Repost – Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

categories: Cheese

Hey People of the Internet,

I’ve been making cheese. Actually I made cheese a long time ago and then totally forgot to post it. But, I am thinking of stepping once more into the breach and it inspired me to hunt this down and get it out.

To get me started, I bought a Mad Millie Italian Cheese Making Kit which came with all the bits and bobs, you need, the cheese cloth, the thermometer, a ricotta mould, citric acid, rennet, steriliser, etc as well as recipes for mozzarella, ricotta, salted ricotta, burrata and mascarpone. You can of course do it without the kit and there are some recipes below but I found the kit was very useful in pulling together all the items listed above.

All I needed to buy was the milk. They recommend you buy unhomogenised milk – i.e milk where the milk and cream are still separate. I thought this might be difficult to find but my local supermarket stocked it.

Now make way for a super thrilling picture of milk heating. Here it is, if you can stand the heat, milk in a saucepan. Oh, the cream blobs I’ve circled? Are actually blobs of cream. That’s about as exciting as the first part of cheesemaking gets!

Once your milk gets up to temperature, pop in your rennet and citric acid. And wait a bit. Your milk mix will thicken into gel like consistency.

Now get your knife and slash away. If you want to make that noise from Psycho, go right ahead. After all, you’ve just spent twenty minutes watching milk heat. You deserve it.

And now you have…no, not a dead girl in the bathtub but some slashed up curds and whey.

You then stir some more, heat them some more until they start to look kind of like melted cheese:

Next up, pour the entire mix into a colander lined with cheesecloth. The whey will run off and the curds will remain in the cloth. I deft you not to think of Little Miss Muffet when you are separating curds and whey.

Tuffet optional.

Now take a handful of curds. Drop them in hot water to let them melt a bit.

Now stretch.

Not like this:

Like this:

And when you’re done stretching, form a ball.

Then drop your balls in ice-cold water….

And you’re done! Fresh delicious mozzarella. Perfect for your next pizza or why not try my cheesy eggplant and salami sandwiches?

I also made some ricotta:

Until I made it, I never realised how much milk you need to make cheese. I think I used two litres of milk for the mozzarella and I got five fairly small balls (bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball) of mozzarella. With the ricotta, I used a litre of milk and got the cheese shown above which even taking my huge man-sized hands into account, is not all that much! Still, it is a great experience and not at all hard to do – the ricotta was even easier to make than the mozzarella.

In a few weeks, I will be trying my hand at goat’s curd but shh don’t tell my book club, it’s a surprise!

Have a wonderful week!

Signature 1

Save

17
Sep
2016

Tanis Inspired Cocktails #3 – The Navigator

categories: Cocktail, Gin, Grapefruit, Podcasts, Tanis

The huge reveal of Tanis Episode 209 was that The Navigator is…

Yeah right, as if I’m going to spoiler that!

No way! You have 21 fascinating episodes of murder, madness, conspiracy and stray right feet washing up on beaches before you can get to that reveal. Having said that, there’s no need to be daunted, the Tanis back catalogue is still small enough that you could binge listen to it all in a weekend.

So get onto it. It is actually one of those things that is also worth a second (or third ) listen.

You could have a Geoff Van Sant moment and grab a beer while you listen. Or, even better, make this super dry, super citrussy cocktail called The Navigator.

The Navigator & Clues to Tanis

The Navigator is to Eld Fen what the runner is to Tanis. Basically, to get there you need one. And you also need a map.

But maybe not a map like this.

Because even when you have a Navigator / Runner, you can only get to Eld Fen / Tanis when the stars don’t align.

As soon as I heard about the stars not aligning my first thought went to the line from Space Oddity, “And the stars look very different today”. I don’t think it’s at all relevant but except maybe for the writers tipping their hat and giving a little nod to the late, great Mr David Bowie. I hope it’s that and the twist about to come is not aliens.

The Navigator Cocktail

I found this on the ever reliable, always excellent Difford’s Guide.

Dry Gin, Limoncello and Pink Grapefruit Juice…three of my favorite things! I added some additional lemon juice to mine. I figured that if I was going to cut open a lemon from the garnish, I may as well use some of it in the drink too!

This is so good! The stars all align with The Navigator. It is:

Lipsmackingly dry from the gin
Sweet from the limoncello
Sour from the lemon juice
Bright with a hint of bitter from the grapefruit.

It’s like a flavour explosion in your mouth.

The Navigator could easily become one of my favorite cocktails!

