Cambozola: Day 2

How to make cambozola is apparently a bit of a trade secret, so while I did a fair bit of online research on the steps, all I was able to find were other home cheesemakers like myself trying to figure it out! So it will be interesting to see if this works or not. Even if it doesn't, I should still end up with an interesting cheese. (Btw, the dark stuff on the insides of my "high-tech empty #2.5 can cheese molds" is not rust, it's condensation and whey droplets.)

The curds basically have to drain for a couple of days under their own weight. This is Day 2 - I packed the curds into the molds yesterday (they were all the way to the top of the molds to start with) and they have been draining whey ever since. Way much more whey than I would have thought that little bit of curds could hold! Seems like cups and cups. Anyway, the curds have shrunken down to about 1/3 of their original height, and it is all starting to hold together when I turn the "mold sandwiches" every few hours. Later tonight, I'll test them to see if they are solid enough to go without being in the molds, and start gently sprinkling salt on the outside. Then I'll put everything into the "portable cheese cave" I've made from a clear plastic shoebox and a plastic shelf, schlep it down to the 45 degree storage room, and wait the next several days to make sure it starts growing the white fuzz it's supposed to grow. Crossing my fingers!

It's a Dairy Day

Maybe it's all the white stuff flying around here today, or maybe it's because my son graciously stopped by Reed's Dairy Store on his way back from teaching lab at the ISU campus late last week and bought me some more of their lovely milk and cream, but today just seemed like a Dairy Day to me.

I already make Kefir nearly every week - I like it because it's got all the goodness of yogurt in a more drinkable form. The aforementioned son was on a Starbuck's "Latte in a Bottle" kick late last year, and I cheerfully confiscated all his empties, washed them and reused them. He thinks I'm nuts, but the bottles were good reuseable glass with sturdy metal lids, so what's not to like? I make my kefir for the week, pour it into these lovely little recycled bottles and I have breakfasts to go all week long for my busy schedule. Pop a little fruit puree into a bottle (Hmmm, huckleberry today? or raspberry? or apricot-ginger? maybe sour cherry? Decisions, decisions!) and I've got a nutritious light breakfast that I can take with me whereever I like, for about 20 cents per serving. And I control all the ingredients, including how much sugar, if any, goes into it.

Today, while I had everything out anyway, I decided to make a batch of yogurt and a batch of sour cream as well. The whole process took about 15 minutes. Well, and a few hours to set up, but I don't have to do anything with it during that time. I made my usual half gallon of Kefir, plus a quart each of yogurt and sour cream. More than enough to last a week for us. The sour cream might even last two, unless I decide to make Elk Stroganoff or something else sour-cream-intensive later this week.

It's moderately lucrative to make your own at home, and doing things like this is how I can afford to pay a little bit more for local stuff now and then and still not bust our family food budget. For instance, the cost to make all these dairy products, besides the 15 minutes of hands on time, was approximately $6.50. The cost for these items, if bought in a store on sale, would be about $10.50. It actually would likely be more, because I have never really seen kefir for sale here in the usual venues - so when I added up the costs, I just counted it the same as an equivalent amount of yogurt. In actuality, if it were available, it would probably be more expensive. So paying a little more for our milk in light of that doesn't cause me undue concern. Especially since it's better for us. And it just tastes better, too, which is definitely worth the few extra cents!

Mmmmmmm, Elk Stroganoff. Dang, I wish now I hadn't promised myself I'd do a meatless meal for my next Dark Day Challenge meal. Oh, well, it'll keep!

Recipe: Chicken Udon Soup - Dark Days Challenge

CHICKEN UDON SOUP
Serves 6-8

Soup Base:
1 large stewing chicken
1 Tbsp fresh minced ginger root, or equivalent dried
salt to taste
chopped green onion for garnish
Water to cover

Noodles:
4 cups flour
1 Tbsp. salt
2 eggs
Water

I was a bit rushed today, so I didn't get a picture of all the ingredients before I started. I wish that I had - the chicken we used was HUMONGOUS. It was an eight pound plus stewing chicken we bought from a local farmer a while back. Very tasty, it was, and there is plenty of meat for at least a couple more meals! Everything but the ginger root was local. This is a very simple soup with few ingredients. The only time intensive part is making the noodles, and that really doesn't take very long.

