Oh So Easy Homemade Cottage Cheese

Now why would anyone possibly want to make their own cottage cheese when they can easily buy it from the grocery store? 


Except - I can't. Because it's not locally available where I live and so I had to figure out a way to make it myself a couple of years ago. It is the simplest thing ever & I made it again just last week to use in the Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte I made for the BWD challenge.


All you need is milk & a few tablespoons of vinegar. Really - that's it. 

Homemade Cottage Cheese

1 litre milk (I used low fat)
3-4 tbsp vinegar

Bring the milk to a boil in a large pan over medium heat (it should reach about 120F).
 
Lower the heat and add the vinegar a couple of teaspoons at a time, stirring well after each addition.
The milk will get cloudy and the curds will start floating on top in large and small clumps. 

After you have added all the vinegar, remove the pot from heat and let it cool for around five minutes before straining the curds through a strainer lined with a cheesecloth.


When most of the liquid has drained away, gather up the sides of the cheesecloth and squeeze to get any remaining liquid out. 


Place the cheesecloth & curds back in the strainer and place over a bowl for 1 - 2 hours to let all moisture drain away. 


Use the cheese right away or store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Baking With Dorie: Hidden Berry Cream Cheese Torte

Dorie Greenspan: where were you my entire life? 

My husband and I love a good cheesecake & so I've attempted to make it a couple of times in past years and always found it to be one of those elusive things that I just can't quite get right. Either I would burn the crust, under-bake the filling or the filling would split in the middle - making a very messy looking cake. In fact, I've never been able to make a cheesecake with a filling that didn't crack. And I've always found the recipes I've tried to be too sweet, too heavy.

When Elizabeth of Gluten Free Baking 101 chose this recipe for this weeks' Baking With Dorie challenge, I was prepared for cheesecake-fail. But then I thought: so far Dorie hasn't let me down & so maybe this time I would finally succeed in making a good & smooth-looking cheesecake!

The ingredient list called for cottage cheese which isn't available locally where I live & Ricotta is prohibitively expensive, so I told my baking partners Susi and Elizabeth that I would be making my own cottage cheese. 

That is easy enough. But then I couldn't come up with cherry jam and decided to make my own jam as well. I used David Lebovitz's directions for making cherry jam using two pounds of cherries; half fresh sour cherries and half frozen, dark & sweet ones. The directions are available here. Since I wanted a very thick jam, I used only enough water to cover the cherries, added the zest of two whole lemons and followed the rest of David's directions. The jam was ready in around half an hour & I've had a very, very hard time restraining myself from eating any of it before I could use it for the baking challenge today. It is so good & I like it even better than my homemade strawberry jam. 

Susi joked that I've turned this week's challenge into a Daring Bakers challenge by making all the ingredients by scratch. It's been a bit of work in that sense & I've stretched it over a couple of days like I did with the lemon tart we made for the last challenge, but I enjoyed it so much. 

I finally got around to baking the torte this morning. Dorie's instructions are easy to follow, and I thought I got everything right. . . 

But: my cake split again :( 

I got past my disappointment, waited for the cake to cool slightly and dusted with icing sugar. 

I released the sides of the pan but didn't try to remove the base of the spring-form pan that I baked in - just in case I broke the bottom of the crust and I didn't want to deal with that kind of disaster at this point.

Then I cut myself a slice of not quite-as-yet-cold-cheesecake. Pure heaven. I can only imagine how much better it will taste when completely chilled.

I think I finally succeeded in making the perfect cheesecake: perfect crust, smooth filling (except for the cracks) that wasn't too sweet. or too heavy Simple to make. Thank you Dorie! I've gotta tell you: I really love you!

For the recipe, check out Susi's page & do go over to Elizabeth's blog and see how she made a Gluten-Free version of this torte. 

Our next challenge is Tender Shortcakes on Pages 423-424, picked by Susi. If you would like to join the challenge, please drop me an email.

Cioccolata Calda - Italian Hot Chocolate

Real Mothers don't eat quiche;

they don't have time to make it. 

Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils 

Are probably in the sandbox.

Real Mothers often have sticky floors, 

Filthy ovens and happy kids.