Print

The Navigator

Print Recipe

A refreshing dry and tangy citrus cocktail

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

2 shots dry gin
3/4 shot Limoncello
1 1/4 shot freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice
1/2 shot freshly squeezed lemon juice
Lemon wheel to garnish

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Shake all the wet ingredients with ice.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with the lemon wheel.
Enjoy!

Tanis Speculation

I have no doubt Nic is about to go into the forest again but with whom? Per the first series, you need four. So, Nic, The Navigator and two others.

If I was Nic, I’d take Geoff Van Sant and MK. But then, given the choice, I’d probably take GVS and MK anywhere with me. They’re the best. I think GVS is my secret podcast crush. What can I say, I happen to have a thing for guys with messy hair and alert eyes who like a drink or two. And in my head he looks like Paul from Orphan Black. And that is never a bad thing!

And MK is just the best. She may also be my secret podcast crush!

I can’t wait…the series two final is fast approaching….I will try to align my fourth (and final) cocktail with that happening!

Breaking News!

Ladies of the PNW who need a thrilling secret conspiracy to liven up their lives? GVS is trying dating again. Why not have a beer with him?

‘kay people of the internet, we’re done.

Keep looking!

Signature 1

Save

03
Sep
2016

Tanis Inspired Cocktails 2 – Eld Fen Martini

categories: Chartreuse, Cocktail, Podcasts, St Germain, Tanis, Vodka

There are wondrous things….

I conjured up the Eld Fen Martini based on a Twitter suggestion by the Tanis Podcast. And here it is:

But first….

What Is Eld Fen?

Eld Fen also known as Old Fen or King Wurm is a….presence. And it’s seriously fucking creepy. Eld Fen sleeps in the darkest part of the deepest forest. But it’s waking up. And it’s coming…..

Ever walk alone in the woods and all of a sudden the hairs on the back of your neck prick up and you know something else is there? You can’t see it or hear it….yet…but it’s there? Just waiting? Now imagine doing that in the dark. And you walk into a circle of birch trees and the crisp smells of the forest fade into something that is sweet and swampy and rotten all at the same time.

You thought you would be safe in the circle but you’ve turned around a few times trying to find the thing that is out there and now you have no idea which direction is home. Which is scary because you’re out there in the dark all alone.

Now multiply that fear by a thousand. Because the truly frightening thing is that you’re not alone. Because you’ve woken it up. And it’s coming.

And when it does? There will be blood. And madness. And unspeakable horror.

That’s Eld Fen.

There are magical things….

Sweet hopscotching Jesus! I was trying to give you all the Tanis-y creepy chill and managed to scare myself!. Good thing I’ve got a lovely martini to calm me down!

What Is The Eld Fen Martini?

It’s an Eld(erflower) and Fen(nel) Martini with a splash of Chartreuse. So it’s sweet from the Elderflowers, anisey (Tanis – y?) from the fennel and herby from the Chartreuse. Delicious. The perfect pick me up after a hard day’s work searching for a place that may or may not exist. And may make people crazy when they find it.

The hardest thing about making the Eld Fen Martini was trying to walk the line between making something that conveyed the swampy, sickly aspects of Eld Fen without making it so disgusting that no one would ever want to drink it. I felt my first attempt, which did not have the Chartreuse, was too pretty, this did not at all convey swampy, hint of pus look I wanted.

Hmm….

I bet you never read that last sentence in a food blog before. And now you know why I chose Eld Fen over Hint Of Pus Martini.

What do you mean you don’t want to have a drink with me? It’s not real pus. It’s Chartreuse. Made by Monks. And not those spooky Order of Cenophus Monks from The Black Tapes. These are proper French Monks who are far too busy tending their garden of 130 herbs so they can make lovely, delicious Chartreuse to:

Kidnap an itinerant
Rip someone else’s face off.
Sew said face onto itinerant
Push itinerant off a monastery tower.

Oh FFS, as if I hadn’t already scared myself enough with Eld Fen. Now I’m freaking out about murderous monks!

There are dangerous things….

I wanted the garnish on the Eld Fen to maintain the dark edge. My favorite maraschino cherry was just a little bit too perky for this. So I went with a blueberry /blackberry garnish. And OMG, if you give these a teeny squish? They start to release little lines of juice which look like veins or splashes of blood! Perfect!

You Get What You Deserve

Here’s the recipe.

