Where am I going with this blog?

I took December and January off from this blog.  I'm glad too, because it's given me time to think about where I'm going with it.

I like reading and following some other blogs by moms and creative types on cooking and saving money.  But I'm in Missoula Montana, and I don't have a lot of the grocery stores they do.  I just enjoy eating well and saving a buck.  I think for now, I'm gonna write about what crazy things I'm excited about and how I'm saving some money, right here in Missoula.

So, it's a Montana blog for frugal chefs, especially, but not only, the stay at home mom types.

It's alive!!: Part II Return of the Kitchen Monsters

So a little more discussion on the things growing in my kitchen.

YOGURT

How good for you is yogurt?  I'm sure I don't have to sell you on that.

I've been making my oatmeal in the mornings a little on the thick side, with milk instead of water.  Then I'll mix in a quarter cup of vanilla yogurt.  It's so creamy and good!  Boaz (my one and a half year old) digs it too.

SOURDOUGH STARTER

I'm super excited about this little experiment streak I'm on with sourdough bread.  I love sourdough, and Jesse told me he did not, but when I made it last week, he said it is one of his favorite breads I've ever made.  I guess homemade bread will have that effect.

I made mine with the basic recipe from the bread machine book.  And then I tweaked it.

2 1/4 t. active dry yeast
2 c. hot water
2 c. bread flour

Wisk them up with a fork in a bowl where it can double, because it probably will.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap, a new shower cap, or a lid.  Let sit in warm place and get nice and bubbly.

After that, based on my internet gleanings, feed morning and night with a couple tablespoons of flour and water.  You want to keep feeding the yeast regularly to develop that nice, sourdough flavor, and you can expect there to be a yeasty, beer smell when you take a whiff of it.

If you don't use it often enough, you'll end up getting a lot of starter.  It's ok to throw some away to keep a reasonably sized volume around,  And after a few days, I don't know, four or five, switch containers.  The edges of the container can grow mold (there's no live yeast competing with it) and you don't want to have to throw the whole thing away.

I make mine in the bread machine because I'm short on counter space and this way I don't make a big floury mess to clean up.  But if you are up for it, you could do it by hand, or in a mixer with the dough hook.

One more thing:  sourdough starter releases alcohol as a byproduct.  You can see this clear, watery substance on the top.  I either mix it in, or drain it off.  It's called "hooch," a low grain alcohol.  Miners used to actually drink the stuff.  Sounds gross to me, but I guess that's sort of what beer is.  Anyway, it's normal and would cook off in the baking process.

It's alive!

Do you ever let the dishes pile up, and then you have the horrible realization that there is stuff growing in your sink?

Well there is stuff growing in my kitchen right now.  Not in the sink though.  Don't worry.

I'm culturing my own yogurt bacteria in my crockpot, and it's pretty awesome.  I found the recipe here.  You just need a little cup of yogurt as a starter, and if you can find your milk for a good price (this week it is $2.29 at Walgreens) you can have your own, inexpensive, homemade yogurt.

Also growing in my kitchen is a sourdough starter.  I have it in a small bowl with the lid resting lightly on top.  I'm trying to find a bread recipe that I could make once or twice a week that could use the yeast in the sourdough starter and not require any additional yeast.  That is to say, the starter would supply all the yeast, and I could keep it alive, and never have to buy yeast again.  

Ambitious, no?

Happy Turkey-Duck-Hen Day!

I'm pretty excited for Thanksgiving this year because for the first time in four years we'll be spending it with my family (but sadly not the Potter family), but mostly because we are going into culinary uncharted waters for me.  There will be not one, not two, but three proteins served this year.  Turkey, the traditional; from the far east, the exotic duck, and the humble chicken.  "But how will you cook all three in your oven at once?" you might be asking.  They are deboned and wrapped up inside one another with a delicious cornbread and rice stuffing in between each one.

It might be cheating a little, because we're getting the Turduckhen from Costco, but you know what, that's what the membership is for.  Getting ridiculously extravagant fowl that I would otherwise have to thaw, debone, wrap, season and cook all on my own, and that's a lot of work.

So here's the menu:

Turduckhen

Cornbread and rice stuffing

Sweet potato casserole

Homemade sausage and apple dressing

Homemade cranberry relish

Canned cranberry relish

Apple pie(s)

Pumpkin pie(s)

Chocolate mousse trifle (because I can't help myself)

Green bean casserole

Potato rolls

and homemade egg nog!

Whew!  What are your favorite Thanksgiving dishes?  What says "Thanksgiving" to you?  And I promise, I'll write another article about the meaning of Thanksgiving.  Yes, right now, I'm just thinking about food.

The Cilantro Challenge

Cilantro is a really common herb in Indian and Mexican food.  A lot of people really love it.  At least as many also loathe it.

The reason it tastes so bad to some people is because of a chemical called aldehydes.  These are the same chemicals that give soap its soapy taste and stink bugs their stinky smell.

Especially for people who hate cilantro, the first taste their brain recognizes is the aldehydes.  After the brain becomes used to the aldehydes and stops recognizing them as a potential toxin, the other flavors of the cilantro become more pronounced.

Dr. Jay Gottfried claims to have reversed his hatred of of the green herb.  He says that after encountering in time after time, his brain no longer recognizes it as a threat, and he now enjoys the fresh flavor from it.  Yes, there is still soapiness, but it's not the forefront flavor.

