Hobbits In Rivendell

Citrus Season

January 21, 2016

1:06 pm

‘Tis the season for winter blahs, endless cups of tea, difficult awakenings, and increased indolence. January lies within that particular limbo of “nothing going on yet” and recovering from too much going on. We are grateful to be healthy and to have the wherewithal to be a little bored. Bored right now is good.

2016 seems to be moving at a shocking clip — it seems inconceivable that we’re getting tax forms already, and looking at bills for car registration and insurance and all the other cyclical things that come round again and again. By this time of month, people have stopped going on about resolutions and have gone back to fearmongering about politics — what if my candidate doesn’t win? — fearmongering about the weather — what if after this El Nino, there’s another La Nina cycle with NO MORE RAIN?? — and in general bickering, unpleasant, cantankerous realities of American society. Definitely time to turn off the …everything, and go outside.

It’s odd how to think how much we’ve forgotten about a rainy season. We’ve been wakened by wind and rain more than once these past few weeks, have watched the previously dead square of yard tentatively take on a furred green aspect as tiny seeds of …something germinate. (Oh, please God, may it not be the ivy again. It took us WEEKS to dig that out. It’s probably ivy. *sigh*) Between the wooden slats of our deck, beneath the bird feeder, eight sunflowers stretch bravely toward the leaden sky. They’re all about four inches tall, but distinctive. If we could transplant them, we would. The dying pine trees — still standing, because the owner can’t decide on a company to come and remove them — seem like they’re shedding pine needles in thick carpets in order to provide hiding places for the tiny, darting birds which have multiplied by the hundreds. Even the hummingbirds – suspiciously hovering and glowering at all comers – have slowed their usual frantic circling to simply sit in the yard and watch this season unfold.

The Wees are selling oranges at their elementary school, and while our weekly farm box provides us with plenty of cabbage, root veg and citrus, we agreed to buy a bag. In the spirit of trying to use everything in the veg box that we can — we’re still making kimchi and pickling carrots and cauliflower — T. bodged a bunch of oranges in a pot the other afternoon and decided to make marmalade.

We’ve been in the marmalade frame of mind before. It didn’t go well. D. worked so hard to thinly slice oranges and lemons and carefully weigh out all the ingredients… and it never set. Worse, it bubbled over and made a mess, and we ended up tossing a lot of it after we scraped it off of the stovetop. This time, T. sliced the oranges by hand instead of with a mandolin, added some cloves, just because, put in a random amount of sugar, and … mainly forgot about it. This we call “serendipitous cooking.” As in, it’s serendipity that it didn’t scorch, boil over, otherwise implode, and it’s actually good. It worries T. when she manages things that D. hasn’t managed… mainly because she can’t figure out how it happened.

Marmalade aficionados suggest softening rinds with a long, liquid reducing boil, not overstirring the marmalade after it’s reached a boil, potting the jam when it’s warm, and not piping hot, and making sure the thinly sliced citrus fruits are not too thin. British marmalade is made with the peel separated from the fruit, but T. didn’t bother zesting the oranges, and ended up turning them off midway through the cooking process for an appointment. Putting them back up to boil afterward may have done good things for the pectin formation. Some marmalade makers add the sugar near the end of the procedure, to keep the end product clear and brighter in color. Others add brown sugar, to create a deeper flavor. Since we have a whole haul of frozen and sliced oranges in the freezer, we look forward to trying out a few of these ideas.

As it stands, this marmalade is quite good, reminiscent of the bittersweet and sticky Dundee marmalade we liked so well in Scotland. T promises next time to pot it in much smaller jars for sharing — until then, she encourages you to prep and freeze your own citrus glut; you never know what wonderful things marmalade can make better. D. likes it drizzled over pound cake or as a layer in a chocolate cake. Eventually, once we pull ourselves together to try angel food again, it will also go well with that…

A hazy winter sun is emerging from behind a bank of gray-edged clouds. A piquant tanginess elevating winter’s earthy root offerings, the abundant orange is a little bit of sun to offset the tough darkness of what may turn out to be a pretty long winter. For that we can be nothing but grateful.