Print

Eld Fen Martini

Print Recipe

A delicious and refreshing cocktail inspired by the Tanis Podcast

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For The Fennel Syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 medium bulb fresh fennel, roughly chopped

For The Eld Fen Martini

30ml Fennel Syrup
30ml Vodka
30ml St Germain Elderflower Liqueur
Juice of 1/2 a lime
Splash of Chartreuse
Ice

For The Garnish

2 blueberries
1 blackberry

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For The Fennel Simple Syrup

Give the fennel seeds a few good whacks with a pestle or heavy rolling pin.
Place the water, sugar, fennel seeds and chopped fennel in a small pan.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for around 10 minutes.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Strain to remove the fennel and fennel seeds.
Place in fridge until required.

For The Cocktail

Chill your martini glass.
Pour the vodka, St Germain, fennel simple syrup, lime juice and Chartreuse into a shaker filled with ice.
Shake, baby, shake.
Pour into your martini glass.
Garnish with blueberries and blackberry that have been slightly bruised to release some juice.
Enjoy!

Notes

You will have enough Fennel Simple Syrup to make plenty of these!

Nutrition

Serving Size: 1

To find Eld Fen, you need a Navigator.

Why you would want to find Eld Fen is utterly beyond me. Is your tv broken? Play some Words With Friends, read a book, write a blog, take up yoga…there are so many things you could do with your life that do not entail pushing you to the brink of sanity and life itself. But if you must find Eld Fen…you’ll need a navigator. And that’s where we’ll go next time….

In the meantime, keep looking.

Signature 1

14
Aug
2016

REPOST – Future Classics – Australian Table – August 2001

categories: Australian Table, Berries, Cocktail, Desserts, Duck, Magazines, Rhubarb, Vodka

Remember how I said I had a fab idea for a whole new series of blog posts whilst on holiday? Here’s the thing, along with hundreds of cookbooks, I also have a huge collection of food magazines, most of which sit on shelves in my back room doing nothing. Once a year, I grab a handful of the oldest, take them on holiday and cut out the recipes I want, throw away the magazines, and cook the recipes over the next 12 months.

Currently I have a few mags from the late 1990’s but they are most from the early noughties onwards. So they are not quite but well on their way to becoming formally vintage. My thought on holiday was….”These are the things that will shortly become the vintage recipes of the future. So, instead of ripping them up, I’m going to start cooking from them. Once a month, I’ll revisit one of these magazines, cook a thing or two and decide if these are future vintage classics – or just junk taking up space in my backroom. Here are the early years to 2013:

And here are 2014 to the present day:

so, to start, we are stepping back in time 15 years to the August 2001 edition of Australian Table:

I also thought it might be fun to revisit some of the content of these magazine as well as the recipes, so without further ado, here are the:

Flavours of The Month – August 2001

This section spoke about what was in season. I thought I might give it a little Retro Food For Modern Times Twist!

Sweet Potatoes

Huh….my plan was to insert a recipe or two from the blog. However, apparently I have made nothing with sweet potatoes. I’ll link to some recipes below.

Baby Bok Choy

Or anything with Bok choky. What have I been cooking in for the last four years?

Cumquats

Hooray – Finally!

Click here for my Four Kumquat Canapés For Four Food Heroes recipes

Pineapples

Melbourne Cup Crab and Pineapple Appetizer and MC Cocktail

Pineapple soufflé

Movies of The Month

Oh man. August 2001 was a GOOD month for movies! I would quite happily watch Bridget Jones’s Diary or Along Came a Spider today. I don’t recall ever seeing Evolution but I am definitely putting that to rights, pronto. I know it’s probably a little late with the picky picky however, Australian Table, I would like to point out that the chocolate-voiced, sloe-eyed maverick investigator is actually called Alex Cross. The ACTOR is Morgan Freeman. And what a difference a letter makes. Slow-eyed which I typed at least a dozen times in the above paragraph makes you sound like you should be taking special classes. Sloe-eyed…hello sexy!

Music Of The Month

Well, I guess you can’t have it all. I listened to none of these at the time nor do i have any real desire to seek out any of these. Maybe the Elvis Costello.

The Food

I chose two recipes from an article on fool proof party food starting with:

Vodka with Crushed Limes

These are my flavours…this was so good! Tangy, sweet delicious!

Crispy Duck with Green Scallion Pancakes

No, these are my flavours! Spicy, seductive!

Berry and Rhubarb Crumble

This recipe came from an advertisement for a 3 in one hand blender. Crumble is pretty much already a classic but the addition of rhubarb instead of the more traditional apple? Genius!

Everything I made from this mag was SUPER! My view is that this is a definite future vintage classic!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk down memory lane! I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a mag from September 2001. I hope it’s as good as this one!