The first step is to rinse the chicken off and put it into a kettle large enough to have enough room to cover the chicken with water. Boil the chicken gently until the meat comes easily from the bones. Remove the chicken from the pot and cool it enough to separate the meat out. Set the meat aside for now. Bring the stock back to a simmer, and add the ginger. Let the stock sit on a very low simmer until the noodles are finished.

To make the noodles...stir the salt into the flour in a medium size bowl. Add eggs, and about a half cup of water. (You can add more later, how much you will need depends on the type of flour, the humidity and the size of egg you use.) Mix the dough well, adding just enough water to make a stiff, but still kneadable dough. Knead the dough until it is smooth, and let it sit for at least 15 minutes to relax. This makes it easier to roll out.

Divide the dough into three parts, and roll each portion out to approximately 1/8 inch thick. Dust the dough with a bit more flour, fold it over into thirds, and cut the folded roll into 1/4" or less ribbons with a sharp knife. Shake each noodle out gently and pile the finished noodles to the side until all are cut. These udon are made from whole white wheat, so they probably aren't the color one would expect. The flavor, however, was outstanding.



In the meantime, bring a saucepan of water to a rolling boil, and add a teaspoon of salt. Drop the finished udon noodles into the hot water a handful at a time. Stir them so they don't stick together, and cook them for one minute after they rise to the surface of the water. Scoop the noodles out of the hot water, rinse them lightly with cool water, and place them into a bowl. You want to partially cook the noodles separately first so the starch that comes off them in the first few minutes doesn't end up in your soup stock, making it unattractively cloudy and gooey.



When all noodles have been pre-cooked, bring the chicken stock up to a rolling boil, and slide the noodles into it. Cook noodles until chewy, but tender and cooked all the way through. How long it will take depends on how thick you made them, but it shouldn't take more than 3-5 minutes or so.



Into each soup bowl put some of the reserved chicken meat cut into bite size pieces, a nice large serving spoonful of the noodles from the broth, and some diced green onion. (These are the first of our shallots from the salad table!)



Ladle the hot ginger-flavored broth over all, and serve! Here is the finished dish - my noodles are a bit thicker and larger than is "traditional" but that's how we like them. You can make yours thinner and smaller if you like.

What's going on in the kitchen this weekend?

Homebrewing: I have two fruit wines and a simple sweet mead that need to be bottled. I have another bottle of concord grape wine in the storage room that may also be ready to bottle, but if I can get the three I have upstairs racked and into the little single serving size bottles I bought, then I'll be doing well! (Update: the plum wine apparently isn't ready to bottle yet, once I brought it up into the warmer house, it began to bubble again! So, I guess that one will wait for another couple or three weeks. The mead and raspberry wines are bottled, though, and I even "prettied up" a few bottles for a picture!)

Salad Table: I will have transplanted nearly all the salad starts by the end of this weekend. They are actually doing pretty well! The lettuce is about three inches or more tall. The shallots are sprouting like mad and should be ready to start cutting by next week some time. With luck, the lettuce will be ready for a first light picking in a couple of weeks. Maybe I can serve my sweetie a home grown salad for Valentine's Day. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Cheesemaking: I decided to go for broke and make a batch of Cambozola. It's a Gorgonzola/Camembert hybrid that we just love melted on fresh, hot bread. Since we have fresh hot bread nearly every day now, I figured I'd give that a try. It's also a cheese we can rarely find here in the grocery stores, and when we can find it, it's generally 12-14 dollars a pound. So economically, it's a very good candidate for home cheesemaking. If it works, I should be able to make a little over a pound of it for just a bit more than the cost of a gallon of milk.