The More Things Change

by TadMack

January 7, 2016

11:22 am

2 Comments on The More Things Change

California

In the major house clean after the holidays, T. found a newsletter from 2005 which commented on the torrential, Ark-inducing rainfall. Those were the days, and the return of the rain to this rather dry state – this week’s “conga line of storms” as one forecaster deliriously burbled – is still too much of a novelty to provoke much complaint about the snarled traffic and the inconvenience of a sudden ploot, as the Scots call a downpour (though we WILL complain about the eejits who don’t understand that one cannot drive a wet road at the same speed as one dry). At work this week, D. discovered that his thick wool cardigan indeed smells quite like wet sheep when thoroughly drenched. Funny, that.

It’s always nice to do a bit of baking when being outdoors is not an option, and D. took the opportunity to use a recent gift of an Angel Food pan for the first time. Whether it was the lemon zest he added to the carefully folded froth or the fact that he – strictly following a recipe for once, since he’d not made an angel food cake for over 20 years – used Egg Beaters instead of cracking fresh eggs, or the Egg Beaters had frozen previously — something made this cake weirdly almost soggy, with huge bubbles, and an appalling…coarseness. Since an angel food cake is normally light, airy, firm, yet tender of crumb, this was a definite MAJOR fail – the first of the New Year, which amused us greatly. It was frustrating, but angel food is just such an easy cake that we were sort of gobsmacked that it had somehow not come out right. From Cook’s Illustrated we learned that Egg Beaters are twice pasteurized… of course, we checked with them AFTER we’d made our error. Well. Live and learn. We have some ideas for what to do next time, and will begin by using a different recipe, in-shell, non-carton egg whites… and going from there.

As you can see, it looks more like bread than cake…

At least our Lavender Lemon Shortbread turned out. Of course, D. doubled both the lemon and the lavender because he feared they’d simply taste like really rich sugar cookies if he didn’t. T. felt the spices fought each other, and would have preferred one merely complementing the other, OR, Lavender sugar cookies and Lemon shortbread, separately. D. found them reasonably tasty, and T. decided, as she often does, that they’d be improved with a tart lemon frosting glaze. Lemon juice, with a soupçon of icing sugar, covers a multitude of sins.

All that needs to be added is a cuppa and a fire, and all’s well that ends well. Well…mostly. Happily D. got a new EvenGrind – a hand-powered coffeebean grinder – and while he is quite pleased with it, he and a coworker have discussed making it work with an electric drill… so, once the whirring stops, and the cuppa’s brewed, THEN all is well. Apparently.

So. A fire, a cookie, a game, and thou. Looking back at every January, wet or dry, we’re pretty much the same as we always are. Cheers to that.

Journey to the Center South of the Earth.

by David T. Macknet

December 30, 2015

1:16 pm

2 Comments on Journey to the ~~Center~~ South of the Earth.

California, Traveling

Finding ourselves with a rare gift of a few days with no appointments or expectations, we decided to head down to Southern California to visit with D’s family. Rather than fly, we figured we’d just drive, as SoCal remains about 8 hours distant, barring traffic. Given the choice between being in airports on Christmas or sitting in our own vehicle? Not that difficult a decision, really. We caught up on chitchat and podcasts (NPR’s Latino USA has an amazing piece on Jewish Latino culture that was really worth hearing) and made surprisingly good time.

Our one concern was the roads – the changing season has brought oddly torrential rains and some floods to the lowlands, and freezing temps even to our little neck of the woods, which is at sea level, and we wondered how much it was going to snow, heading over the Grapevine. We found that for Southern California, it was snowy … meaning there were maybe 3 inches built up, in spots, and the road was a wee bit wet, in spots. (It was a bit odd finding ice on the top of the car in San Bernadino, though). It was gorgeous and we were grateful to arrive when it was already on the ground, with no issue of the road being closed.

Our time was mostly spent watching D’s sibs and their various children (7 nieces and nephews!) enjoy their various aerial toys and putting together an evil trampoline that took far longer than it should have (never underestimate the power of people not reading directions). There was plenty of interesting food (potatoes, sliced thinly, on …pizza? Surprisingly tasty, with an Alfredo sauce), many, many, many citrus and palm trees, and a trip to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, to which we hadn’t gone since …2002 or so. An old photograph shows us there in high summer, shivering as we snap a photograph. We’d forgotten that it wasn’t just the cold that had chased us down last time… it was a few other details, like the fact that it’s very high!