Have a great week!

Signature 1

Save

02
Aug
2016

Bali and My Holiday Reading Habits – Repost from 2016

categories: Bali, Books, Travel

Salamat Datang! I’m back from two week in Bali and, whilst I have yet to cook anything, I am serious blogging withdrawal so I thought I would give you a brief catch up on the trip. There were many hours of pool and beachside lazing so I did a LOT of reading. So, I thought I would do a combined what we did / what I read post and also let you know the…ahem…science behind how I choose my holiday reads!

Stop #1 – Ubud

Our first stop was Ubud in central Bali. Unlike the rest of Indonesia which is Muslim, the Balinese are largely Buddhists. They are deeply spiritual and part of their spirituality involves putting out offerings for the Gods each day. Offerings on the ground ward off evil spirits, offerings above the ground attract the good spirits. Sometimes you will also see an offering with a cookie or a cigarette or a glass of arak in it. These are the ancestor offerings and contain the respective ancestor’s favourite things!

They also adorn their statues of the Gods with fresh flowers each day!

I did a Balinese cooking class at Ketut’s Place which was awesome! The class was in an open kitchen overlooking rice paddies and a garden where most of the vegetables we used were grown. Ketut was also a fabulous host, knowledgeable and incredibly funny! I can’t wait to get back into cooking so I can show you some of what I learned! Incidentally, there are only four names in Bali. The first child is always called Wayan, the second is Made, the third child is Nyoman and the fourth child is Ketut. If a family has more than four children, it starts all over again with child #5 being called Wayan.

We did a trip to the Ubud Monkey Forest. Now these guys take the term cheeky monkey to a whole new level – if it isn’t bolted down, they will steal it – hats, sunglasses, cameras are all fair game! We sat down for a little rest at one point and the Fussiest Eater in the World had a monkey rifling through his pockets! Another baby monkey held out what was his prize possession for us to look at – it was a diamond earring. So brazen!

Ubud was lovely, a lovely place to chill out. The cooking class was amazing and I would recommend that to anyone. Food highlight was eating at The 3 Monkeys on the Monkey Forest Road. The downside/s were that it was a little rainy and the villa we stayed in happened to be next to a chicken farm. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived next to a chicken farm but the roosters start crowing at around 3am and do not STFU. Afternoon naps became a thing!

Holiday Reading Habit #1 – The Re-Read/s

I have an annual book cull where I get rid of all the books I have read that I didn’t enjoy (so many this year, it has been a really BAD year for reading for me). Then I do a sweep of my main bookshelves and pull out anything that I look at and think “Now…what was that about again?” and these go onto a holding shelf where they become the basis for the holiday re-read. The holiday re-read is ruthless. It is a case of love it or leave it. Literally. Leave it in the hotel or ideally, swap it for something better in the hotel book exchange!

I had two re-reads in this years picks and OMFG…if anything could convince you of how varied my reading tastes are, have a look at these. Lets start with:

allmenarebastards.com by Allison Rushby

I read this cover to cover on the plane. And had time to spare. Which should tell you everything you need to know. It’s a light, frothy piece of chick lit about a girl who sets up a website called allmenarebastards.com which, quelle surprise, goes viral and how she finds true love despite her man hatin’ ways. It made the 6 hour plane trip to Bali go by relatively quickly but the main character really annoyed me. I also found myself wondering why this had made the re-read shelf and was not dispatched to a better place, i.e. the local charity shop in the first instance.

Verdict: Left it on a jet plane.

The Raw-Shark Texts by Stephen Hall

I bought this when it first came out in 2007 and remember being not entirely taken with it. Obviously not enough to discard it but I remember thinking it was a bit too clever-clever, a little too fond of it’s own high concepts and wordplays (for an example…name the Raw-Shark Texts is a play on words on the Rorschach Tests administered by psychiatrists). I chose it because about a week before I left I was listening to some old booky podcasts and heard it being reviewed favourably on on Hear…Read This. This was enough to get me to pull it off the shelf for another go.

I don’t even know where to begin with this. A man wakes up one morning with no recollection of who he is. Turns out he is Eric Sanderson v 2. Through letters from the original Eric Sanderson he learns that he lost the love of his life, Clio in a diving accident in Greece. Eric and his cat called Ian embark on a quest to find Dr Trey Fidourus who may hold the clue to Eric’s past. Eric’s nemesis in this quest is a Ludovician, a gigantic thought shark who, before it kills you, destroys your memories.

