I continue to be enamored of whey and hope my recipes for slow-cooked onions or crisp pickles may have piqued your interest. I suggest you get your hands on some by making fresh cheese or paneer (which might lead you down another path to this Indian dish or this one). I've learned that whey is also referred to as "milk serum," which sounds like something from the world of molecular gastronomy. But this yellowish, watery liquid is simply what's left when milk curdles, either from the use of rennet (sweet whey) or acid, like lemon or vinegar (acid whey). Whey was once a popular drink in inns and coffee houses (in the 1700s!) and has been used for centuries by European, Middle Eastern and Asian peoples to preserve food and in all manner of fermented tonics. It's an excellent source of minerals and digestive bacteria, and acts as a remedy for an upset stomach. Sipped on its own, whey is kind of an acquired taste, with a faint cheesiness that is not unpleasant. When combined with honey and frozen into sorbet, it's simply divine.
Read More...

I think I've already mentioned Julia Moskin's D.I.Y Cooking Handbook for the New York Times online right? It's where I got inspired to make vin d'orange. (Which turned out great, incidentally.) She's got a bunch of useful recipes there, including a few that overlap with some of mine. Like one for making your own ketchup; and preserving lemons; and this one for making your own fresh cream cheese. Hers is a slightly shorter process because she uses rennet, which causes your milk to curdle right away. I learned my technique from Nourishing Traditions, where you simply let milk sit out on the counter for a few days until it curdles on its own. Actually, some good bacteria helps it along. You separate the curds from the whey (reserving the latter for making pickles and sauerkraut, and stirring into soups and smoothies), then drain the curds so they come together in a light, creamy cheese. It's kind of magical.
Read More...

Consider rhubarb: long, ribbed, celery-like stalks and not a seed or rind in sight. This is a vegetable, right? But in 1947, a New York court decided that since it's used as a fruit, it is  to be counted as such for the purposes of regulations and duties. Thus, with one wave of a bureaucrat's hand, does a vegetable become a fruit. Although its leaves are toxic, rhubarb's tart stalks have a long history of medicinal and culinary uses. The stuff grown in hothouses tends to be redder and sweeter than what you find in the gardeny. My big, bushy plants are of the Victoria variety—named for the British queen, whose countrymen tend to love a bit of rhubarb fool—and they are predominantly green. A clear, true, vegetal green with a flavor to match. Rhubarb is often combined with apples or strawberries. Their sweetness helps temper its rather aggressive bite, but can also overwhelm its delicate flavor, described by Alice Waters as "the smell of the earth in the spring." Wanting to showcase that, and armed with rhubarb from the garden and fresh milk from the farm, I decided to make rhubarb ice cream.
Read More...

Certain foods just have a universal appeal. Consider the dumpling, for instance. It's found in so many cultures, this rose by any other name: knedlíky (Czech), kreplach (Jewish), pantrucas (Chile), manti (Armenia), ravioli (Italy), buuz (Mongolia), pangsit (Indonesia), dim sum (China), gyoza (Japan), mandu (Korea)...the list goes on and on. Yogurt—and soured milk of all kinds—may not be quite as common, especially given that many African and Asian countries don't do dairy, but among those that do it's a deeply-held tradition. From straight-up yogurt to crème fraîche to quark to ricotta to paneer to Mexico's indigenous Nahuatl jocoque árabe, people have long been introducing bacteria or acid to milk with delectable results. Greek yogurt has become hugely popular in this country over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous Fage (pronounced "fa-yeh") brand and now Chobani, too. It's simply yogurt which has been strained to remove the whey, giving it a much denser, creamier texture. Sometimes this style of yogurt is even enriched with extra butterfat or powdered milk.
Read More...

Although it's raining today, yesterday was unbelievably balmy, conjuring up thoughts of daffodils, asparagus and, yes, ice cream. Seems like a good time to tell you about a recent visit to the (relatively) new flagship of Il Laboratorio del Gelato, on Houston Street, conveniently located near Katz's. Not familiar with this temple of frozen treats? Even those of you who aren't in Manhattan may well have succumbed to the temptations of Ciao Bella ice cream. Well, they were started by the same gelato obsessive, Jon Snyder. For a long time, he mostly supplied fine restaurants with his quality product, including flavors both classic (chocolate, espresso, vanilla) and unusual (basil, kalamansi, prune/armagnac). But this venue is most definitely retail, and provides the fortunate public with access to a vast number of flavors, produced in authentic small batches.

For a list of the whole repertoire, see here. By no means have I tested even a small percentage of these flavors, though I can vouch for the sensuous texture and rich, true flavor of espresso, coconut and pumpkin, as well as the deliciously creamy sorbet, especially the mind-blowing passionfruit. Other flavors I'd like to go back for include rosemary, honey-lavender, mascarpone, pink peppercorn, malt, rhubarb, cheddar cheese and licorice. I can dream, right?
Read More...

One of the more beloved tales in my family's rich lore is of how my father, very early in his marriage to my mother, came up behind her as she was leaning into the oven and goosed her—except it turned out to be my grandmother!! I can just see the shock on both of their faces, and imagine the explosion of laughter that followed. They both had a wicked sense of humor, especially my dad. He and my maternal grandparents loved each other dearly, once the deeply Christian Chávez family got over the idea that their beloved eldest daughter was going to marry a Jew.