Dark Days Challenge: I am still trying to settle on my DDC meal to document for this week. I'm leaning towards oriental food (something we eat a lot of and love) but I can't decide between chicken or pork based dishes. We have both local pork and chicken in the freezer right now, so I could do either. My sweetie is nursing a cold this weekend, though - so I think chicken would be a good idea. I can make him bunches of chicken soup (the roasting chicken we got from a local source here is about an 8 pounder, dressed, so there's plenty for several meals on that one!) and still have lots of meat left to make other dishes.

At any rate, I'll have pictures for all of this up at intervals over the weekend. I have some step by step on the Chicken Udon Soup I made tonight, but it's been a long day with the mead and wine bottling and nursing a sick husband, so it may have to wait till tomorrow!

Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese Update

Well, we opened it tonight, and about a third of the two pound wheel is already gone. I think that means it passed muster with the crew, so I'll be making some more in the next couple of days. Hooray for us, we actually made some pretty decent hard cheese!

The color was an almost startlingly bright white, the flavor was a nice semi-sharp with perhaps a little too much acid but not seriously out of character, and the texture was somewhat dry and flaky. (The book mentioned it would be dry-ish and flakey - that was fine by me.) We chose this cheese for our first hard cheese because it's ready in only 4 weeks, as opposed to at least three months for most of the other hard cheese recipes. I used the recipe for Farmhouse Cheddar in the cheese book listed at the bottom of the blog - so far it's been a winner! We're going to make another one or two cheddars in the next couple of weeks, plus a couple of camemberts and a couple of small bleus. I will probably need to make something pretty much every week in order to build up our "cheese cellar" to the point that we can have enough to use more often than once a month. I think it will be fun, though!

Here is a picture of the freshly opened cheese:

Recipe: Idaho Onion Soup - Dark Days Challenge

HEARTY IDAHO ONION SOUP (with ELK)
serves 4 - 5

2 lbs. elk (or buffalo, or beef) "osso bucco" (shank or leg steak)
2 large or 3-4 medium or small onions
1 large or two small carrots, chopped into largish chunks
1 cup diced celery, or 1/2 tsp celery seed, or 1/4 cup dried celery
1-6 cloves garlic (I used 6, we like garlic)
1-2 bay leaves
fresh herb sprigs - thyme, rosemary, etc.
6-8 whole peppercorns, optional
1 small bottle of beer, optional, your choice of style (here I'm using some wheat beer I made this fall)
1 Tbsp meat drippings, saved from the roasted meat, or 1 Tbsp olive oil to be used for sauteeing onions
salt to taste


This is a type of not-quite-classic French onion soup. Definitely winter comfort food! The flavor of homemade beef (or in this case, elk) stock is nothing like canned stock or that made from instant bullion. It has a complexity and depth of flavor that only slow roasting and slow cooking with aromatic vegetables and herbs can give. Because there is a fair bit of meat on the bones this makes a nice, light one pot meal with the addition of some bread and a salad. This recipe also finishes just as well in the crockpot, for those of us who have to be away all day and can't mind the stove.

Ingredients round up: Clockwise from high noon (okay, "high eleven-thirty"...) we have a bowl with some no-knead bread dough patiently doing its thing, a small bottle of home-made beer, three onions (storage sprouts and all), osso bucco elk leg shank steaks waiting to go into the oven, and one 2 lb. wheel of our inaugural farmhouse white cheddar cheese, ready to be opened and (hopefully) melted on top of the finished bread we'll be eating with the soup. I forgot to set out the herbs, spices and carrots for this picture, but they made it in later!



