Cheese Amidst Chaos

With a packed weekend on the cards, the wife kinda pushed me into making cheese on Saturday. I understand nagging is 2-way traffic.
I chose feta since it does not require too much surveillance while making. Since 2 litres (which is my standard volume for cheese making) would produce a significant amount of feta, I split a litre to indulge in some cream cheese.
With all the happenings on Saturday, the wife's stained glass project and my RTO work, the feta turned out to be the best decision. Will leave it for a couple of weeks in brine to age.
The cream cheese though turned truant. I'd forgotten to check on it on Saturday night - exhaustion got the better of me. It moved on to the next stage of aging - sour cream. No matter, sour cream dips are still wonderful. Add a few skinned and seeded fresno's, a pinch of salt & sugar and you've got yourself some amazing spiced dipping sauce.

This was probably one of my better results with cream cheese. Awaiting some sourdough from the wife to complement this.

Can mascarpone and tiramisu be far behind ??

Green with Pizza

What do you do with a bunch of basil, fresh mozzarella that's been made a week ago, disinegrating in brine and a lazy weekend ? why pesto pizza of course!!!

The love affair with pesto started with the discovery of that amazing dry fruit - the pine nut. Costing over $6 a pound at the time in the local grocery stores in Ames, these were looked upon as treats to be enjoyed over special occasions on a student budget. Healthy doses of Emeril & Mario Batali introduced us to the magic of pesto. I still remember one of those Emeril shows dedicated to pizza's. The magical journey with pesto had begun.

Back home in B'lore, locating the chilgoza turned out to be a nightmare. Luckily, with a globalized population and fair amount of relatives and friends buzzing beween here and the US meant a fairly steady supply of the revernial nut.

Once you've had fresh mozz, its tough to go back to the greasy breads the normal folks term pizza's, and so it is with me. How often can you say you make your pizza from scratch, I mean the real scratch, even your cheese.
I don't do the traditional overnight rise of the dough for the base coz pizza urges happen at the drop of a hat.

My basic recipe has been to use a 6yr old supply of Fleishman's active dry yeast, suitably stored in the freezer over the years, along with good old chakki-ground atta. Allow this to rest for about 30mts, and hand stretch my dough to fit the baking pan (the stone has arrived, need to season it before use).
The pesto is a simple basil, pine nut (or toasted walnut) with parsley or coriander, generous tablespoons of parmigiano or plain powdered parmesan, garlic and salt to taste, with olive oil as binder. I'd love to be able to do this in my mortar and pestle, but used the blender(the photo is to show off)

Raiding the refrigerator, I found just green - capsicum, greeen olives and canned jalapenos. With the oven at 225, laid out the base on a square sheet and slathered the pesto on with the toppings. Crumbled the mozz on top and baked for 20mts.
Result below, total bliss :-)))

The Havarti Experiment

This one is over a month old. I finally go to adding the picures to complete the enry.

I've been making cheese for a while, all of which have been the soft varieties with a fair degree of success. I 've tried my hand at neufchatel, feta, cream cheese, mozzarella & ricotta with fairly ok results.
Time to move up the chain. If there's ever going to be a "Gurjar's Cheese Co.', its time I got into the tougher varieties - the aged cheeses.
What makes these tricky is that in India, especially at home with limited equipment, you never know what you'll get - either dry inedible chunks of milk fat or putrid blue-mould goop masses.

My first experiment is with a cheese called 'Havarti'. Its a relatively quick ageing cheese - about 2 weeks (upto 12 weeks if you have he paience) if all goes well. Here's the story.

Day 0 - Got my usual 2 litres of fresh cows milk from the friendly folks near home. Found I was out of meso culture. Scraped the ice tray to get about a cube and a few scraps of the leftover. Added a whole tbsp of thermo culture to cover up - not a good beginning at all. Hoping it wont come back to haunt me later.

Right now in the pressing stage - started off with a 6lb load, followed it with a 10lb and now a 15lb improvised load (atta container at home). Will keep this on for another 6 hrs


Day 4 - I'm getting some form of a rind developing. Not sure if its a rind or just the cheese drying out, but the colourations on the edges suggest something is happening along with a decidedly more fuller taste. No mould so far. I'm checking on this twice a day to make sure there's no mould. Pictures of the cheese below, notice the colourations on the edge.

Day xx - lessons learnt. I'd say for a starter, the cheese came out ok - thats to say that it had to be thrown away in the end coz I didn't control humidity and moisture tool well. Thats a learning I can take away pretty quick. What really encouraged me was the fact that I was able to get a faint 'bite' to my cheese with the aging processs - something I'm quite proud of.