But this is about another sort of goose altogether. A goose egg, actually, no doubt laid by a female relative of the lovely fellow from River Brook Farm who was the centerpiece of our Christmas dinner.
Read More...

G and I signed up for a mozzarella-making class at Artisanal, the center for all things cheese, located on the West side in Manhattan. It was originally an offshoot of Terrance Brennan's restaurant of the same name, though I'm not sure the two are still affiliated. At any rate, they have state-of-the-art cheese caves there and a staff of knowledgeable affineurs (cheese "agers") and educators, and a fun range of classes. We took a cheese & honey pairing class there last year that put a bee on our bonnet about raising our own bees...but that's another story. Now that I'm all up on curds and whey, what with making my own fresh cheese and all, I thought the next logical step would be making my own mozzarella. Somehow I thought we would be starting from scratch—with fresh milk and some rennet. But it turns out that making curds is a rather more involved process than they want to take a classful of cheese novices through in a 2-hour course and, like many perfectly respectable cheese-makers, they start from pre-made curds. I confess, I was a little disappointed, although at least Artisanal purchases its curds from DiPalo, the venerable cheese shop on Grand Street in what used to be New York's Little Italy. If you've never been to DiPalo, you must pay them a visit right away. They import amazing cheese, salume and pasta from Italy, and they make their own delicious mozzarella fresh every day. The people at Artisanal said that DiPalo will sell you a pound of fresh mozzarella curd if you know to ask for it. Once you've got the curd, making the mozzarella is a walk in the park. Of course, you know me: I will make my own curd one of these days, and you'll be the first to know all about it. Maybe I'll even get my hands on some water buffalo milk to do it...
Read More...

Yes, I know, you think I'm senile and posting again about that divine strawberry-fennel ice cream. Wrong. It's yet another wickedly delicious fruit ice cream. Who knew? I was never a huge fan of this genre, tending to pass over the Graeter's black raspberry in favor of the coffee or caramel or mint chip. But this is one of the most delectable flavors EVER. I don't know if it has to do with the raw milk or the brilliant orange egg yolks straight from the farm, but I'm thinking it's about the way the slightly tart and wonderfully intense flavor of the raspberries plays off the unctuous custard. Because we were impatient, I didn't wait for the custard to cool completely before putting it in the ice cream maker, and then we were unwilling to wait for it to harden in the freezer. The result was almost like frozen whipped cream (um, that's what it is, right?) and we had to shovel the stuff in quickly before it could melt.
Read More...

I can't take credit for that: my friend Louise told me about a Rawesome food co-op in Venice, California, that sells raw milk—she's going there to stock up! I feel like the Pied Piper of natural dairy. Love it. I'm  jealous because they sell raw butter there. The farm I buy from doesn't separate the cream from the milk and I haven't quite figured out how to do that successfully. Every source says you just wait for it to rise to the top and skim it off, but that seems to leave me with something more like half-&-half. Any thoughts? Raw cheese, on the other hand, is pretty easy to find—as long as it's aged. I guess they figure any harmful bacteria will have died off, so by law raw milk cheeses have to be aged at least 60 days to be considered fit for human consumption. Whatever. You know I'll get my hands on some fresh raw milk cheese very soon. Thinking about making my own mozzarella. Yep, I'm a radical. (By the way, did I ever tell you that my father contracted bovine tuberculosis in Mexico when he was 19? Saved him from going into the service during WWII! Nowadays, even mom-&-pop farms do regular testing to make sure that doesn't happen.) So I did pick up some raw milk cheeses at Lucy's Whey in the Chelsea Market this week. I sampled them for lunch today and they were truly delicious. (I also picked up that lovely tray from Brooklyn Slate. Great packaging; would make a nice housegift for some cheese-loving host.)
Read More...

Meet Louise, an enormous black milk cow who'd just given birth to this still-trembling little calf on Saturday morning when we stopped by our small local farm to pick up some raw milk. They're kind enough to sell it to us right from the cow. Well, pretty much. It's legal in New York, but only if you buy it directly from the farm. (It's banned outright in New Jersey, and available at retail in Connecticut.) You'll need to bring your own container—I use big glass jugs. If this recent article in New York magazine is any indication, raw milk is gaining in popularity as people begin to understand more about its nutritional value and appreciate its wonderful taste. (Old-style delivery services will bring it right to your door!) My mother-in-law was absolutely horrified at the idea of us drinking raw milk, and that's a testament to how this country has been brainwashed into believing that industrialized food is cleaner and safer. But in fact, high-heat pasteurization and homogenization do a great disservice to the quality and value of the milk we drink. And most cases of salmonella associated with milk in the past decade have been from pasteurized products. Perhaps, like I did, you shun milk altogether? As recently as a couple of months ago, I was posting about all the alternatives—soy, almond, rice, hemp. Now that I've learned about how the high-heat and chemical extraction processes essentially damage these foods, I really can't recommend you consume any of them on a regular basis. I know, I know, the ground beneath us is always shifting. But I feel much more empowered now that I have begun to do my own research (forever indebted to Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions) and really understand the science behind my food choices. Don't despair, there's still plenty of good stuff to eat.