Lazy Fridays

The best part of Friday evenings is that you don't have to run against time to get something ready for dinner. Its also a great time to get into the kitchen to get those biceps working and work up some fresh pasta.


The fun thing about pasta is that you can use pretty much any veggie as a filler with minimal fuss. Come to think of it, you're having chapati's with veggies--very Indian.

Its also simple food to chomp on when you have guests, great for kids to experiment with (different shapes) to keep them occupied enough to eat it as well.

I personally love fresh pasta with a dash of olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper, hydrated sun dried tomatos and a generous sprinkling of romano. Way to my heart....

The Havarti Chronicles - part 2

So here I am, a few months after my first attempt at a hard cheese.

Delighted with my second attempt. The cheese is edible! and just about aged - around 4 weeks. The difference being the constant monitoring over the first few weeks to make sure there was no mould developing, once the mould developed, cleaning it, rubbing with olive oil and tightly packing it in clingfilm. This demands that I increase my production to be able to sample more batches and improve on where I need to. Plan to increase batch size to at least 3 litres and build the necessary equipment to manage it – maybe even a cheese press :-)

Thrilled that simple buttermilk can help create this kind of texture and taste. This one is haphazardly infused with fresh basil - as an afterthought so its not very uniformly distributed.

The challenge is to get fresh milk, being summer there seems to be a sudden shortage at the local cowshed's.