Category: Cheesemaking

Things I’ve Learned About Cooking Recently

I love food and beverage-making challenges. Making things that sound “hard” gives me no end of pleasure. This year, I’ve stepped it up a notch and taken on a number of the big ones, but I’ve also learned quite a bit about cooking some very simple things. Here’s my partial list of things I’ve learned how to make, maybe a short description of how I feel about it, and the thing I consider to be “the key” to success with that thing.

Cassoulette – very tasty, but made me become vegetarian – it’s not easy to find all those meats in the US. Try Asian markets, or find a more Americanized version.

Beer – homemade can be so much better – cleanliness is key.

Cheese – still very new to this – your thermometer is your friend.

Wine – if I could stop doing everything else, I’d just make wine – Best advice I’ve ever gotten came to me 2nd hand from a very famous winemaker: “Get good grapes and don’t fuck em up.”

Pizza dough – easy as pie! – With 3 to 5 ingredients, you kick ass and you’ll be so happy.

Tortillas – I can eat these all day. – With 2 ingredients, you kick ass! A tortilla press is inexpensive and helpful, but I’ve made some of my best tortillas using an empty wine bottle as a rolling pin.

Tamales – if you’re gonna do tamales, do a LOT of them. I make em vegetarian, and I make everything from scratch. Takes me 8-10 hours, but I end up with 70 or so of them. I hear they freeze great, but they never make it to that point here.

Guacamole – I thought I knew how to make guacamole until my Mexican friend taught me her family recipe. Sorry, I can’t say any more.

Crepes – Amazingly versatile and tasty. Just a few ingredients, but the cooking takes practice. Don’t give up! I always have to throw away the first one to get the amount of oil right in the pan.

Souffle – memorize the recipe you’re doing. At certain points, it’s critical that you work fast.

Pretzels – the dough is irritatingly dry. There must be a better way to do them. I have a lot of trouble making long and thin enough ropes of dough. Tasty, though!

Limoncello – I make the best limoncello you’ve never had (well, maybe a couple of you have). Filter the water, filter the alcohol. Wash those lemons. Be patient, it’s worth it!

I’m looking for new challenges. What else is there that a lot of people don’t bother to learn to cook, or that’s considered difficult?

My first yogurt!

Ok, remember how I told you about fermentation a few posts back? Well, we did some more fermenting last night and made some Yogurt! The directions we followed are here, along with some excellent information about what exactly yogurt is and what you can do with it.

If you don’t feel like leaving my site (and I don’t blame you!), here’s the basics: when you introduce the right kind of bacteria into milk, they go crazy and convert sugar into lactic acid. The lactic acid lowers the PH and causes the milk protein to thicken. Hot damn, you’ve got yogurt.

I’ve never been a huge fan of yogurt. However, when we tasted the result this morning with some granola and strawberries, I have to say, it was the best I’ve had.

Stay tuned for my next chemistry experiment…cheese!

Me? Overextended? Nah.

I’ve been an insane ball of energy lately. I’m reading about 20 books and 10-20 magazines now, I’m learning 2 different programming language, making wine, planning events and more events, blogging and updating a lot of personal sites, running a growing business and a couple fun businesses, taking golf lessons, planning to start making cheese, swimming, practicing chess, trying to get a band together, trying to learn guitar, and some other stuff I’ve forgotten about.

I often enjoy having a million things going on. I’ve been trying to move at least one thing measurably forward per day. This isn’t always easy, especially with things like learning guitar where measuring progress is sometimes very difficult from day to day. But, that’s my strategy.

Lately I’m a bit worried that I’m not paying enough attention to my health, though. So, that’s the thing I’m starting to think about now. Now, here’s the big catch…I think I’d be healthier and less stressed if I worked just as hard as I do now, but on a lot fewer things. Is there anyone out there in blog-reading land who has gone from being a scatterbrain to being a focused person and found it less stressful? Can it be done?