It is a really clever book and I enjoyed reading this a lot more this time and felt that I either understood, or was not as irritated by, the wordplays and stylistic concepts as I was the first time round. I also enjoyed the story which is all about the power of words and memory and loss a lot more than I did the first time round. However, I felt that reading this twice was enough and it did not make the journey home with me.

It was also quite unnerving lying on a beach and reading about a (thought) shark. All the more so when I slipped on a rock on Lembongan island and cut my knee open. The only place to wash it was in the sea and the entire time I kept thinking of how sharks can smell a drop of blood in about a billion parts of water and expected to be attacked any second!

Verdict: Left (somewhat reluctantly) in Sanur. Standout character – Ian the cat.

Stop #2 – Legian

Ummm…if my photos are anything to go by I didn’t carpe diem at all in Legian. It would seem the opposite – all my photos are of night times, bars, cocktails, restaurants…and the Fussiest Eater in the World getting up close and personal at a drag show! It was much busier than Ubud with better weather and thankfully no roosters! In amongst all the tourist tat there here is some good shopping to be had in in Legian and it’s neighbour Seminyak. I bought two lovely leather handbags for a fraction of the cost back home. If you do want the tourist stuff, be prepared to barter hard.

Holiday Reading Habit #2 – Personal Development

I like to use our winter holiday as a time of reflection and planning for the “year” ahead. My birthday is mid August so I tend to set my annual goals each year to start from September. Our winter break is a great time for reflection on the year gone by and what to aim for in the coming 12 months. To that end, I like to get a bit of my personal development reading in during this time. This is also my time to plan for the blog and I had a super ( at least I think so) idea for a new segment. Stay tuned for that.

This year I read:

Radical Self Love by Gala Darling

I think I would have loved this book had I read it in my 20’s when I totally lacked confidence in myself. Having someone say that it is ok to be yourself, however offbeat or oddball that self if would have been very empowering. Now, that I am an old curmudgeon, I didn’t find anything in here that I hadn’t heard before. Having said that, I think there are times we could all use a little boost and I think this will be a book I turn back to in those times to get some motivation or see myself out of a low patch. And having said THAT, I found her talk of tapping as a way to relieve everything from eating disorders to childhood traumas to be way too out there for me. Does anyone do this? I had not even heard of it before reading this and it sounds highly spurious. Please correct me if I am wrong!

Verdict: A real pick and mix. Some parts I will definitely refer back to, some parts (the tapping) were not for me.

Let it Out by Katie Dalebout

I used to be a frequent listener to Katie’s podcast, The Wellness Wonderland but I gave it up because it got a bit too woo-woo for me. There is a bit of that in Let it Out but I feel that the great journalling tips contained in here far outweigh the flakiness quotient. I have not finished this yet but, as a sporadic journaller who wants to be a regular journaller, this contains some great ideas!

Verdict: Definite keeper!

Stop #3 – Sanur

On the way to the beach resort of Sanur we drove to Tanah Lot, one of Bali’s most beautiful temples:

And we did a day trip to Lembongan Island…tropical paradise!

(Except for when you fall over over and cut your knee on a rock so are a bit too scared to swim in case a shark gets you!)

Holiday Reading Habit #3 – The One You’ve Been Wanting To Read for Ages

I took The Goldfinch with me. Did not even open it. Very disappointed with myself as that is a big and heavy book to be carrying around for no reason!

Holiday Reading Habit #4 – The Book Set in the Place You are At

Epic fail. Did not even think of a book set in Bali to read. BUT had an awesome idea for a book set in Bali to write. Then again I was rather cocktail fuelled at the time. Lets see. If it’s still burbling away in there by NANOWRIMO, maybe I’ll have a crack at writing it!

Holiday Reading Habit #5 – The Total Surprise

This is usually something I pick up on my travels but this time was something I had with me.

I finished Gala Darling by the pool and could not be bothered to walk back to the hotel room to get The Goldfinch. And here’s my Gala Darlingesque tip for the young and impressionable. ALWAYS walk back to the hotel room to get the book you really want to read. Because otherwise you will flick on your Kindle to something like The Good Girl which you have already started and didn’t particularly enjoy but hey, its there and there’s no point in starting anything new when you have The Goldfinch waiting in your hotel room.

Maybe I have read too many of the Gone Girlesque books that have come onto the market since the original but this story of a kidnapping did not grab me at all.

Verdict: Should have walked back to the hotel room to pick up The Goldfinch

However, I read it here so life was not all bad!

Back soon with some cooking!

And tell me how do you choose your holiday reads?

Signature 1 Save

Save