The last time we were in one of the trams, they had much smaller cars (you can see one in the picture above). Nowadays, the cars are round, and the floor rotates around 360° over the course of moving up nearly a vertical mile, from 2,643 feet elevation at the embarkation station to 8,516 feet at debarkation. D. thought this would be fun (T was, as she always is in trams, dubious). We found that having the windows constantly sliding to the side, while trying to brace and take pictures, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Though it did tend to distract from the disturbing bits (going over the pylons and swinging nauseatingly baaaack and forth), overall we think that it would have been nice, for the photographers, to be stable rather than slowly rotating about. Ah, well, the kids got a kick out of it.

Though some of our party were unprepared for the realities of snow (one child discovered that Crocs and bare feet do not make for enjoyable snow play) and certainly neither T. nor D. expected Southern Cal to be cold enough to have brought scarves or ear-covering hats (T. counted herself fortunate to find an extra pair of knit gloves in the car and D. was very grateful for his flannel-lined cardigan), it was a pleasant trip up, but one we won’t be taking again soon. While it’s quite a wonderful view from the top of Mt. San Jacinto, both T. and D. were struggling with the altitude more than they remembered (which is probably why we only made a brief visit the summer of 2002 – yeah, it was snowy up there and we were in shorts, but we couldn’t breathe), and T’s lungs didn’t really enjoy the hike from the parking lot in dry 29°F/-1°C air (her ten-minute coughing jag reminded her why she’d never choose to live in a high desert). We were a bit disappointed in our performance, but high altitude fans we are not. *waves to our friends in Denver*

The air was astoundingly clear for Southern California. We could see all the way to the Salton Sea (which was just cut out of the photograph on the far right in the shot below).

This trip also gave D the excuse to break in his new camera. It was a treat to hold onto something so much smaller and lighter, and get some truly detailed and clear pictures — but focus is tricky — as he realized when T. met a friend from Iowa for lunch (the joys of others traveling to see family nearby!) and he took a picture of them which left them both blurry, but the road behind in sharp focus. We also realize we need to get an additional battery pack for the new rig – at the top of the mountain, D. ran out of power, so spent some time hanging about in the lodge with the charger plugged into a free socket. Ah, well. We’ll be better prepared next time.

And now we take stock of our lives, and tumble into the new year. Joy to you, friends — stay dry and WARM.

-D & T

The Unprepared Chef, or, How To Make An Imperfect Cheesecake

by TadMack

December 17, 2015

2:07 pm

Leave a comment on The Unprepared Chef, or, How To Make An Imperfect Cheesecake

Baking, Experimental

Can you bake a cheesecake without cream cheese? T. asked the internets at large on a Wednesday afternoon. She was treated to dubious silences and a chorus of “NO” by well-meaning strangers when she perused the goods in her fridge and found a log of Laura Chenel chèvre – a mild and fresh Sonoma goat cheese. “It’s too bossy,” she was warned. “Too much flavor.” That’s as may be, but when you’re stuck on a writing project and have been cooking just because a.) you’re cold and cross, and b.) you’re craving an excuse to eat blueberries, and c.) did we mention cross? you just… go ahead and make that thing. Because, cheesecake. Sometimes life is less about if you could do a thing, than if you should…

Normal people have… food on hand, in the house, and don’t need to make lightning raids on the pantry to create things out of odds and ends, but somehow, the end of the week always brings us to this weird pass. Maybe it’s just that we haven’t yet gotten into the habit of doing “big shops” for more than a few days at a time, a relic of our time in the UK when we went to the tiny market up the road daily. Maybe it’s just that we rarely have desserts that we make for ourselves (though D. frequently makes ginormous cakes and …carries them off to work) and we don’t think to have ingredients on hand. Maybe it’s just that SOMEONE is altogether too fond of cream cheese frosting for their ginormous work cakes. At any rate, T was determined to thaw some blueberries, and needed something to go with them. Enter the chèvre.

Possibly a traditional West Coast American cheesecake (sans eggs, unbaked) might not have worked out as well, but this was T’s usual kitchen sink veggie hybrid, which uses a box of Mori-Nu silken tofu to replace the additional protein and creaminess that eggs would have provided. A tablespoon of vanilla, together with half (4 oz. from an 8 oz. log) of a Laura Chenel chèvre cheese – no salt added, because chèvre is already salted – three tablespoons of castor sugar, and we were good to go. The ingredients she simply creamed together with a stick blender, and set aside.