Real Mothers know that dried play dough

doesn't come out of carpets. 

Real Mothers don't want to know what

The vacuum just sucked up...

Real Mothers sometimes ask, 'Why me?'

And get their answer with a little

Voice that says, 'Because I love you best...'

Happy Mothers Day! 

Moms, treat yourself to some decadent Italian Hot Chocolate today - you deserve it. 

I made this today as requested by my son: 

Italian Hot Chocolate or Cioccolata Calda 

From the recipe at Bell'alimento

100g good quality chocolate with 70% cocoa or higher, roughly chopped

1.5 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tsp cornstarch

Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium heat till bubbles form on the sides. Add in the sugar at this point and stir until dissolved.

In a small cup, mix the cornstarch with a few tablespoons of the warm milk and return the mixture to the saucepan, stirring for 2-3 minutes till the milk thickens a little. 

Turn heat to low & add in the chopped chocolate. Stir, remove from heat and continue to stir until the chocolate is dissolved. 

Pour into cups and consume immediately. 

Broccoli Chicken Cups

To be completely honest with you, I haven't really been able to get my act together since I moved exactly a month ago. 

I had thought of several new things to try out in my kitchen and then blog about, but time just seems to get away from me these days. I'm back in school after a 3-month break and am now trying to work on my non-existent time-management skills. 

Even simple tasks are over-whelming lately & so the thought of having people over really throws me over the edge. Although I love the whole process of entertaining, I find it nerve-wracking. Especially because I belong to the school of thought that "more is less". So I am very capable of adding last-minute things to the Smorgasbord and making DH run to the grocery store at the last minute for some essential ingredient for an unplanned-for addition to my menu. 

And so I am that person standing over the stove, stirring a pot of something or the other while throwing orders at the rest of my petrified family to run around fetching things for me seconds before our guests arrive. 

We had a replay of all of the above this past weekend because it was a people-filled one both days. I had a huge assignment due (for school) right before the weekend started so, much to my disappointment, out of the ten things I had planned to make; I could only manage a few (read 7 - why are you surprised? didn't I say, 'more is less'? ).  

These Broccoli Chicken Cups were one of several appetizers made (but the only ones photographed) and our friends loved them so much that they took along all the leftover ones home with them. I managed to sneak away just two - so I could take a photo of them in the morning! 

The recipe is adapted from Taste of Home. 

Broccoli Chicken Cups

2.5 cups roasted chicken, shredded

1 can (10 3/4 oz) reduced-fat, reduced-sodium condensed cream of chicken soup

1 cup chopped fresh broccoli

2 small tomatoes, seeded and chopped

1 small carrot, grated

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 garlic clove, minced

1 - 1.5 tsp freshly crushed black pepper

12 frozen low-fat puff pastry squares

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a large bowl combine all the ingredients except the Parmesan cheese. 

Gently press puff pastry squares into muffin cups coated with cooking spray.

Spoon chicken mixture into pastry cups. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. 

Bake 25-30 minutes. Serve warm.

 

Split Level Pudding: Baking with Dorie

This week's Baking With Dorie challenge was selected by Susi of Susi's Kochen und Backen. She chose Split Level Pudding which is a vanilla pudding that has been layered over ganache.  

I have never made pudding from scratch before, and I honestly expected something to go horribly wrong. Amongst many other doom-filled scenarios; I envisioned myself whisking away at a lumpy, stubborn mess that would refuse to relent. Or a slippery, slimy one that wouldn't set up after hours of refrigeration.

But my pudding was almost perfect. I am saying 'almost' only because, for the Ganache layer, I used Lindt's dark chocolate with 70% cocoa and somehow, the bitterness from the chocolate really stood out and didn't blend well with the flavor of the pudding itself.  

But that being said, this pudding does taste dreamy. Had I used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead; the pudding might have tasted even better.  

It is a little labor intensive because you first make the pudding in a saucepan and then blend it in a food-processor, returning to the saucepan yet again to cook the pudding till it thickens. Dorie recommends processing it one last time to ensure a uniformly smooth texture.

