Make Cheese? Make Cheese!

I always thought that making cheese was a long, drawn out process (that must be why it's so expensive, right?), until I saw this tutorial on how to make your own ricotta cheese, from Lex. Who knew it was so simple?

And then I found you could make your own cottage cheese, or paneer. Also awesome. I must look into this whole cheese-making business.

After making cheese, you end up with whey - milk plasma. It can be used to substitute milk in baking; apparently it works well in biscuits or bread. I imagine it would be excellent for pancakes, as well. There is also a recipe for whey wine on the Wikipedia article that, though I have no idea how it will taste, I am strangely compelled to try...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my place this year, and it was AMAZING! My dad brought a couple of pies from the Tartan Pie Bakery in Errington, including their specialty, a Tartan Pie. I'd never had, nor heard of one before - it's basically an entire turkey dinner in pie form. And it's GOOD! There's turkey, stuffing, veggies, and even cranberries, all topped with a mashed potato crust. So tasty!

I made a delicious ham with help from the always incredible Jackson's Meats on 4th. The glaze suggestion of beer (I used Guinness), brown sugar and dijon mustard was fantastic.

I also made Mark Bittman's recipe for simmered sweet potatoes, as well as an herb-glazed carrots recipe I've been carrying with me since highschool. It's super simple - you just simmer carrots with a little sugar, butter, and a pinch each of thyme and oregano. They look fancy, but are a cinch to make.

But the part I was really excited about was the dessert. My brother has been raving for a while about a vegan Mexican restaurant he went to once that used cashews as a replacement for dairy products, and he was especially excited about their vegan cheesecake. I have been dying to try making one ever since.

I found this Vegetarian Times Recipe for a vegan raw cheesecake made with cashews, and decided to give it a go. Since I don't actually care if it's vegan or raw, I modified it a whole lot: instead of making a crust, I used a store-bought graham crust; I used cashew butter instead of raw cashews; I used honey instead of agave syrup, and I used vanilla flavouring to replace the ridiculously expensive sun-dried vanilla beans. The cheesecake was very rich and filling, and actually a little too sweet for me. Less honey may have been better.

My grandma also brought over a bag full of pears that came from her friend's tree - way more than we can eat, and some of them were already starting to spoil, so I decided to make up a big pot of compote.

Compote is basically a fruit stew - it can be made with just about any fruit, but I usually use apples. It's super easy to make: you just throw all the ingredients into a pot and simmer until the fruit is soft. For this batch I used:

-about 10 small pears
-2 cinnamon sticks
-about 10 whole cloves
-4 large shavings of orange zest
-roughly 2 tablespoons of sugar
-enough water to keep it cooking evenly.

I never measure anything when I make compote, but really, no matter what you put into it, it will always taste good - especially while warm!

Reinventing Chicken Pot Pie

I had the hugest craving for chicken pot pie, but I had no idea how to make it, and felt way too lazy to look up recipes on the internet - so I just made it up.
First, I made a stew out of the following:
-two chicken thighs
-one chopped carrot
-one stick chopped celery
-one clove crushed garlic
-1/2 a yellow onion
-1 1/2 cups chicken stock
-spices (in this case, mostly pre-packaged poultry spice since I was so lazy)

I let that simmer while I mixed up the biscuit dough. Biscuits are very simple:

Ingredients:
-2 cups white flour
-4 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 tsp baking soda
-about 3 tbsp cold butter (you can use more or less as you see fit)
-about 7/8 cup milk

First, I mixed together the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter using a pastry cutter until none of the butter bits were larger than a pea. I added the milk and just mixed it in - if you overmix, your biscuits will be chewy.

After the milk is mixed in, ordinarily you would take it and knead it about 10 times on a floured surface - again, if you overknead, it will be chewy. This time, however, I just sort of spread it out until it made a top "crust" for the stew in my casserole dish. This recipe usually makes about 10 biscuits, and I still had enough left over to make 3, so I used 3/4 of the dough.

I stuck this in the oven at 400 deg F for 10 minutes and presto! Chicken Pot Pie!
Notes:

-The chicken part was a little watery. In the future, I would add something to make it thicker - some kind of starch. Potatoes or flour or cornstarch or something along those lines.

-I think the biscuit dough on the top was a little thick. I would probably use about half the entire biscuit recipe next time - it tasted a little too much of baking powder for a chicken pot pie.

-Also, it occurred to me how easy it would be to make biscuit dough ahead of time. Just do everything except add the milk, then freeze it until you're ready for biscuits. When you want to bake them, you add milk and mix until you get the proper consistency. Mmmm... biscuits.