The unprepared chef traditionally never has digestive biscuits, gingersnaps, or anything else helpful — or homemade — but there’s always that stale packet of graham crackers she got for the nephews ages ago — they’ll do in a pinch for the crust. They won’t add much flavor, so freshly ground dried ginger and/or cinnamon to the dry crushed crackers is essential. One and a half cups of blueberry mixed with a half tablespoon of King Arthur Flour dried lemon juice, two tablespoons of sugar and 3/4 tablespoon of cornstarch was stirred to a thickening boil, and set aside for later… and then T put it together, baked it – sans water bath, just in a plain oven at 170°C/350°F for thirty-five minutes until the middle still jiggled but there were signs of tightening all around the edges.

T could hardly wait for the stuff to cool. Enquiring minds now wanted to know if it was any good… and it was! The slight tangyness provided by sour cream in many cheesecake recipes for more prepared chefs is provided by the chèvre. We actually wish we had used more than half the container; the Chenel is such a mild cheese and not so assertive that we couldn’t have used more of that piquancy (conversely, we could maybe have gotten the same effect with a tablespoon less of sugar – we’ll have to fiddle with it). Maybe we’re just on a late autumn citrus kick, but T. really wished she’d added more lemon in the form of zest to the berry topping, which she added to the room-temperature cooled pie. Next time. Next time.

Until then, here’s to finding random things in the cupboards and the fridge and beating them into culinary submission.

In lieu of the pie…

by TadMack

November 30, 2015

12:52 pm

Leave a comment on In lieu of the pie…

Baking, California, Experimental, Food, Life

Not every use of pumpkin this time of year ends in pie or a hideously over-sweetened “spiced” coffee drink of red cup fame. (There’s no pumpkin in those things, actually, so never mind…) D’s friend, Rainer, who emigrated from Germany, recently enjoyed some of D’s carrot cake and reminisced about a cake he ate growing up, made with Hokkaido pumpkins. It was, he described it, rich, dense, and spiced similarly. He then gave D. the recipe in …German. Fortunately, there’s Google.

The first thing we had to decipher is what a Hokkaido pumpkin is… and where to find one. The name easily enough identified it as yet another varietal of Japanese pumpkin, but it’s known in this part of California as a Red Kuri (or kari) squash. At our usual market we found something that looked … KIND OF like a red kuri in shape, but it was too large, and the color was more butternutty… and the grocery store brilliantly labelled it “Winter Squash.” Um. Yes. Full of detailed, helpful information, that name.

Red kuri – or Hokkaido squash – as you see in this cheater picture from Wikimedia Commons – are beautiful. Their small size and intensely colored rind are notable, and their inner flesh is kind of …pink. They’re on the sweeter side, and are carried locally at various farm markets, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and the like, though with the before-Thanksgiving run on hard squash and gourds, we couldn’t source any this time. We bought our “winter” squash for Tuesday soup and grated a kabocha instead. Another Japanese favorite, used in tempura, kabocha are hard and sweet and have the same bright orange flesh, so we figured it was a decent substitute.

Rainer’s Kürbiskuchen

200g soft butter —> 7/8 cup
150 g sugar —> 3/4
100 g of honey or maple syrup —> 1/3 c honey
4 egg yolks
500 g pumpkin flesh —> 17 oz
300g Hazelnuts —> 2 c. hazelnut flour
100 g flour —> 1 c. AP flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch of salt,
1 teaspoon cinnamon,
nutmeg
some black pepper.
4 egg whites

200 g chocolate —> 1 c
dried pumpkin seeds for garnish

This recipe records the equivalents which we used – please note that they are not exact, nor did we entirely follow the recipe, though we were as faithful as we could be.

The what-to-mix-first portion of the recipe didn’t translate very well, but once you’ve made carrot cake, you can pretty well make this. As we had a few hopeful vegans around this holiday, we opted to make the cake vegan — so we made flax eggs and used Smart Balance. We cut the butter called for by half because …well, it just seemed like a lot, and there’s really nothing worse than a greasy cake. We baked it in an angel food cake pan and were astonished at how much oil there was left still in the pan afterward. We were actually a little worried, but it all came right …

”

The instructions mentioned something about having chocolate flake scattered on the top of this cake. D. made a deep, rich ganache instead, and we skipped the pepita garnish because if you didn’t see pumpkin seeds, you’d have no idea that pumpkin was the flavor of the cake! Though too soft for T. – she’d like to try the recipe again with the right kind of pumpkin, with eggs, and with a different balance of hazelnut flour to AP flour, just to test some hypotheses – the cake was a hit with the guests over lunch on the weekend, and the remainder was quickly snarfed up by workmates. The ganache contrasted amazingly well with the bland sweetness of the pumpkin. This was a “ten minute cake,” it was literally gone before Rainer even got to taste any! Oh, well. Good excuse to make it again.

