Sunday was such a productive day! Schoolwork, artwork, and lots of fun food-related projects, including – wait for it – cheese!

That’s right. Eli and I made our own goats milk ricotta cheese, which I then used to make lasagna for dinner. I feel so self-sufficient.

Now, I won’t lie to you. It was ridiculously easy to make, even easier than the yogurt we’ve been playing around with making lately (which I ought to write about, but need to perfect first). All you need is some milk, some yogurt, and a little vinegar. And that’s just the recipe we used. Technically, you can make ricotta with just milk and any acid (vinegar or lemon juice). Or you can use the whey left over from norma cheesemaking, like they do traditionally. But it’s not like I have a ton of whey just lying around, do I? (Um… No.)

Ricotta Cheese

adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz

Ingredients & Gear

• 1 quart goats milk
• 1 half cup plain yogurt
• ~1 tsp vinegar
• ~1 tsp salt
• 1 strainer lined with muslin (or a few layers of cheesecloth)
• A deep mixing bowl

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes until you start to see curds. Ideally, you ought to keep the boil gentle, but if you stop to grab your camera, you might let it boil a little more vigorously than intended. This doesn’t seem to effect the final cheese, at all thank goodness.

Pour curds and liquid into lined strainer, placed over a deep bowl. I lined my strainer with muslin, because that is what I had. David Lebovitz recommends using a few layers of cheesecloth, which makes sense for cheesemaking. But the single layer of muslin served the same purpose, frankly, and saved me a trip to the store.

Let the curds drain for at least 15 minutes, to taste. My bowl wasn’t very deep, so I had to pour the liquid out of the bowl part way through this step. So if you do have a deep bowl, I highly recommend it.

I let my curds drain for maybe 30 minutes and had a nice dry ricotta, just the way I like it. But if you let it drain for just 15 minutes, it’ll end up about like store-bought (That’s how it looked when I checked it at that time).

When it has drained to the consistency you like, put it in a container and you’re all set.

We used our ricotta to make a lasagna just last night. I don’t know if it was the freshness (cooking with it the same day it was made), or the texture of homemade, or the rich flavor of the goats milk, but it was one of the best lasagnas I’ve ever made!

I made this galette for our Labor day mini-feast. It was quite a hit! Light and delightful. The pears really stand up on their own in this one, and the rest of the ingredients are just support. I ended up with much less sugar and what-not in the galette, so it tasted of fruit and not syrup. Our guest went back for seconds!

The pears were from our CSA share last week, but they were about the same size as a standard Bartlett from the store. They were still a bit firm, not quite eating ripe unless you like your pears really crisp, but they baked up perfectly because of that. Pears are normally so delicate that they needed that head-start. If they have been perfectly ripe when I sliced into them, they would have turned into mush in the oven (and that’s not good eats ).

The Recipe

• one 9 inch pie crust (again I used a store bought crust, but use whatever feels right to you, be it homemade or no)
• three pears, sliced about 1/8 inch thick
• one tbsp orange juice (you could use lemon juice here if you don’t have orange around the house)
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar (although you could substitute white sugar, brown sugar, or even splenda, as you please)
• one tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• one tsp butter
• one egg plus one tbsp water to eggwash the crust
• a few pinches of turbinado sugar to dust the crust before baking

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Prepare a baking sheet. This time I baked the galette on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and had no problems with sticking or anything. It’s what I recommend. But you could butter a baking sheet or butter tin foil if you don’t have parchment paper around.

Put juice in a medium mixing bowl. As you slice the pears, toss them in the juice. This will help prevent browning. Once you have sliced all of the pears, add the sugar, cornstarch, spices, and almond extract to the bowl and mix until combined.

Roll out your crust onto your baking sheet, making sure that it has no weak/thin spots that may break during baking. Place filling in the center of your crust, leaving about 2 inches (maybe a little more) around the edges.If you want to be fancy, you can lay your slices out in circles. But I like the rustic look, so I let it be a little more chaotic.

Starting anywhere you like, fold the edge up and around the filling. As you pull each new bit of edge up, fold it gently over, to make a tucked crust. Once the crust is fully folded over, whisk the one egg with one tbsp of water and brush over the outer crust. Then sprinkle with turbinado sugar.

Right before baking, crumble one tsp of butter over the filling of the galette.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden, brown and delicious! Makes eight cute-as-a-button slices of galette, perfect for serving after a full dinner, or perfect with ice cream (maybe next time…).

