Nutty

This is one of the things about living in a different country than the United States: you crave peanut butter, but you can't buy it.

So I did what was necessary.

Unfortunately, I have heard about blenders breaking while trying to make peanut butter, so my blender was not an option. Neither was my nonexistent food processor or electric grinder. There was only one option left...




...el Molino

Homemade yogurt and cream cheese

Thank you to alpharubicon.com for the recipe!

Where I live in the Middle of Nowhere, Peru there is no cream cheese. Not only that, there is no real yogurt. We have yogurt, but it is drinkable, flavored, heavily sweetened, and makes me want to throw up.

So I decided to take this situation into my own hands. One inspired day, I began my very own homemade cream cheese. Here it is!

¡NOTES!:
-I washed all of these things in boiling water, then to be safe, I rinsed it in a bleach-water solution. You don't want icky nastiness growing all over your cream cheese.
-ALSO--I I had raw milk to use but if you don't if you can get lightly pasteurized milk it's better than supermarket milk. You could try this with ultra-pasteurized milk, but I'm not sure how it'd turn out. If you use raw milk, besides the first step, boil it and let it cool before using it.
-This makes about 1 to 1.5 cups cream cheese.
-ONE LAST THING: this recipe will take 3 days to make. There's little labour involved, just a lot of waiting.


DIRECTIONS:
1. Begin with 1 cup fresh 2% milk. Let this cup sit, covered, at room temperature for 24 hours. If you use raw milk, don't boil this.

2. After 24 hours, boil 2 more cups milk, then let cool until you can stick your finger in it, but it's still warm. Pour this into the cup from yesterday, cover, and set aside for another 24 hours.

3. After another 24 hours, boil 2 liters of milk and let this sit until warm. Add it to the milk mixture from the last 2 days, and let sit, covered, for a final 24 hours.

4. The next day, boil some water and put it in a large pot that your bowl with the milk mixture will fit into without touching the boiling water. Put the bowl on top, and let sit for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice. Then put your almost-yogurt it in a cheesecloth-lined colander (I just used a clean T-shirt for this), put this over another bowl to catch the drippings, and wait.

...Or at least that's what I did. To get cream cheese this way, it takes 6 hours of sitting and draining. Or, if you tie your cheesecloth/bag/T-shirt and hang it over a bowl, you'll cut this time down to about an hour and a half. This is much better, right? But if you're just making yogurt, the way I just described with a colander is better to get your desired thickness.

Here's where you decide what to do with this mixture, you can either:
a. wait for 1 hour and have yogurt.
b. wait for 2 hours and have Greek yogurt.
c. string up the bag, and have sour cream in an hour, and cream cheese in an hour & a half to 2 hours.


If you're impatient like me, you chose to have some yogurt while you were waiting for cream cheese :) Or you could just divide your mixture into yogurt and cream cheese.

Here you can see the progression, I took a photo every hour for the 1st 4, then the last is the cream cheese. After hour 4 the loss of water was minimal, but by these pictures you can see how much liquid really comes out!

Japanese curry goodness

This is one of those comfort foods that feels like a comfort food even if you didn't grow up with it. At least for me :)

Usually, you use prepared Japanese curry mix to make this, but I don't think it's necessary.

If you like your curries spicy add a bit of cayenne, but traditionally Japanese curry is pretty mild.



JAPANESE CURRY:

Curry mix:
-2 Tbs. mild curry powder
-.5 tsp. black pepper
-1 tsp. salt
-1/8 tsp. each: allspice, cloves, chili powder
-1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper (if you like it spicy)

Ingredients:
-1/2 head cauliflower, cut into florets and stems into 1 inch pieces
-2 carrots, cut obliquely (this means cut the bottom at a 30 degree angle, then turn 90 degrees and cut at the same angle. It's a good technique for getting the most possible surface area on a veggie: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6B7tC1TcLI)
-8 oz. button mushrooms, halved
-1 onion, finely chopped
-1 inch chunk peeled ginger, minced
-3 cloves garlic, minced
-1 tsp. cumin
-1 c. red wine
-3.5 c. water
-1 packet chicken bouillon
-1/4 c. corn starch, mixed with water

Directions:
Heat 2 Tbs. oil in a large pot over high heat, and when hot stir fry the veggies until soft, but not cooked through. Remove and set aside.

Heat 1 Tbs oil in the same pot over med-high heat, and add ginger, garlic, and cumin, and fry one minute, stirring. Add onion, and fry until translucent. Add wine, bouillon, and water, and cook with lid off for 7 minutes over high heat, reducing. Add veggies, and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add spice mix and corn starch water mix, and stir. Cook for another 5 minutes, or until the sauce is thick.

Serve hot with hot sticky rice.

Simple BBQ Sauce

Perfect BBQ sauce for playing around with. A lot of people do raspberry or peach or chipotle flavor and all that pizazz, but I know just as well that I can do a great sauce now and put it with raspberries and peaches and chipotle later--more variety in one bottle, and a great standard to have on hand.



My favorite use for this of ALL TIME?? Yakisoba, mmm....take some cooked ramen and stir-fry it with veggies, sesame oil, soy sauce and BBQ sauce, you get heaven. Or another Japanese junk food favorite of mine is Okonomiyaki--cabbage pancakes smothered in BBQ sauce...SO good.


::BASIC BBQ SAUCE::

INGREDIENTS:

-1 red onion, diced
-12 roma tomatoes, cored & chopped
-5 cloves garlic
-3/4 to 1 c. vinegar (depends on how sour you like yours, I like mine really sour!)
-1 jalapeño, halved & seeded
-1/4 c. brown sugar
-1/4 c. molasses
-2 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
-1 tsp. salt
-1 tsp. corn starch mixed with 2 Tbs. water

DIRECTIONS:

Heat 3 Tbs. veggie oil in a pot over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook until just beginning to turn brown, about 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, and jalapeño in a blender and blend until smooth. When the onion is ready, pour the tomato mixture into the pot and turn the heat to high. Add the sugar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, and salt. Quickly, pour this mixture in a blender and blend until smooth. Add back to the pot, and cook over medium-high heat until about a quarter of the water has evaporated and the flavors meld, about 10-12 minutes. The mixture should be relatively thick by now, just a little watery. Stir the corn starch and water well and pour into the sauce. Stir sauce until thickened. Turn off heat, let cool, and fill your bottles to the top!