Anyone weary of the traditional uses of pumpkin during the holidays might swap out carrots (and raisins) in a traditional carrot cake recipe, and enjoy the results!

Baking Like the Babes: Russian Chrysanthemum Bread

by TadMack

November 23, 2015

4:26 pm

1 Comment on Baking Like the Babes: Russian Chrysanthemum Bread

Baking, California, Experimental, Food, Life

When you bake bread every week, or every-other, you lose the ability to really… blog anything interesting about it. Oh, yes, this week the dough had a GREAT gluten! This week we used a little more White Whole Wheat, and a pumpernickel instead of a blended rye…. Yeah, we know we have the ability to gabble on endlessly about that sort of thing, but at the end of the day, we love you too much to expose you to our sheer nerdishness. I mean, we’re the people who peruse the King Arthur Flour catalogue over breakfast! So, we bake – a great deal – and it’s usually wholemeal bread which we use for absolutely everything – toast to sandwiches. Sometimes we’re inspired to branch out by seeing images of some wonderful thing, and that was the case this time. Blogging Baker Babe Lien is rounding up the Bread Baking Babes this month, and while we’re rather short on babe-ishness around here this week, we happily played along with this gorgeous looking bread.

Russian Chrysanthemum bread seems like one of those holiday breads that is just perfect for this time of year. The simple dough calls for using strong flour, which is simply a high gluten flour, and the recipe follows. The filling for the original bread Lien (and many others) made is savory, which you know we’ll have to try before winter is over, but you know we mavericks can never simply follow a recipe properly the first time — we made ours of tartly sweet cranberries and clementines with dark chocolate — basically leftovers from the cranberry sauce T. had just made, with shards of dark chocolate thrown in. It is a TASTY filling – not terribly sweet, not too tart, smooth and richly chocolaty. T. thought this looked like a pull-apart bread to us, but a lot of the Baking Babes – and D. – thought it made more sense to actually slice it. This bread is open to a great deal of variation – it’ll be interesting to see where it lands in our whimsy next! And we do look forward to trying it in a springform pan, or with some more flower-y shapes.

500 g strong flour/bread flour (with some extra for dusting the board when you roll out the dough)
7 g dry instant yeast
125 ml milk, lukewarm (1/2 cup)
125 ml kefir or yogurt (1/2 cup)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
90 ml olive oil (3 oz.)

We used whole wheat flour and instead of sugar, maple syrup. We also forgot the yogurt and skipped out on the egg in the glaze and in the dough, as several guests this weekend are vegan. We’ll give it another try at some point as written.

When making her bread, Babe Elle wisely rolled her dough all out and used a biscuit cutter to get the perfectly sized rounds. Would this have made our lives much easier? Oh… sure. *cough* Maybe. Probably. However, D rolling the dough out individually suited the graduated sizes of the petals on his mums.

Overfilling the petals is really the worst thing you can do, with a loose filling – you need just a schmear of filling to show, and just enough so that it won’t squish out when you’ve pinched the dough together… it should stay in place, allegedly. T. started filling with a tablespoon initially, but switched to about a teaspoon full of filling – enough to taste, not to make a meal on (sadly). And the round of dough is simply folded in half and then the folded edges pinched together to make a petal. This would be a great job for small children with clean hands and a ~~need~~ desire to avoid other work and participate in the making of the treat.

We topped our bread with sugar crystals, colored with saffron, just to add a little crunch and color. Though T. really did kind of over-do it on the filling, the dough turned out to be very excited about proofing, which made the whole thing a bit more forgiving than it could have been. The tender, toothsome dough baked up looking golden-brown and delicious and was really well received by eaters of all ages this past weekend.

It’s too easy to be busy lately, and the holiday throws its own craziness into the mix of the daily things we have to do. We’d lately forgotten the fun of baking with others, so we’re grateful for the Babes for being the first to try this easy – yet complex – frilly bread. Can’t wait to try it again!