Enjoy!

A little late but here nevertheless…

A recipe for blueberry galette, from one found on epicurious:

• one refrigerated pie crust (although a homemade pie crust would probably be even better )
• 3 cups of blueberries, rinsed
• one half cup of ginger sugar. We used the sugar left over from dusting the cystallized ginger we made for my birthday party, which made it ever so lightly ginger flavored. Absent such a stash of gingery goodness, normal sugar and a tsp or so of fresh or ground ginger (to taste) would probably approximate what we were after.
• one tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp orange juice. The recipe called for lemon juice, but we were all out. The orange was delightful.
• one egg to egg wash the crust (see below)
• a small amount of turbinado sugar (sugar-in-the-raw) to sprinkle on the crust

Put the blueberries, sugar, cinnamon, corn starch, and juice in a bowl and mix until just combined. Place the crust on a buttered baking sheet or buttered tin foil on a baking sheet. Put filling in the center of the crust and spread around, leaving about 2 inches (maybe a little more) around the edges.

Starting anywhere you like, fold the edge up and around the filling. As you pull each new bit of edge up, fold it over, to make a pretty tucked crust. Be sure to fold gently to avoid the crust breaking during baking (My galette split right at the bottom edge and spilled a bit of filling out, so I know I wasn’t quite gentle enough.). Once the crust is fully folded over, whisk the one egg with one tbsp of water and brush over the outer crust. Then sprinkle with turbinado sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees F for about 25 minutes or until the crust is golden, brown, and delicious.

Having finally gotten somewhat recovered from the cold-of-doom I contracted at camp, I spent the weekend cooking and baking with my darling wife. Together we made our first batch of crackers (easy and oh-so-tasty, plus no high-fructose corn syrup!). And using the starter from camp, we made our first loaf of sourdough bread. I also got to have my first real cooking-Friday of the year (what with it being dark, our being at camp, and my getting deathly-ill, I haven’t been all that interested in spending quality time cooking since about… well, sometime in October).

I’m currently tossing around the idea of joining an author team at a group blog right now, where I would spend more time writing about my cooking, so I’m going to save my rambling about our cooking/baking. But I will share a photo. This is our bread. Isn’t it pretty?

We’ll be making more over the coming weeks/months. So if you know me in real life, you can probably count on eating some of this lovely bread (different loaf, mind you; we’re keeping this one for ourselves) at our upcoming vernal equinox celebration and at probably just about every dinner party we throw this year.

My recipe for crockpot cider-baked beans, if you can call these basic guidelines a recipe. I’m just not a big recipe writer, mainly because I never cook things the same way twice. And I don’t usually pay much attention to exact measurements. Update: please see a couple of additions I’ve made below (things I forgot the first time around. Oops.).

So here goes…

3 cans of beans. I used pinto, black, and light red kidney. Normal 15 oz cans are fine. Update: drain and lightly rinse the beans before using them. They don’t have to be totally rinsed off, just not completely gooey.

Some leeks chopped fine. I’d say one bottom end of a leek, but two would be even more leek-alicious.

Some minced garlic. I used the stuff in a jar, pre-minced. Maybe one big spoonful. So I guess you could say two or three cloves worth.

Chili powder. A dash or two. Maybe a teaspoon. Maybe a little more.

Mustard powder. Again, a dash or two, depending on how much kick you want the beans to have.

About 1 tsp kosher salt

Ground pepper. Maybe as much as the salt.

4 whole cloves.

1 ~2″ piece of cinnamon stick

1 cup apple cider

1 cup water

About a third of a cup of Brown Sugar Twin. This is what makes it safe for my mother. If you’re not feeding my mother, or any other diabetic, you can use about 1/2 cup maple syrup.

Update: Some Baco’s. That’s right. Baco’s. Their vegetarian (made from soy), but they still give the beans that bacon-y goodness you know and love. Tee.

2 tbsp cornstarch

To make: Put everything but the cornstarch in the crockpot and cook on high for 2-3 hours, until the beans are as tender as you would like them. My latest batch may have even cooked 4 hours (You can’t do much to ruin beans). Once the beans are nice and tender, you can turn the crockpot to warm (or low, if you don’t have a warm setting). Make a slurry with a couple of Tbsp of water and the cornstarch. Mix the slurry with some of the bean liquid, then add it all to the crockpot. Stir until thickened and serve.

Enjoy!