mexican feast!

yesterday was the first day of spring, and me and borris and our friend shelsy decided to celebrate with a mexican feast. it was so good, i am having left overs tonight Yay!

i got this book given to me, and i haven't had the chance to cook from it yet.

so yesterday i made these sauces/dips from the recipe book. the bean dip, the guacamole, i bought a green salsa and made a warm cheesy mexican dip. they were all so good.

 

shelsy and i also made our own tortilla from scratch. we used the tortilla press i got for my birthday and they turned out really well. tonight i am making the left over ones into quesadillas.

 

we were so hungry and the food was so yummy they couldn't even stop to smile.

 

the highlight for me was this chipotle mayo i made. i made it to go on the roasted corn. this is a copy of one of our favorite dishes at a new mexican restaurant in town. and i think for a first try it was a success.

  

next time i think the cheese needs to be a harder young cheese, like a pecorino, but basically you roast the corn, then slather it in the chipotle mayo, sprinkle with cheese and a squeeze of lime juice! 

to - die - for!

Dumplings! well more like steam bun, but we call them dumplings

when i was a kid, my mom used to make beef stew and dumplings, and i loved the dumplings. the weather here has suddenly become much colder so in reaction to this i have started cooking winter foods.

borris is a vego, so that means no beef stew, but the other night i was cooking a lentil rice and bean kind of stew thing, and on the very next page of my hand written recipe book was the cheese dumpling recipe. i decided to put the dumplings on top of the lentil bean stew, taking a chance that it might not go together that well. but it did!

 

they were a success and almost as good as when mom made them. we will definitely be having this meal again! and it was so easy!

cheese making!

the other weekend a group of us went a did a 4 hour cheese making class. it was great. here are the highlights.

we heated the full cream milk and culture to 35 degrees Celsius. they we put the milk in this small esky. the esky incubates the warmth of the milk and lets the bacteria get to work creating an acidic environment perfect for the rennet. then 30 minutes later you add the rennet to the milk and let it rest an hour while you have a lovely cheese tasting session.



the rennet sets the milk quickly and after an hour you are ready to cut the curd. the smaller you cut the curd the drier the cheese will be. when making Parmesan the curd is cut at 2mm intervals. Since we were making a feta type cheese we cut the curd around 2 cm.



this is the curd cut, you want to be gentle at this stage, so the curd can stay together in clumps. this rests for another half an hour before it is stirred twice, with a rest of 20 minutes after each stir.



in the meantime you get your cheese hoops ready, and line them with cheese cloth (or in the case chux) to keep the curd from slipping through the holes.



you stir the curds one last time



before you begin lifting and placing the curds in the cheese hoops.



this is the fresh curd in the hoops, with all the whey left in the esky. (you can use the whey to make fresh ricotta or feed it to your pigs, apparently they love it)

the curds need to drain here for a while, then get flipped over to ensure even draining.

this is the cheese i made ready to take home. the cheese will need to continue to drain for the next 24 hours. the next day the cheeses get soaked in a salt brine and then chilled ready to eat.

borris and i ate the cheese, they were good, a little bit mild in flavour, but for a first cheese pretty good.

This is the basic start to make all kinds of cheese, and a few small changes in temperatures, how the curds are cut and sometimes a second heating of the curds will allow you to create all kinds of variations.

maybe one day when i have more time i will follow this up with a the cheese recipe book and try my hand at some more cheeses at home.