Forget paleo, go mid-Victorian

by David T. Macknet

November 19, 2015

1:45 pm

Leave a comment on Forget paleo, go mid-Victorian

Food

“Mid-Victorians lived without modern diagnostics, drugs, surgery or contraception. Despite that, and because of the high nutrient density of their diet, their life spans were as good as ours and their health spans significantly longer.”

Read the full article at Health Spectator – it’s worth a read, particularly in conjunction with the what we eat infographic. Spoiler: eat fruits and veggies and avoid sugar.

-D

We’re still around; Fermenting things

by David T. Macknet

November 18, 2015

7:49 am

1 Comment on We’re still around; Fermenting things

California

So, it’s been a while since we’ve written here. T., of course, has been writing over at Writing YA and on her own blog, but D. has been tinkering about with twitter rather than trying to scrape up the energy to actually write anything. So, in the interest of at least letting you know that we’re still here, a brief post.

A few months back, D. got a fermentation crock. In that, we’ve made three batches of kimchi, 2 batches of sauerkraut (one traditional with green apples and caraway seeds, the other Indian inspired), a batch of root beer, and two batches of ginger beer. We’re right now fermenting some green beans and carrots with dill seeds and garlic, for Thanksgiving. They’ll have been in for a solid week, brined, so they should be mildly sour.

Because we have the crock (ginger beer was the initial motivation), D. picked up The Art of Fermentation, and we’ve been enjoying the reading of it far more than any other cookbook we’ve ever had. We’ve come to love kimchi (mix it with rice, yogurt, cheese, and bake it – you’ll be surprised). We’ve also started to look about and say, “what else can we ferment?” In a culture which doesn’t eat that many veggies (check out this infographic), we’re quite happy to be adding more veggies to our diets, packed with flavor.

Anyway, that’s enough gushing about fermenting things. May you have a happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.

-D & T

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him to create 80+ degree weather that resists cooling down…

by TadMack

October 16, 2015

3:40 pm

2 Comments on Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; conspiring with him to create 80+ degree weather that resists cooling down…

California, Food, Kitchen Favorites, Life

So, it’s October already, and do you know, there’s only two weeks of this month, after the weekend. How. Does. This. Keep. Happening.

October

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.

So dark out now, when Niecelet goes whimpering to the ferry and comes home from the gym, when D. leaves for work at half-six, dark, dark, and nippier these last few days. Turkeys roam the streets in feral packs while wisps of fog steal over the hills. The change of seasons is upon us.

(Okay, at least one of those things happens pretty much year ’round, but you get the point.)(We’ll leave you to guess whether it’s the fog, or the feral turkeys.) Since the produce is exhausted and fairly terrible about now from both the garden and the farm box (with the exception of the last fat, round eggplant on the very sturdy and still flowering plant), and since the afternoons are overcast and hinting at rain that has yet to appear (pleasepleaseplease, this weekend, let it begin), T. keeps making soup, in the vain hope that soup is to clouds and cold weather as washing your car is to rain storms. So far, no dice. But lots of diced veggies — cumin, garlic, and carrots, exhausted kale, weary tomatoes. We added coconut “fat,” instead of butter, and half and half, instead of cream. All you need is a stick blender, and it all comes together.

And, eventually, so will the season; the start-stop of pseudo-summer will at last give way to the long season of mild, dark, and stormy. We’ll hear frogs again, and curse the wet leaves as they plaster themselves to our legs. We’ll slosh and splash through another winter — with perhaps some real rain this time — and enjoy many a savory cup of soup.

Cheers,

D&T

Taste & See: Miyoko’s & Coracao Confections

by TadMack

September 15, 2015

2:21 pm

2 Comments on Taste & See: Miyoko’s & Coracao Confections

Experimental, Food

In our continuing efforts to explore the world of artisan vegan cheese with T’s mother, we threw another “wine” and “cheese” (for every time you read that word, substitute “cultured nut product” or something) party to sample some of Miyoko’s autumn offerings – but this time added the raw cacao offerings of Coracao Confections to the mix. The Wee Elf let us know that he was disappointed that we hadn’t simply invited him over to have more Sharp Farmhouse cheese, and his little brother continued to not really taste much, but no matter – this time the Littles were along to make snarky remarks (can you really call the 15-26 group Littles anymore? Yes? Forever? Right-oh, then) and The Aunt came to take teensy, tiny tastes of this or that — and then enjoy more than expected.

