Chevre

Growing up, my family had goats, usually two of them. We milked 'em morning and night, and got more than a gallon per goat on a good day. Mostly we sold the milk to families with kids who couldn't digest cow's milk (my brother was like that, one of the reasons we got goats in the first place. Goat milk is more similar to human milk than cow milk is, so it's really good for kids who just stopped breast feeding, or who have sensitive stomachs), but some people just liked having raw, unpasteurized milk.

One of our goats was a Nubian, the kind in this picture. Pretty cute, right?
Picture found here.
We also had a Saanen and an Alpine.

In some ways, the life of a kid with goats was a pain in the butt: having vacations hinge on whether you can find someone to milk while you're gone (and finding a neighbor in the suburbs who not only can milk, but is willing to do it twice a day for even just a few days is... well, about as hard a you'd expect); being a teenager and having to milk/feed them in the morning when you want to be sleeping in, and in the evening when you want to be hanging out; and trying to seem like just a normal kid when there are little handfuls of alfalfa that fell in your pockets when you fed the goats this morning.

But raising goats had it advantages, too: the milk's really good, as long as the goats are fed right; there were no unnatural hormones in the milk; blah blah blah we learned about hard work; and best of all- yogurt and cheese. My mom made lots of both, especially in the summer, when the goats produced the most milk (more daylight = more milk). Today, for the first time in more than ten years, I made goat cheese.

Chevre is the generic name for goat cheese, coming from the French word for goat. The kind of cheese most people think of when the think of goat cheese- that creamy, soft cheese that sort of has the consistency of a crumbly cream cheese- is the kind I made. and it couldn't be much easier:


Put a half gallon of goat's milk in a stainless steel pot (aluminum can change the taste). Slowly heat the milk to 195 degrees, stirring frequently so none of the milk starts cooking to the bottom of the pot. The milk will get frothy and start stinking the way that warm milk does, but it shouldn't boil.


Add 1/4 C lemon juice very slowly, stirring while you add it. As soon as it's all in there, though, stop stirring. Let the milk curdle. It'll look really disgusting.


Add a bit of salt and let it cool to 100 degrees.

Strain the curds from the whey for 2 - 4 hours, until it's the texture you want (I wanted ours to be more creamy, so I only strained it for about two hours). You can buy cheesecloth at kitchen stores, or sometimes at the fabric store, but my mom discovered something better: In the paint section at Home Depot, you can buy two paint strainers for about three bucks. They work as well as expensive cheesecloth, and they're reusable, cheap, and just the right size. They're good for jelly bags, too.

You could hook the bag on the faucet and strain right into the sink, but then you'd have to do the dishes before you make cheese, and what's the fun in that? Just jerry-rig something like this, and those dishes can wait!

And there you have it! Homemade chevre! Luke and I are each going to get one half of the cheese to make a meal for the other. I'll show you what we come up with.

Twenty pounds (of tomatoes) lighter

I ordered twenty pounds of tomatoes from our co-op, and what came were some of the most perfectly round, perfectly ripened tomatoes I've ever seen.


A third of them I cut into fourths, drizzled with olive oil and minced garlic, and slow-roasted in the oven for three hours. Those'll be used for pasta salads and rich soups. The rest I canned to use for tomato sauces during the winter, when there are only those good-looking-but-totally-flavorless tomatoes at the grocery store.

Cotija!

Last week was one full of hispanic meals for Lukey and me. It wasn't intentional- I didn't plan the meals thinking, "Let's eat the food of our friends down south!"- but that's the way it ended up. Deliciously.

Luke lived in Guatemala for a couple years, and made for me the breakfast he had every day while there: black beans, homemade tortillas, and eggs with table cream. He fancied it up for me with a sprinkling of cotija and something he got very rarely- fried plantain (we used green bananas).

Turns out, ten years hasn't been long enough for Luke to like this meal again. I loved it, though, and was surprised at how good it tasted for how simple it was (the only spice was salt).

For dinner one night I made mexican corn cakes. I think because I never saw my parents use it the whole time I was growing up (and they cooked interesting stuff from all over the world), I'm delighted to find different recipes that use masa harina. This was one of those. Topped with tomatos from the garden and a slice of avocado, they were a simple, satisfying meal (and then for dessert I made my first flan with homemade caramel, and it was decadent and wonderful. Definitely one to save in the recipe box).

The best tasting (and least photogenic) meal was the night we had flautas. This is the meal that made me SO glad that I make extra food and preserve it- these flautas (I guess just taquitos that are folded instead of rolled?) were filled with the cilantro pesto that I froze this summer, and a little cheese. That's it. The meal was quick and so good that I made them again for lunches for days (until the last of the cilantro pesto was used up, actually. Time to replenish).

A few good meals

Had a few more recipes this week that were good enough to share:

Saturday we had Indian food: Matar "Paneer," which wasn't really paneer because paneer is a kind of cheese (which Luke and I are going to make sometime soon), and this recipe uses tofu. So maybe Matar Tahu? I'm not sure. Anyway, I like making Indian food because we get to use all those spices that taste and smell so good, but that we don't use very regularly- curry, garam masala, turmeric, coriander. This recipe had all of 'em, and the mix of flavors was very good (if you're from Utah: this reminds me of something from Curry in a Hurry). If you look at the instructions, you'll see that this was an easy meal to make; my only addition would be to the instruction about letting all the spices absorb: after adding the spices, let them cook together for at least ten minutes. The texture and flavor will be better because of it. I kept tasting every couple minutes, and the longer they cooked together, the better. Oh, and don't skip the step about pressing the excess water out of the tofu- it makes a big difference.

(My broken camera has an especially hard time with browns and yellows. You know how Indian curries look. This was like that.)