Roast the osso bucco in the oven at 400 degrees until nice and brown. If the meat looks like it might burn or become too dry before the bones are roasted, haul the whole thing out of the oven and cut the meat from the bones. Hold the meat aside until you assemble the stock, but roast the bones a bit more. The darker you can get the bones at this point (without burning them, of course) the richer the flavor and color of the stock will be when you are through. If you like the taste of roasted garlic and carrots and want to boost the flavor of the stock even more, throw them into the pan with the meat about thirty minutes before you take the pan out of the oven. Be sure to watch so the veggies roast but don't burn. Burnt garlic, in particular, tastes rather nasty.

If you want to use the crockpot method and don't have time to do all of this in the morning before you leave, try making the recipe up to this point the night before, then cool and refrigerate everything. The roasted meat and bones (and vegetables, if you decide to roast them first) should look something like this when you are finished.



Round up the rest of your stock ingredients, and set out the crockpot or stock pot you plan to cook everything in. Remove the meat from the roasting pan (reserving any drippings if you want to sautee the onions in them.) Place the roasted meat and bones into your crockpot or stock pot, adding enough water to cover all by a good couple of inches. Add the chopped carrot, garlic, celery or celery seed, the peppercorns and the herbs. Slice up the onions now into thin rings, throwing the clean skins and peels into the stock for flavor. Pour in the beer (I used it to deglaze the roasting pan first.) Put a lid on the crock pot or stock pot and let the whole thing simmer on a back burner for at least a good 6-8 hours or in the crockpot for 8-10 hours. If cooking on top of the stove, be sure to keep an eye on the liquid levels so you don't run dry.



(Don't wander off for an hour to read your favorite food blogs, and forget to plug your crockpot in, like I did. Oh, well, at least it's a long weekend! And, as I told myself when I discovered the problem, it could have been worse - I could have decided to take a nap.)

In a medium skillet, add the reserved fat drippings or the 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and sautee the onion rings until they are transluscent and lightly caramelized. (If you don't have enough meat drippings to make a good tablespoonful, add some olive oil to the pan.) At this point you can put the finished, cooled onions into a covered dish and refrigerate them until the stock is ready.



With the bulk of the work out of the way, you can now take some time to work on your bread. You want to time your recipe so that it comes out of the oven about half an hour before the stock is finished. Ideally, your bread should be well baked and "settled," but still fresh and warm when the time comes to assemble the meal. If you will be out of the house, but have a bread machine, you could start your favorite bread recipe in it now and set the timer so that it begins to bake right after you arrive home (for safety reasons, you probably don't want it to go through the bake cycle with no one there.)

Here's a picture of the finished loaf from that bowl of bread dough goo in the first picture. I've got to tell you, that no-knead bread recipe is amazing. It's quite simply become the backbone of our meal menu these days. It could hardly be any easier than it is. Mix three dry ingredients with enough water to make a wet dough, let sit for 12 hours or more, half-heartedly shape the loaf, let it rise again, and bake. If you spend more than 10 minutes, hands on, actually making the bread, you're probably doing it wrong. I've had the goal of baking all our own bread for years, but with the usual recipes I could never manage it often enough to keep up with the demand for fresh bread around here. With this recipe, finally, I can. And as you can see, the technique produces the most amazing crust...my husband goes into raptures every time a loaf comes out of the oven, and he's got pretty high standards for bread.



To serve, strain the meat stock, reserving the meat chunks and if you wish, the carrots (and, of course, the stock!) for the table. The garlic will most likely have been liquified by the roasting and long cooking, so if you can no longer find it, that's where it went! Dice the meat and any retained vegetables into manageable sizes (I like approximately 1/2" dices) and put them back into the pot. Remove the sauteed onions from the refrigerator and gently stir them into the very hot broth. You want the onions to remain as intact as possible, so don't stir too vigorously. Taste and adjust for seasoning - it will probably need some salt.

Slice your bread and sprinkle your choice of grated cheese on top (or use thin slices to cover each piece) then run the breads briefly through the toaster oven or under the broiler until the cheese has melted and begins to turn golden brown around the edges. Ladle the hot broth and vegetables into soup bowls and either float a slice of the cheese bread on the top to sop up juices until it becomes "spoonable," or serve the bread dry on the side for dipping.