I'm hooked now. Done with the soft cheese for now, will concentrate on the havarti for the next few months. If I'm able to control temp & humidity in the refrigerator to some degree, I feel I should be good to go. Problem ? Waiting for the minimum 2 month ripening period means I'm going to have to wait till March to have a steady supply of this cheese :-(

Of Saucy Tales & Stinky Prawn

Its finally here, thanks to a dear colleague of mine. Now to experiment (evil grin!!)
Sambal it will be. Some nice Fresno chillies await their fate at the hands of the twisted (confused) chef this weekend

House Cleaning (Part 1) - Cheese & The Joys of Sunny Days

Winter has come to Bangalore. My immediate temptation is to reach for my soup recipes. But first, there is the small problem of clearing the cheese rack in the refrigerator. My latest batch of mozzarella was in its brine for over a week, not something you want to subject fresh cheese to.
There was bread that Shantala had baked the day before. and there were 2 full packets of fresh italian basil. The orders from the kitchen matron were to finish what was lying around before embarking on further exploits with broth.
A couple of week ago, we had some lovely sunshine. I took advantage of that and made my first batch of tomato confit, the remnants of which I present below. This also emptied out my EVOO (Rachel Ray acronym). I didn't bother with any marjoram since getting it fresh is such a bother. I must say that allowing the tomato to get to it being rubbery is the perfect way to enjoy it.
I was all for making a fresh batch of feta o blend with this and make a great dip or even a pasta sauce for a rainy day, but it was not to be.
The irresistable homemade bread and the presence of basil was enough to rustle up some rustic bruschetta. We had a German guest who I would like to believe was missing food from back home. The bottle was pretty empty once we were done with it.
Fresh mozzarella is really something. The only reason I buy it is if I have to feed more than 4 people - and I haven't done that in a while. Milk hunting over 2 litres can be a strain on the body on a weekend :-)
Still have half the quantity of mozz. With all the basil around, its probably going to land up on a pizza with the new oven at home.

Singapore Chilli Crab

A free Saturday, a longing to cook and a free bike was all I needed to head out that paradise in Bangalore-Russel Market. Over the years, small, crowded places in old Bangalore have been a favourite haunt. The other place that comes to my mind is the City Market-Avenue Road area. These places are treasure troves for street photography along with anything you may ever need.
Russel Market to me represents bits of old Bangalore, sandwiched between the cantonment areas of MG Road and Frazer Town.


I headed out to the vegetable market at around 10 in the morning – very late if you want super fresh produce. First sights were fresh looking gherkins, French beans and okra. In addition, the alsande looked tender and fresh too.
A half kilo of each and I was off to the seafood stalls. The plan for lunch was to try my version of Singapore Chilli Crab. Thoughts of this dish on a huge platter served in the Jumbo Seafood restaurant on the EC Parkway are still fresh in memory. The only problem ? great big crabs. The ones I had in S’pore were easily about a half kilo each. The ones in the market for the most part didn’t look like they’d cross 250-300gms. The thought of fighting the long departed crab for its innards wasn’t very appealing.



Further along, I spied what I wanted. Decent sized crab. Got a kilo cleaned and packed.



One caveat to walking around in the market---no slippers. The meat market, especially the outside stinks. You need a super strong constitution to be able to review all the produce available rather than casting your eye on the first sign of sea meat and whisking it away.






Okay, now for the recipe.

1-2 medium sized onions
Chillies – quantity based on how hot you want your dish to be. I used 3 normal green chillies
2-4 cloves garlic
2-3 diced tomato’s, preferably the ones that are over ripe
1 cup tomato ketchup
1 tsp curry powder –my twist
3 heaped tsp seeni sambol – since I didn’t have the belacan, thought this would substitute ok
Salt to taste
2-3tbsp Oil

Blend the raw onion with all the chillies to get a fine paste. Taste to check heat. Mine eventually turned out a wee bit under ‘hot’.
Cook the paste in the oil for 5mts till it changes to a pale white/light brown colour. I feel carmelizing the onions add the necessary sweet taste to the dish
Add the diced tomato’s with the skins on. I don’t believe in a concasse all the time. (Roughage in any form is great for the morning job :-PP)
Allow the tomato’s to cook well, stirring occasionally and mashing them in when fully done
Add the ketchup to the mix and stir well
I added about a cup of water since I didn’t think I’d get volume with what I had. I complemented this with the sambal that we had at home (expiry date is this month. Looking at finishing as much as possible). Sambal on its own is quite addictive, even more so with hot rice.
Once I had a good broth bubbling, I added a teaspoon of some super hot Sri Lankan curry powder. At this time, I had to innovate since the chilli was getting overwhelmed with all the sweet ingredients that had gone into the mix.
I added the crabs in the end, cooked for about 15mts. Realized that I overcooked this by a few minutes so some of the flesh was not very firm.
Served this with hot rice, no garnish (maybe just plain cilantro would have been nice).

Lessons learnt:
1. Cook crab for not more than 10mts. Once shells turn red, stop cooking
2. Use belacan to get a richer flavour of the seafood
3. Figure out how to make those superb soft dumplings they served in S’pore
4. Invest in a steamer

All in all, a very satisfying time in the kitchen. Total prep + cook time <30mts which I thought was great. Shantala completed this meal with some thai stir fried veggies and some Chinese style greens with pine nuts

Da first post

I got started on this to try and put some recipe's that I fool around with. What I will try to do is to write down what I make, regardless of what it eventually turns into. I will definitely put photos in to make it more appealing.
I believe in spending quite a bit of time in my kitchen, so recipe's are likely to be drawn out, but I believe the fun in cooking is spending as little time as possible in the kitchen to turn out simple and great tasting dishes.