That’s the fun of these little tastings – we are all surprised – usually pleasantly – by our responses. Nobody (except maybe T’s Mom) goes into these tastings expecting to love the food – we have chips and salsa on standby, at all times – yet we don’t need them, which is nice. This time our taster’s responses ranged from the pleasantly surprised, to the “Hm, that might be okay in a dish” to the, “Oh, dear Lord, no,” end of the spectrum. What one person views as a hardline NO, another person views as an opportunity to take all of the plate home with them – which wasn’t a surprise. In addition to the chips was homemade pico de gallo, kimchi and pickled veggies and as always, a lot of laughter and rude commentary.

We started with the scariest cheese in the bunch – the one covered in charcoally-powdered-ash, because why not go all the way out there? The Mt. Vesuvius was slightly firm, with a dense smoothness that clung to the knife. The …smeary black ash was finely powdered and stuck fast, not coming off on anything but fingers and knives. It was quickly ascertained to be tasteless, but still made for some very worried, unhappy faces as it was passed around the table. The Elf demurred quietly. The Aunt reminded everyone that charcoal was a time-honored remedy for a sick stomach, so with tentative expressions, tasters went for the first bite… and said, “Huh.”

Second comment: “Oh, hey, that’s really good!” Third comment, tied with action, “Pass it back, would you?” And then the tasters tried to bogart that whole plate for themselves, even before Elf could finally have a taste and put in his bid for trying to keep the plate. Typical, really.

Our second cheese was one we knew would be rich and unique. Truffles are kind of a big deal amongst foodies, and though not everyone in the tasting group were fungus-fiends, we figured that we needed to at least try the stuff and thereby hold up the standard for dedicated California foodies, or they’d come and take our license or something. We opened up the French Style Winter Truffle wheel with expectation of a complicated and sophisticated flavor. I mean, we had no choice. The description uses the word “umami.” As in, An elegant, woodsy, and earthy wheel marbled with truffle-scented mushrooms. Explodes with deep umami flavors in a luxurious creamy base. We were going to come away from this cheese having had An Experience.

… Of course, being us, the experience was, “Huh. That tastes like dirt.” “No, it doesn’t, it tastes like earth – it’s earthy.” “Well, that’s what mushrooms taste like.” “Dirt?” “No, I said EARTH.”

And the Laurel and Hardy convention rolled along from there.

This isn’t a bad cheese. It’s creamy, spreads well, is studded with little mushroom-y pieces — but the prerequisite here is that you must really like mushrooms to feel like this is your cheese. Our group is… slightly indifferent to mushrooms, unless they’re on pizza (the Philistines). Conclusion: Melted into a bowl of buttery pasta (dairy-free butter, of course), this cheese would be amazing… just not so much for us on seedy or rye crackers, fruit, cucumbers, or any of the other things we had to pair it with. Maybe an especially sour sourdough could redeem it? It has a real richness and creaminess that needs… something more. We just don’t know, not having elegant enough palettes for that umami! Not disappointed, though. Onward!

You’ll notice that the Country-Style Herbes de Provence picture comes from the Miyoko’s Kitchen website… as unfortunately, our photographer got busy with the pickled cauliflower and some ashy cheese and crackers and forgot to take a picture… *sigh* It is so hard to get good help these days. Anyway. The herby name is evocative, as the cheese wheel is indeed smothered in gray-green herbes de Provence – which include thyme, lavender, and rosemary, but sadly, no purple flowers on ours. The herbs give off their scent as soon as the knife cuts through the product. The cheese is quite firm – enough so that you really can slice it instead of spread it – but we found we liked it better a little softer. This was a taster positive, though not the favorite the Mt. Vesuvius was – it confused some of the less sophisticated palettes of the younger set, and for others, the lavender taste was interfered with by its sweetish smell, making the cheese sweet, but others appreciated the texture and flavors. Softened, the herb-y schmear on crackers was mild and nutty.