If you have a locavore blog...

... and want a link on my site under Locavore Blogs, drop me a comment and let me know!

Recipe: Huckleberry Pots de Creme - Dark Days Challenge

HUCKLEBERRY AND VANILLA BEAN POTS DE CREME
serves 4 - 5

4 egg yolks (use 5 if any of the eggs are small)
3/4 cup whipping cream or heavy cream
3/4 cup half-and-half (make your own if necessary)
1/4 cup sugar (white or turbinado)
1/2 of a 5-6" vanilla bean, split
pinch of salt
6 Tbsp. sweetened Huckleberry jam, preserves or puree
4 - 5 four ounce ceramic ramekins or other oven safe small bowls or cups

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

You will also need small squares of aluminum foil to cover the tops of the ramekins, a deep oven safe casserole or other pot that all the ramekins can fit into, a four cup bowl or oversized pyrex measuring cup, and a one cup microwave safe bowl or cup. Oh, and a wire whisk or an electric hand blender with a whisking attachment.

Here are the ingredients: clockwise from high noon we have whole milk, farm-fresh eggs, Huckleberry puree, heavy whipping cream, white sugar, vanilla beans, as well as four small ceramic ramekins and a larger ceramic casserole. All of the ingredients except for the vanilla beans are local. Well, the huckleberries came from Northern Idaho, but we picked them ourselves while on summer vacation, so I think that counts!



Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, and use the edge of your knife to scrape out all the tiny, glistening black vanilla specks. Put your half-and-half into a one cup microwave oven safe cup, add the sugar, the pinch of salt, and stir the vanilla specks into it. Heat the half and half in a pyrex measuring cup in the microwave on high for about one minute, or until steamy hot but not boiling over. You can also use a small pot on the stove, but be sure to watch it and stir it constantly.



In your 1 quart bowl or oversized pyrex cup, beat the egg yolks until they are thick. Pour the hot half-and-half slowly into the egg yolks, beating them as you go with a whisk. Whisk in the rest of the heavy cream. Note: if you use a hand blender, beat the mixture on low to medium, not on high, or you may end up with egg yolk spattered on everything in sight.

(Not that I would know, of course. Because you do NOT see egg yolk spatters on everything in sight in the background of this picture. It is just your imagination.)



Pour the still-warm mixture into four or five 4 oz. ramekins, trying to avoid pouring in any of the foam from the whisking process. This is where mixing the custard in a large Pyrex cup comes in handy - the spout helps keep the foam back while you pour. If you have to, you can skim the foam off with a spoon, however.




Here is the fun part - drizzle one teaspoon of Huckleberry puree into each cup of custard. Yum, yum, looks good already, doesn't it? Yes, there will be some Huckleberry puree left. No, you may not eat it. Save it for spooning over the tops of the finished custards. Yes, I know I'm a meanie, but you'll thank me later.




Cover each pot de creme with a small square of aluminum foil. Put the smaller pots into your larger pot and fill the larger pot with enough hot water that it comes about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Now, put the whole thing into your oven for about 30 minutes.




The pots de creme are done when the edges are set but the middle still wiggles. Remove them from the oven, and let them cool enough to handle. Take them out of the larger pot, and allow them to sit on the counter, covered until they are near room temperature. Put them, still covered, into the fridge for 4-6 hours or overnight. That's it!



Serve cold with another dollop of Huckleberry puree. You can also double your caloric trouble if you like by whipping up a bit of the leftover heavy cream and dotting each pot with that as well.

Recipe: Baked Beans and Elk Short Ribs - Dark Days Challenge

Finally, here is a full recipe, pictures and all!

BAKED NAVY BEANS WITH ELK SHORT RIBS
Serves 4-5.