On Wednesday, we had a southern meal: catfish po'boys, okra, and baked yam wedges. I chose the meal with Luke in mind- this is the sort of comfort food he loves- and I knew it was a good choice when he talked about it for days before we made it and kept telling me, while it was cooking, how excited he was. The po'boys were a recipe from the Martha Stewart cookbook I got for Christmas from Marina, my mother-in-law. The okra was like I've never had it before, with a very interesting flavor (halfway between southern and Indian), with none of that okra slime (which really ain't so bad, but I know some people hate it). Luke, who doesn't really like okra, was crazy about it. The yam was just cut up and shaken up with a little oil and some salt and pepper and then baked at 450 for twenty minutes, stirring a couple times. The whole meal was very good. "It's not the best meal we've ever cooked," said Luke, "but it was just perfect." And then all night he kept telling me how happy I make him.


On Thursday we had broiled black pepper tofu and soba noodles with vegetables (we left out the mint). In years of eating tofu fairly regularly, I don't remember ever eating it like this- as a simple main dish, not just a part of a sauce or curry. I liked it! The lemony dipping sauce was good enough that Luke later used it as a sort of au jus sauce for a sandwich. The noodle salad was good for dinner, and then again for leftovers the next day. This dinner convinced me that we need to find more recipes that use sesame oil.


There were some recipes we planned but didn't try because stuff came up (I spent a couple days with my mom and sisters, and went out with Barbara, a mentor/friend/professor). So this weeks meals will be easier to plan!

Week of dinners:

Luke and I are continuing with our goal to spend $35 on a week's worth of meals. It's become sort of a weird obsession, not because we couldn't afford to spend more on groceries, but because the challenge is really fun. On Friday nights I spend almost an hour planning the menu for the next week, including an estimate for how much each item is going to cost, and then we go to the grocery store to buy everything at once (I remember a time when I'd get kind of sad if I didn't feel like I was being social enough on my weekends. Things've changed). It's become one of my favorite weekly activities (aside from Wednesday night quiz night) of the week.

This week was an especially good one for meals, so I thought I'd share the recipes:

On Saturday we had black bean soup with coconut milk and cilantro. My friend Drew had made it for a potluck last week, but ours turned out differently because we had the time to blend it and let the flavors simmer (he was in a hurry because all the potluck guests had arrived). Both ways were good. A creamy, spicy, vegan soup with a nice blend of flavors (would be good without the cilantro, too, for people like Whitney who don't like the taste).

Picture from Fab Frugal Food

On Sunday we had Asian chicken noodle soup, which was instantly a family favorite. We left out the mint, because we didn't want to detract from the lemongrass, ginger, and lime. Don't skip the sriracha- it makes the soup perfect!

Picture from Martha Stewart

On Monday we had caramelized salmon with mango salsa. So fresh and summery tasting, and not heavy. We ate it with tomato rice (rice + tomato bouillon in the rice maker), and it was a hearty (and very orange) meal.



On Tuesday we had tacos with homemade tortillas. For the tortillas, mix corn flour (buy a big bag of the Maseca brand for three dollars in the hispanic foods aisle of the grocery store) and water together until it's the texture of playdough. Roll out (I found it easiest to put a little patty between to pieces of seran wrap, and then smash flat (as opposed to actually rolling) with a cup), and grill. These simple tortillas are good with stuff in them, but if you wanted to eat them plain, you'd want to add salt to the dough. Soon we'll invest in a tortilla press, so we we can have round, perfectly uniform tortillas. I know it doesn't make them taste any better, but for some reason it matters to me.

Picture from Adventures in Shaw

On Wednesday we had grilled chicken gyros with tzatziki sauce. Rather than using pitas, we used a naan recipe my mom gave us (a favorite since our experiment with indian food). This dish was so good. So good!!! We changed a few things: 1) We didn't marinate the chicken for as long as we were supposed to, because we figured if we were cooking the chicken in the sauce, that was good enough. And it was. 2) We didn't remove excess water from the cucumber for the tzatziki sauce. We kept it wet, and eliminated the oil in the sauce. 3) we used cucumbers instead of red onion (partially because Luke doesn't really like onions much, and partially because the cucumber sounded better). This is one of those kinds of meals that if you ordered it at a restaurant, it would become the only thing you'd ever order there.


And last I didn't have dinner. I went to make dinner (at 11:30 p.m.)* and realized that I'd forgotten to get tofu.** Luke was getting off work at midnight and said he'd pick up some DiGiorno, but he ended up having a work meeting that kept him until two. I fell asleep around one thirty, waiting for pizza.

*One thing I find myself loving about it just being me and Luke is that we can eat dinner in the middle of the night if we want.
**Actually, I didn't realize it. I called up Luke at work, annoyed that the tofu had mysteriously disappeared (just like a can of black beans had earlier this week), and he reminded me that I actually hadn't gone to get it.

Keeping it real cheap.

Luke and I have been challenging ourselves to eat well on $35/week. Between the two of us, that's about 31 meals; $1.13/meal per person. Without eating a lot of boxed/prepared foods (Ramen, frozen burritos, mac & cheese), it's hard. Hard, but satisfying. One thing that's helped is having a freezer chock full of nettles, stone fruit, soup, berries, stock, pesto, and homemade dough.


Another thing that helps is that I love preparing menus (on little scraps of paper left around the house. I'm my mother's daughter), and find huge satisfaction in being able to have gnocci, kebabs, curry (and soda), etc. and spending only thirty dollars. Tonight we tried a recipe from Everyday Food: grilled pizzas. The magazine had delicious-looking toppings of grilled asparagus and ricotta; or fontina, fennel and onion. We kept it cheap with peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and a little sausage.


The whole meals cost us less than four dollars, and was delicious. If you like thin crust pizza, you'd like this. The dough recipe is here.