And the texture is smooth, though it firms up a little after refrigeration. The ganache layer didn't harden at all while the pudding was cooling in the fridge (I had assumed that it would), but you do have to work at digging it out. 

I still can't believe I made this wonderful pudding and am secretly very impressed with myself! I would make this again & again with other variations suggested by Dorie Greenspan and a twist that I've thought of myself. 

The recipe can be found on Pages 384-385 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours. Or on Susi's blog. If you would like to join the challenge, please email me at needfulthings at ymail dot com. We'd love to have you bake along with us.

David Lebovitz's Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

Summer is almost around the corner.

And that should be excuse enough to start making ice cream. 

The one thing I don't own is an ice cream maker (not for long) even though I am quite a bit of a kitchen appliance/gadget junkie.

I compulsively and impulsively buy things for my kitchen the way other people buy clothes or shoes.

I'm hopeless, really. 

The lack of an appliance doesn't stop me from making ice cream. Sure: making it without one is more labor intensive and a serious time commitment but worth each minute of effort & all the hours spent whisking, freezing, whisking, freezing and waiting . . 

I have several pounds of strawberries to get through and have been on the lookout for simple strawberry recipes that involve ingredients I already have on hand so that there is no mad rush to the grocery store. 

Today is a lazy day, so anything I made today couldn't possibly require me to do anything but spend most of my time with the hubby & kids all morning.

I finally found just what I was looking for.

I-scream

My toddler woke up this morning and the first thing she said was: "I want ice-cweam".

I told her I didn't have any and my suggestion "Let's have cereal first and then we'll go down to the store and buy ice cream, ok?" was met with a full-blown  interminably long mother-of-meltdowns (yeah, welcome to terrible 2's).

However, she managed to calm down long enough to make it through breakfast. I really didn't want to go to the store till later in the evening but I try not to say things to my kids that I don't mean or make promises I won't follow through on. I had figured, I would just get the kids in the kitchen after breakfast and we'd make our own ice cream. 

Think again: no cream, not enough milk, no oreos (for their favorite cookies & cream ice cream). There was still no way I was going to go to the store. We just had to make do with whatever we had on hand. Which was basically nothing. And then it hit me: I could make banana ice cream. 

All I need for that is bananas. And this is also something I have known forever but never bothered to try: after all, why make banana ice cream when there are far more exciting (and possibly more palatable) things to make. Such as Nutella ice cream, for e.g. I'm still sulking over my inability to make Nutella ice cream the day before  by the way :( 

Beggars can't be choosers. Banana ice cream it would have to be. 

Homemade Butter

I've been too unwell since Friday night to actually either make it out of bed or get off the couch. Reason: extremely bad case of Rhinosinusitis & a throat infection. My sense of smell is completely gone, along with my sense of taste - can't even hear with my left ear. It's a wonder I'm functioning at all. 


It's rather disconcerting not to be able to smell or taste anything. I've even tried to jump-start my taste buds by dolloping heaped teaspoons of that Habanero sauce on top of everything I'm eating. But food still tastes like sawdust.


Since I'm unable to stay on my feet for too long & my children need entertainment, I've had to create activities I could either engage in or observe from my permanent position on the couch. 


Today we decided to make homemade butter. It's ridiculously easy. 


I read about how to make it a long time ago & couldn't believe it would actually work so I was just about as surprised as my 5 yr old when we sat around shaking a large Tupperware container half-filled with whipping cream and came up with actual butter in less than 10 minutes! 

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Lasagne

Ok, so it's taken me just a little over a year to get back to this blog ... and I never did that cupcake challenge.. my bad. But I'm back now, and hoping to keep on blogging. 

First blog post, you say - and no photo of the actual lasagne? Here's what happened: the kitchen light bulb needed replacing this morning but I wasn't too bothered because my kitchen gets really good, natural sunlight for just between an hour or two,around mid-morning. And otherwise, there's light enough in there to find my way around till the sun goes down and it's completely dark. So I started taking photos of the Bell Peppers and suddenly realized I was all out of milk. So off I went to the grocery store & by the time I got back, natural light was fading fast. Then it was a matter of getting the cooking over with before it got dark and I couldn't see any more.