2.5-3 lbs short ribs - elk, buffalo or beef should all work fine
1 Tbsp. cooking oil
4 cups soaked Navy beans (approx 2 cups dry, soaked over night if possible)
2 small or 1 large onion, diced
3 -4 cloves of garlic, chopped
2-4 pieces of sliced bacon, chopped into 1 inch pieces
2 Tbsp. deli mustard
1/3 cup honey, brown sugar or molasses
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup fruit preserves, jam, puree or marmalade
2 cups tomato juice, or approx. 1 cup thick tomato sauce and 1 cup water
3 cups water
1 1/2 tsp. salt

You'll need a large, heavy skillet or pot to brown the ribs in. You'll also need a large crockpot for slow cooking or a large covered casserole for baking this dish in the oven.

Here are the main ingredients...starting clockwise from "high noon" we have a half-pint jar of Sunshine Marmalade, a quart jar of home-canned tomato juice, two small onions and a small head of garlic, a tub with some home-cured bacon made from local pork belly, a 2.5 lb package of elk short ribs, and a four-cup measuring cup with soaked navy beans.



First, rinse the short ribs, pat them dry, and brown them in 1 Tbsp. oil in a large, heavy skillet. Get them good and brown and even a little crispy around the edges. This adds flavor and also helps cook out a bit of the extra grease. Don't worry, there's still plenty of flavor left. And don't forget that you're going to add some chopped bacon to the dish as well, so a little less grease here is a good thing.



To keep yourself occupied while the ribs are browning, you can start dicing up the onion, garlic and bacon. Don't worry too much about dicing the garlic super fine - chunky is good enough - you just don't want to spoon up some beans and get a whole clove of garlic in that one bite. Well, maybe you do. But, I really don't - I'd rather spread all that yummy garlic around a bit.



Pour the soaked beans into the bottom of the pot. Sure, they'll float around after you add all the liquids, but I like starting them off in a neat pile in the bottom of the crockpot anyway.



Toss the diced onions, garlic and bacon in on top of the beans. Mmmmmm! In case you were wondering, so far everything in the pot is local. It's already starting to smell good - and we don't have everything in it yet!



Measure out the mustard, and put that in, too. This is some home-made mustard I put together a week or so ago. It's yellow mustard flour and some whole brown mustard seeds, with some vinegar, water and a bit of salt. You can use whatever mustard you like best, or whatever you have in your fridge. I bought the makings from Penzey's, so this isn't really local. Maybe that will change some day - I know mustard should grow well here.



Measure out the honey, and put that in. You could add more honey if you like, but I didn't want the beans to be overly sweet. Just a tiny bit of sweet with the savory onion and the tangy tomato is what I'm after here.



See! Local honey! Believe it or not, I got it at Sam's. What you can't see in this picture is that the honey was so thick I had to literally squeeeeeeze it out of the jug like toothpaste. It had been sitting in our storage room. I guess it is a little cool in there right now.



Pour 1/3 cup of Worcestershire sauce in over it all. You could probably use soy sauce if you don't have any Worcestershire, but I think you'll be missing some of the flavor. Nope, Worcestershire isn't local. But it's good stuff!



Pour or spoon 8 ounces of your favorite fruit jam, marmalade or puree into the pot. I'm using something I call Sunshine Marmalade. It's an apricot jam that's been pepped up with some citrus zest and finely diced fresh ginger. We like it much better than plain apricot jam, which often seems to taste a bit bland to me. This was made from some really lovely home-grown apricots our next door neighbors gave us last year.



By now the ribs should be good and browned on both sides (you did remember to flip them every few minutes, didn't you?) Drain the browned ribs a bit, and plop them right on top of all the other stuff you just put in the crock. Sprinkle the salt in now.



Pour the tomato juice and water over everything, and plug the crockpot in and cook for 10-12 hours on low, or put it all into a large covered dish in the oven at 300-325 degrees for about 4-5 hours. You want it to cook nice and slow so the beans can soak up all that good flavor floating around and the ribs can become falling-off-the-bone tender. Keep an eye on the liquid levels so the beans don't dry out.