We next moved on to the Double Cream Sundried Tomato Garlic. We knew this one would be well-received, because the creamy, mild and buttery flavor the cultured cashews had in the Double Cream chives are so like Boursin, and could only be improved by pairing with other flavors. The Sundried Tomato Garlic didn’t disappoint. Creamy and tangy, the garlic just a hint and the tomato not too acidic, it reminded us of a familiar and well-loved dish… smeared across a piping hot baguette, this would be a lovely dairy-free pizza type of thing. So, so zesty, creamy, and tasty! For fun, we tested an additional cheese at the same time – but it was a Fresh Buffalo-Style Mozzarella. The cheese, unlike the other wheels, wrapped in waxed paper, came in a cup, where it was packed in brine to keep it fresh. It’s not a particularly pretty cheese, looking much like dairy buffalo mozzarella, except more of a beige-y ball, not stark white.

To taste the cultured nut “mozza,” T. made simple open-faced pizza breads with a plain tomato sauce and medallions of this cheese, which managed to both melt and brown, though not stretch. Surprisingly, the smallest Wee liked the mozzarella best … or, perhaps we should say, he simply chomped happily on all the pizza breads he could reach and asked for more, apparently not noticing any difference between dairy mozzarella and Miyoko’s Buffalo-Style. The six year old palette… is surprisingly robust at times. Or indifferent. Anyway. Our conclusion on the mozzarella is that it is a workable substitute for pizza, and we’ll have to make an additional tasting to see if its mild, nutty flavor holds up to basil, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and pear tomatoes – which is how one also eats buffalo mozzarella.

We veered from our cheese tasting to try Coracao Confections. These chocolates are coconut sugar sweetened, easily found in the Bay Area and ordered simply from the company – big pluses for our non-California readers – and contain 81% cocoa, so they’ve got that deep, dark, good stuff that’s healthy. All of the organic, raw, dairy free, gluten free, soy free, low-glycemic, heart-healthy stuff aside, at the end of the day, truffles are made wth sugar. Of course they’d go over well with the tasters, right? …Kind of. We sampled Raspberry Fudge which got a thumbs up. Rose Truffle which got a confused, “Okay, that tastes like flowers” thumbs up – and it did, the light and lovely rose came through clearly – this was followed by an enthusiastic two thumbs up for Tangerine Bee Pollen, though tasters were again confused and dubious about including pollen in anything they ate, and wondered if the local pollen was supposed to help them combat Bay Area allergies (probably, but one would have to eat a lot more truffles than just one or two to … oh, wait, that’s not a bad idea). Surprised by the Berkley Bar, tasters found this one a good second place, and agreed that it indeed was very much like a Snickers, with raw almonds instead of peanuts. We finished with Peppermint Patties, which contained fresh mint and chlorophyll for a bright and impressive green filling – and…the coconut “bacon” truffle.

(We can see our friend M. now, giving us a distressed and disbelieving look, with horrified head-shaking, mourning, “Vegan bacon!? Now, that is just wrong. Wrong.” Yeah, well, we live in a world that puts together chocolate and KALE “granola” – of course called “kalenola” – you have to learn to roll with the punches with the California vegan foodies, all right?) In this limited edition truffle, they took flaked coconut and coconut sugar, and then add Hickory Smoke, and Applewood Smoked Salt and added it to the top in a crunchy, slightly salty topping… The smoky, crunchy, and a little sweet adds… something very distressing to some people. Surprisingly, this one got the “Dear Lord, NO!” from the lifetime veggies and vegans in the crowd – our omnivores thought it was actually okay to pretty tasty. So, does it really taste like bacon? No one in this house can say for sure, but coconut “bacon” has been a staple at Coracao for months, and has appeared in various guises – and it sells out, over and over, so people are eating it. …Just not these people, apparently. (FINE, Mark, you win.)

Especially those of us who took that one nibble too many, hit a wall, and made a lot of sad faces while everyone else ate. Poor Elf. It’s very hard to be eight.

We had so much fun doing this that we’re going to do it again. Next time, we’re hoping to grab some other cultured nut products we’re seeing get good reviews – Kite Hill’s artisinal almond milk fresh cheeses are showing up at Nob Hill, Vtopia is a brand coming to our area, and CHAO slices by Field Roast (the tomato cayenne is supposed to be amazing) are already in groceries like Safeway. We expect to encounter both the revolting and the revealing – and it’s all in the name of sharing something meaningful to some of our family (Hi, Mom!) and enjoying an entertaining meal. Cheers!

Glasgow:
NY:
Grinnell:
Roswell:
Berkeley: