Asparagus, Leek, and Sheep Cheese Risotto

The genesis of this recipe came from this week's farmer's market and Garden Variety Cheese-- we were tasting their samples and the woman working at the booth suggested that we make risotto with one of their cheeses: Hollyhock, which their website describes as "a raw sheep cheese aged for at least 8 months."  It melted into the risotto very well, and gave it a pleasantly mild taste.

I've found that while risotto isn't necessarily difficult, it does require a lot of patience.   I first learned to make it from my dad, who is in no way Italian-- so if this misses the "traditional" mark, I'm sorry!  The leeks I used (thick as my wrist and about four feet tall, including the ends of the leaves) are also his.

1 large leek, white and pale green parts only, washed and sliced finely
1 small onion, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. fresh herbs, minced (I used oregano, thyme, and parsley from our garden)
1/3 c. dry white cooking wine or sherry
2 c. arborio rice
6 c. chicken broth (more might be necessary)
1 lb. skinny asparagus
about 1 c. grated Hollyhock cheese (you can use a similar sheep's milk cheese or parmesan if you can't find this one)
2 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Prep: clean and half-moon the leeks.  The easiest way to do this is cut off the tops and remove the outer layer, then cut in half and rinse under cold water.  Dice the onion and mince the garlic and herbs.  Snap the bottoms off the asparagus and then cut into one-inch pieces. 

Heat olive oil in a large nonstick pan over medium heat; then, add the leeks, onions, garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper.  Cook all until the onions and leeks are limp and translucent.

Add the rice.  Stir continuously until the rice is just barely translucent around the outsides of the kernel-- you may need to add a bit more oil.  Once the rice is at that stage, add the cooking sherry and stir until it's fully absorbed.

The next step is to add the chicken broth: do so slowly, about half a cup at a time.  Each time you add broth, stir until the broth has been absorbed (but not so long that the rice gets dry).  This is the part that takes patience, so try not to get frustrated: it'll be worth it, I promise.

Once you have about half a cup of broth left, add the asparagus.  You can either add it directly to the risotto or sautee it briefly beforehand in olive oil, salt, and pepper.  If you choose to sautee it, don't cook for longer than 3-4 minutes-- it'll finish cooking with the rice, and overcooked asparagus isn't fun for anyone.

After all the broth has been added, turn off the heat and fold in about 3/4 c. of the grated cheese.  Garnish with the rest of the cheese and a little more minced herbs, if you have any left.

Serves 4-6 as a main course, or more as an appetizer/side.

Cheese, part two

When I picked up my cheese to check on it last night, it was... leaking. Uh-oh, I thought, I hope it hasn't turned to mush. Although I had planned to wait until at least the end of February, as it's only been aging about three weeks at this point, I was worried enough to cut it open now.

It's an interesting sort of cheese. It's definitely firmer than the cheese I've been making, but it's a bit more like feta than cheddar in texture. In terms of taste-- well, it's interesting. You can tell that someday, it will be a cheddar, but it isn't quite there yet. There is a taste, but it's not hugely strong.

So: notes for next time.

1. Make sure to press the cheese with the right amount of weight for the right amount of time.
2. Make sure that the cheese is fully dry before you wax it.
3. More salt? I think it's not quite salty enough for my tastes.

Also: there is more cheese than I will eat before it gets moldy. I have about five pieces to give away; each is about three ounces. Who wants some?

DDC IN THE FUTURE: Adventures in cheese-land

Instead of New Year's resolutions in 2010, I made two summer resolutions: I would learn how to bake bread, and I would learn to make my own cheese. In pursuit of bread, I made a lot of focaccia, soda bread, pizza dough, and biscuits-- nothing I'd really count as a proper loaf (unlike my housemate Brianna, who has become quite adept at the whole bread thing).

Cheese, on the other hand...

I started making cheese in August, almost missing the end of summer. While on vacation up in Oregon, I picked up a ricotta and mozzarella kit from Powell's, put together by the fine people at Urban Cheesecraft. In it were cheese salt, rennet tablets, citric acid, good-quality cheesecloth, and an incredibly adorable (and accurate) thermometer. I quickly set about making mozzarella and ricotta, having a great time doing it-- there have been a few times I've made a "ground-up" pizza, with home-made crust, sauce, and cheese-- but I decided I wanted to go a bit further.

This fall, I started making my own goat cheese. While the results weren't always perfect (the feta that turned out as cream cheese-- delicious cream cheese!-- for example), it's something that I really enjoy being able to do. This winter at a craft fair, I brought home-made goat cheeses as my treat to share. The still-in-waiting scrambled eggs DDC post has goat cheese as an ingredient. I love the flexibility of soft goat cheese, the way they can be sweet (with honey and lavender) or savory (with shallot jam). I will eat it with just about anything.

Making cheese can be amazingly easy: a batch of goat cheese takes me no more than an hour and a half, if I'm focused. Ricotta is even simpler, and the hardest part of mozzarella for me is dealing with the hot curds when you're stretching them.