Here's the final product! The rib meat was falling off the bones, and the beans came out savory and just a little sweet. I added a bit of Tabasco Chipotle sauce towards the end - just a few shakes - and I think it made the beans a lot more flavorful. I think one change I'll make next time is to marinade the elk ribs overnight - they were good and tender and tasty, but not quite as flavorful as I'd like. I think a nice garlicky wine marinade, with perhaps a bit of mustard added, would be just the ticket.

Salad Sprouts, Day 7

Things are moving along pretty well with the (hopefully) future salad patch. Nearly all the seeds have sprouted, and most are getting their first true leaves. Some of the sprouts were getting a bit tall, so I took the cover off both seedling starters and moved the lights down to just about 2 inches above the tops of the leaves. I also set up some simple reflectors with aluminum foil to make sure the seedlings get all the light they can. I'm not too worried about the longer stems - I'll just bury them up to their leaves when I transplant, and all will be well.

This weekend I decided to finish getting my freezers cleaned out. We had a really busy summer this year and although I managed to keep up with some of the fruit processing, a lot of it just got cleaned, de-seeded and put into freezer bags. As a result, our freezer was starting to run out of room! So I hauled out bags and bags of frozen fruits and made purees, jams, syrups and canned whole fruits over the weekend. We now have about 100 jars of various fruit things on the counter. It was worth it, though, if only for the fact that I found four one-gallon bags of Idaho Huckleberries we hadn't eaten yet from the last time we went pickin'. Huckleberries look like blueberries, but the flavor is many times more intense. Think of the most luscious blueberries you've ever had, and add to that the flavor of the very best, sun ripened blackberries, and you'll come close. If you've never had Huckleberries (REAL huckleberries, not the so-called "garden huckleberries" you can buy seeds for in the catalogs) then you are seriously missing out. Take my word for it - you must fix this - and the sooner the better. Huckleberries are one of the very best things about living in this part of the country.

With what I canned this weekend, plus all the jarred fruit stuffs we already have in the storage room, I think we probably now have enough jam to last us about three or four years. I'm going to have to seriously find new things to do with some of our fruit this summer, or we'll soon have a jam backlog that no amount of biscuits can fix.

Recipe: Hmmm, Corned Elk?

Now that I've found some good local sources for elk and buffalo meat, I've started thinking about all the things I could do with it. One of the areas of cooking that I've been experimenting with is making our own deli-type sandwich meats. Corned Beef is one of the deli meats I've been making for years. It's very, very easy, and much tastier than the corned beef in the store. So, I wonder - how would it work with Elk or buffalo meat? Would it be as good? Better? Well, I plan to give it a try!

In the meantime, here's the basic corned beef recipe we always use:

* Morton's TenderQuick salt - navy blue bag in the spice section, usually on the bottom shelf.
* Lean uncooked beef roast - that's the beauty of making your own - you can use *good* beef
* water - plain cold tap water is fine
* "Pickling spice" (or if you can't find that, mix peppercorns, red pepper flakes, crushed bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon chunks, whole coriander and mustard seed in a combination that pleases you.)

Find a large, non metallic container with a lid. A gallon glass jar or a couple of half gallon canning jars with lids work well. Or you can use a small, clean, plastic food grade bucket, or even a large, deep ceramic or plastic bowl with a makeshift cover. Just remember that whatever you use, it has to be deep enough for the meat to stay submerged in brine, and the whole thing needs to be able to fit into your refrigerator.

Cut the meat into chunks, or leave it whole. Chunks 4 inches on a side or thereabouts cure faster than a whole roast, but it's up to you whether to cut the roast smaller or not. Rinse the meat in clean, cool water and put it into your clean non-metallic container. Mix enough brine in a 1:8 ratio of Morton's salt to water to fully cover the meat, and pour it in. Throw in a handful of spices, put the lid on, and set it in the fridge to cure. Chunks will be ready to eat in about 4 days, but larger pieces might take up to 10. Fish out what you want, cook it however you like, and leave the rest in the brine for later. Up to a point, it just keeps getting more flavorful.

That's it! Corned beef at home is so simple and fast there's no reason to pay exorbitant prices for fatty, low quality corned brisket packed in brine at the store. Making your own means you control how much fat is in the final product, and also how spicy it is. You don't even have to add spices if you don't like them, it's your choice and won't affect the curing at all. You can also use plain kosher or canning salt instead of the Morton's, but it won't look like, and may not taste like, the corned beef you've had in the past. But if you have a thing about nitrates, give it a try on a small scale and see how you like it.

Wow, that was fast!

It's been just three days since I started some cold-season greens for the salad table I"m working on, and already sprouts are poking up out of the seed starting cells! The lettuces and the chinese cabbage seem to be the first out of the gate, followed closely by the Bright Lights Chard. For onions, I dug through our very last of the shallots from Fall 2006, and found many that were still firm and sproutable. So I took a couple of dozen of them and pressed them lightly into some moist potting soil so they could begin to take root while I finish putting the main planting boxes together. I checked today and found they are almost all sprouting new white roots - I can't believe these things are over a year old. I'm beginning to think this project just might work out after all!

I've been doing some research, and have decided to modify my setup a bit. I'm going to put a couple of shallow storage tubs on the plastic table, and inside those tubs, set four rows of cut pvc pipe with drain holes. That's to form a water and air reservoir for the grow bags I'm planning to set on top. Each bag will straddle a pipe, with the perforated ends of each bag sagging/dipping down over the perf pipe into the water. The tubs I'm planning to use are clear, which might cause an algae problem after a while, but will also make seeing which tubs need refilling a bit easier. I'm using grow bags because I can swap them in and out of the table and light setup as needed, as plants become too tired to produce or try to go to seed on me - that way what is under the lamps is always fresh and at its peak. If I planted directly in the tubs, I'd have to dump the whole thing and replant, and that's harder to do, messier, and lowers overall productivity.

I have four kinds of spinach, 8 kinds of lettuce, some Red Russian Kale, Bright Lights Chard, and Tah Tsai chinese greens in the seed starting units. As soon as these are out, I'll likely start some herbs. The salad greens should be ready to transplant in a couple more weeks. By then, I should have the table, watering reservoirs and lights all set up and ready to receive them. I figure with luck, a month after that I'll be eating home grown salads again. Crossing my fingers, and I'll be sure to post pictures and updates as things progress!

Major progress this week!

After taking on the "Dark Days Eat Local Challenge" I realized, too late, that we'd mostly eaten all the local meats I'd bought this fall. Ooops. So, yesterday and today I got on the phone to some of the folks I'd bought from earlier in the year and asked them if they still had any meats for sale. I also went to work online, trying to dig up some new suppliers. Long story short - I scored! We have one humongous roasting chicken and two nice pork roasts sitting in our freezer right now, plus some elk burger and elk stew meat on the way. What I managed to round up in the last 24 hours will be enough to make about 30 local meat meals!

As an added bonus, while searching I discovered some information that should help me track down some Idaho-grown wild rice, and perhaps even some more locally produced cheese! It turns out there is a large commercial cheese plant in Twin Falls that uses milk from local dairies to turn out all sorts of every day cheeses like cheddar, jack, and colby. I'm going to call their office tomorrow and see what brands their cheese is sold under so I can look for it in grocery stores here in town. This company is a subsidiary of a national cheese and dairy company, but the plant is here and they use all locally produced milk, so I'm counting it as local. We're making cheese here at home, too, but our first wheel of farmhouse cheddar won't be ready for another three weeks or so. (Yes, that red thing in the picture is it - lopsided and waxed rather awkwardly, but we hope tasty nonetheless!) It will definitely be nice to be able to get local ready-made cheeses to fill in the gaps between homemade batches.

The next major challenge is finding cooking oil...