inspired by a recent post on Local Kitchen and another blog that I unfortunately have misplaced (if it’s yours, please speak up!). I’ve been told that you can make vinegar not only from fruit juices, but also from fruit scraps. So, last weekend when I made apple chutney, I saved all the peels and cores and stuck them in a giant jar with about a quart of filtered water. The first stage of fermentation (from fruit juice to alchohol) requires anerobic bacteria, so I’ve sealed the jar. Once it stops bubbling, I’ll assume that the alcohol production is done and will move to a cheesecloth cover, as the vinegar-producing bacteria—unlike the alcohol-producing bacteria—require air. This apparently may take many months, so stay tuned.

DIY: Are you creme curious?

jilllygoat — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:35:55 +0000

Welcome to the first installment of our new weekly feature, Ask the Goats!

Q: Tell me more about creme fraiche. It seems expensive. What’s all the fuss about? Is there a version I can make myself?

(Courtsey J, one of Doris’s co-workers)

Friends, it is time to examine a dairy product you may be lacking in your life. Creme fraiche is like sour cream’s fancy kissin’ cousin. It tends to be a little thinner and more tangy than our sour American version. However, there are two worlds to creme fraiche. The first one is the true, authentic (and expensive ) product of thick, unpasteurized fresh cream that is left to thicken and mature with its own proper lactic cultures. It is generally pricey and sometimes quite difficult to obtain since it requires raw cream. (However, you can order it from the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company.)

Our version of creme fraiche should always be identified as to its origins: a mock version that is easily made it at home with heavy cream, buttermilk, and time. Obviously, if you have lovely local, raw and organic dairy products on hand, use those. But you can very easily make this with corner store ingredients.

Here’s what you do:

Stir about 2 tablespoons of buttermilk into 1 cup of heavy cream. Place in a warm area, say near a pilot light, wood stove, or on top of your refridgerator–you’re looking for a home of about 85 degrees. Cover loosely and leave for at least 8 hours. The amount of time it takes to thicken and sour slightly will depend on the temperature and quality of the buttermilk you are using.

Why isn’t this real creme fraiche? If you’re pouring your cream and buttermilk from a carton that says “pasteurized” or “ultra-pasteurized” you’re miles away from the real deal simply because your product is barren of wild and tasty lactic cultures that are swimming around in the raw dairy product. Another important difference between the two is that real creme fraiche will tolerate cooking and gentle heating and retain its thickening powers. Mock creme fraiche lacks this ability and is poorly suited for dessert slathering and sauce thickening. It is, however, great for drizzling over special bruschetta, starchy things like potatoes, or adding to a composed dessert bowl thing (like fresh berries topped with crumbled streudel bits…)

Yogurt Everyday

dorisgoat — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:21:23 +0000

The local billy goat and I consume a shocking amount of yogurt: usually about 3 quarts a week. Yogurt makers are inexpensive (my model cost me $15 in 2003 and is now selling for $25 on amazon.com) and well worth it. Your first few batches may be a bit wobbly until you get the hang of it, but check out the math:

1 quart organic yogurt = ~$5
1 gallon organic milk = ~$5-6
1 gallon milk = 4 quarts yogurt

So. Depending on how much yogurt you eat, you might want to give it a try.

Basic Yogurt

1/4 c. fresh (less than a week or two old) all-natural yogurt (try Fage,Stonyfield, or Brown Cow)
4 c. milk (your choice fat content: the thicker the milk, the thicker the yogurt. Try starting with whole and work your way down.)

After five years, my technique is half superstition and half science, but it works.

First, you heat up your milk to about 165°F. I used to use a thermometer, but now just look for foam. You don’t want it to boil. Then turn off the heat and forget about it for an hour or so while it cools down. Remove the skin and discard.

Meanwhile, right after I measure the milk, I put the starter yogurt into the measuring cup. I’ve never seen a recipe that says that you need to do this, but I find that things work out better if the yogurt is at room temperature when I mix it with the milk.

When the milk is cool enough that you can comfortably hold your finger in it, it’s cool enough. If you’re using a thermometer, you’re looking for about 105°F. It’s better to err on the side of too cool rather than too hot; I’ve forgotten about it for hours and not had a problem. Then add about half of the milk to the yogurt culture and whisk it smooth. Add the remaining milk to your yogurt container. Add the yogurt and milk mixture on top of this. Don’t bother to stir. Put it in your machine, plug it in, and let it cook for anywhere between 4 and 12 hours, depending on the age of the culture.

You’ll know when it’s done when you can clearly see a layer of whey that separates from the yogurt. You can pour that off, or keep it, your choice.

Yogurt FAQ

Aren’t you bascially leaving room temperature milk out on your counter for several hours? Why is this safe?
Two things. First, by bringing your milk up to 165°F, you are killing most of the most common milk-borne bacteria. Second, by seeding your milk mixture with “fresh” yogurt, you are giving the so-called “good” bacteria a head start. The idea is that the good bacteria outproduce the bad bacteria, and you end up with delicious yogurt.

Does it matter what kind of yogurt I use for a starter? Yes and no. For it to work, the most important thing is that your starter be fresh. You’ll also find that different brands of yogurt use a different mix of bacterial cultures, so a yogurt that you make from Dannon yogurt will taste different from one that you make from Trader Joe’s yogurt. My personal favorite starter is Fage.

Do I have to use a commercial starter every time? Heavens, no! I’ve been using my current yogurt culture as a starter for the next batch for about six months now. I only have to buy more yogurt when I travel or fall off the yogurt wagon for some other reason and it gets a couple of weeks old. Even then, I’ve sometimes reinvigorated it by making a really runny batch and then immediately making a good batch from the new one.

Why is my yogurt runny? There could be a couple of problems. First, you need to realize that homemade yogurt will almost always be thinner than commerical yogurt, which frequently comes with chemical stabilizers. But there could be other issues. The fattier your milk, the thicker your yogurt will be. It might just need to cook longer, even up to 24 hours. Or your culture could be bad, in which case you should buy a new one and start again. If this really bothers you, you could try spiking your milk/yogurt mixture with a couple of tablespoons of full-fat instant dry milk, although I have heard no-so-great things about the way that this product is made.

It’s really tart. Or curdly. Or something. What happened? If you forget to remove the skin, it’ll be gross. If the milk is too hot when you add it to the yogurt, the texture will be strange. If you forget to turn it off and let it go, say, 24 hours, it will be tart. None of these things will hurt you, but, depending on your tolerance for funky yogurt, you may or may not want to eat it.

What can I use it in? Everything! Most posts soon.

Mayonnaise is the Devil's Work

dorisgoat — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:13:04 +0000

Double-yolk eggs = amazing mayannaise.

You will want to eat it straight from the jar, with a spoon.

This is basically Deborah Madison’s recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but less precise:

1 egg (double-yolked!!!!)
3/4 c. canola oil (or olive oil, but I find it too strong)
a big of Dijon mustard
salt
a dash of mild acid, like lemon juice or white wine vinegar

Put the egg, 1/4 c of the oil, the salt, and the mustard in a blender. Turn it on for about 30 seconds, until it’s opaque. Then add the rest of the oil through the top with the motor running. Add in a bit of vinegar. And you’re done.

It’s mayonnaise. We use it in sandwiches, aioli, blue cheese dressing, tuna salad, egg salad (more eggs!), potato salad. It’s hard to go wrong here unless you’re avoiding raw eggs, in which case I can only say: I’m so, so sorry.