In mid-December, I moaned about the lack of local cheddar when making shepherd's pie. This, in part, led me to do the totally sane thing: pick up a copy of Home Cheese Making, a SRS cheese mold, and two gallons of Strauss farms whole milk. Twenty-four hours after I started it, I have a pound (or so) of farmhouse cheddar hanging out in my kitchen, developing a hard coating. In a few days, I'm going to cover it with wax, and by the end of February, I'll have my very own, pretty darn local cheese (not counting the cultures, rennet, or cheese salt). I hope it works.

DDC, Week Five: Scrambled Eggs

Simple one, this time: scrambled eggs with stuff in them. Not really a whole lot to say about this one, aside from the fact that it's my first non-dinner meal.

Eggs: Glaum, Aptos
Butter: Strauss Farms, Petaluma
Rosemary Salt: Eatwell Farms, San Francisco
Goat cheese: homemade, with goat milk from Myenberg, Turlock
Chanterelles: Shopper's Corner (they were marked "local;" it's a grocery store I trust)
Shallots: my father's garden
Thyme: kitchen windowsill
Garlic: from the farmer's market; I don't remember which farm.

This entry is backdated to reflect around when I actually cooked the eggs.

Cheese, Jam, Broth

I'm sorry that I haven't been updating for the last few weeks! It's been work, and Thanksgiving, and while I've done a lot of cooking, I haven't done a lot of photography or anything like that. If you follow me on Facebook, you know a lot of it-- a friend commented to me the other day that from my FB, it looks like I'd have no time to do anything other than cook and eat!

I've been experimenting a lot more with cheese, for example. Within the last two weeks, I've made two batches of chevre, mozzarella, and am currently halfway through a batch of feta (from this recipe; I'm somewhat concerned that it'll stay more creamy than crumbly). This is in part due to discovering the lovely people at Mountain Feed and Farm Supply, up in Ben Lomond, who carry all the cheesemaking supplies a girl could dream of. I was so, so happy to discover them-- the staff is both very friendly and very knowledgeable. They also carry vacuum-sealers, smokers, juicers; in other words, things that I really kinda want. Like, a lot. Also, jars! Pectin! PH testing strips for canning! I could really go on for hours.

My dad has also been doing this thing where almost every time I go down to my parents' house, he gives me a whole lot of homegrown something. So far, it's been shallots, oranges, and dried tomatoes, all from the yard/garden. The oranges are getting eaten, the dried tomatoes became pesto, and the shallots... oh, the shallots.

Let me start by saying that I haven't always loved onions. When I was growing up, my parents would always remind me of my sister, Miranda, who absolutely hated onions-- and for a long time, I was right there with her. Sometime near the end of college, I started using onions when I cooked, and from there, it's been all downhill.

On the other hand, when your dad gives you two pounds of shallots, sometimes it's hard to figure out what to do. Thankfully, I'd been considering making savory jam, so shallot jam it was! I used this recipe (I more than doubled the cooking time after I added the balsamic vinegar, btw, so that it actually had a jam-texture), and we have decided that it tastes good on just about everything. I still have a bunch of shallots left, though-- anyone want some jam? It does look a bit like the creature from the black lagoon, but it tastes sweet and savory and the same time. I am in love.

(Also: the secret to Kelley's tuna sandwiches is, indeed, pickled red onions. Woo!)

Tonight I'm making vegetable broth in preparation for the Dark Days Challenge, about which I am incredibly excited. I've managed to find local ingredients for just about everything I need to make beef stew, so that'll be the first thing I make. I'm very excited about this challenge; it'll be the first time I've participated in something like this!

Day of Food

Every few weeks, I try to spend a day (or at least six-eight hours) cooking food. Today, the second rainy weekend day of the fall, was a perfect day, seeing as I spend the *first* rainy weekend day of the fall on the couch, knitting.

I had a few things planned-- sausages and ice cream-- but there were a few new things, too!

The first thing I started were the sausages:

Apple-Cinnamon-Nutmeg Sausages

1 1/2 lb. pork loin
2 oz. pork fat
1 tbsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. apple, minced
casings

I followed the directions here, essentially, to make these sausages. They're sitting in the fridge right now, waiting to be cooked for dinner tomorrow. We'll see how they turn out!

As the sausages take a few hours all together (between each major step, you have to re-freeze your meat), I made goat cheese in between sausage steps, following the directions here, at Urban Cheesecraft-- for those of you who were living with me this summer, this is where I bought my cheese kit from. I didn't realise that the curds had, in fact, separated from the whey, because they were so tiny! A few hours of straining later, though, I have a really pretty chunk of goat cheese. I plan to split it in half and make half of it honey-and-lavender (we had this at Harley
Farms a few months ago, and it was delicious), and make the other half garlic-and-herb.

Once the sausages and the cheese were done, it was clearly time to make ice cream. Housemate Brianna had wanted earl grey and lavender ice cream, so that's what I made-- following the recipe for vanilla ice cream in Ad Hoc, and substituting looseleaf earl grey and lavender for the vanilla. It, too, is not quite done, but should be deeeeelicious.

Then, it was 9:45, and I made dinner...

...a package of tortellini from Safeway.