You may enjoy reading the article in full here.

I would love to develop an appreciation for cilantro, because I could eat a taco without fear, not avoid pico de gallo, and enjoy Indian food to its fullest.  I'm going to take the cilantro challenge.  I'm going to eat 20 dishes with cilantro in them in 2012, and see if I can learn to like cilantro.  After all, I'm so grateful that I came around to onions, mushrooms, and peppers.

What are your thoughts?  Do you love cilantro or hate it?  Would you be willing to take the cilantro challenge with me?

Three meals, one chicken.

I'm a big fan of chicken.  It's possibly the perfect meat. Not too fatty, but still delightfully greasy in your mouth, white meat, dark meat, just the right size for working with.  Honestly, I don't get all the Thanksgiving hype over turkey.  You need a lot more equipment and time, and it's probably still going to come out dry.  So, as promised, how to make the most from one humble chicken.

First off, I like to wait until Albertsons has their amazing chicken sale.  $0.79/lb. for a whole fryer, meaning you can buy a whole chicken for around $3.50.  That even beats the $5 or $6 roasted chicken you can find starting around 4pm.

Open up the raw chicken, take out the giblets, trim the neck and tail down if they bother you, set all that aside.  Then rub the chicken down with your favorite seasoning-salt, pepper, Lowry's, garlic, truffle oil, poultry seasoning, whatever suits your fancy.  You can even get up between the skin and the meat so all the flavor isn't lost on the skin.  Now, if you like really crispy skin, leaving the chicken uncovered in the refrigerator for one or two days will really help with that.

Then I like to roast the whole bird, starting face down in a 350 degree oven.  I do it breast-down because all the juices run to the white meat and help baste it, but if your goal is crispy skin, you might want to leave her breast-up.  Roast until a meat thermometer reads 165 degrees.  Start checking around 40 minutes, depending on the size of the bird.  Let it rest for a few minutes so the juices don't all run out.

Now what I would do is carve up the bird and save either the breasts or the the thighs for meal two.  Serve it up with mashed potatoes or rice and a side of vegetables.  Save the carcass after you cut the meat off and throw it into the freezer in a plastic bag.

For meal two, you cut your breast or thigh meat into strips.  Toss it with some pasta alfredo.  Or, you can put it into tacos.

For meal three, I cover the carcass with warm water and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for an hour.  Then I pull it out and scrape the leftover bits of meat off; this generally yields about a cup of meat.  I put the meat back in the pot and put in about two cups of mirepoix (two parts sauteed onion and one part each sauteed carrots and celery) and two or three cloves of garlic, minced.  From here, you can either add egg noodles or homemade noodles (saving a little bit more money) or go on to make chicken and dumplings.  (You'll also want to adjust your spices accordingly.  Last time, I put in a little turmeric and cayenne pepper as well as salt, pepper, paprika, and poultry seasoning for an Indian flair.)

For the dumplings, you just take 1 or 2 cups of flour, 3/4-1 1/2 t. salt, 1-2 t. thyme, and enough water to make it sticky.  Work the dough together in a bowl so it's just barely sticky, then add more flour, so it's not sticky.  Then, tear off large or small chunks of dough and carefully drop them into your hot broth.  Then cook up in 8-10 minutes.  I like my chicken and dumplings thick, so I make a very thin paste of flour and water and whisk it in, that way all the vegetables and dumplings are suspended, rather than sinking to the bottom.

So, what ideas do you guys have to stretch a chicken into multiple meals?

Goats Milk: Part II

A couple weeks ago, I saw Aarti Sequeira make paneer, a really easy Indian cheese.  It's basically just curdled milk, patted into block form, and used in Indian cooking.  After successfully reproducing her paneer, she mentioned that it's similar to making ricotta, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Now, I don't really like to dirty up my measuring cups and spoons too much if I don't have to.  So I just dumped.  But if you like measuring and that sort of thing, here's the recipe that I used like the Pirates' Code-just guidelines.  I substituted about half the milk for the leftover goat's milk.  I warn you:  if you have not had it before, it is gamey, grassy, and almost pungent.  

You basically have to slowly bring the milk up to a boil, then reduce the heat, and add an acid to curdle the milk.  In this case, I used some vinegar and lemon juice.  

Here it is in the pot.  You'll want to heat it slowly and stir to
keep the curds from burning.  If you look closely
you can see how the surface is bumpy.  Those are the curds. 

So you know that nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet?  Well "curds and whey" is exactly what we're creating here.  The curds become the cheese.  The whey still has some riboflavin and a nice umami flavor, if you ask me.  I've heard that you could use it instead of buttermilk in some recipes if you don't want it to go to waste.  I draped a folded, thin woven cloth towel over a colander to drain my cheese, but cheesecloth is recommended.  Hence the name, I assume.

This is the cheese draining.  No spiders here!

So I took my half-goat's milk, half-cow's milk ricotta and spread it over top of some homemade lasagna.  I had leftover spaghetti sauce, a bunch of lasagna noodles I bought on sale, some frozen zucchini and some mushrooms on their way out.  Layered and topped with the ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella.  Sorry, no picture of the lasagna.  Sometimes I get so excited when the food comes out that I forget to take a picture of it.

Don't be afraid of homemade cheese!  This was super easy, it only took about an hour and a half to go from yucky milk to yummy lasagna.  

And don't ask me what a "tuffet" is.  I still don't know.