The Mud, the Blood, and the Beer

Allerton Adventures
We went back to Allerton to hike some of the trails. This time, we brought proper footwear. We forgot mosquito repellent, though, and that brought about our downfall.

We started at the trailhead beyond the sunken garden, the spot we turned around last time.

On either side of the trailhead, they planted something that looked like lantana. The flowers bloomed in little clusters, what the sciencey folks call an inflorescence, and the leaves were small and fern-like. I think it might be a type of yarrow, but I don't know.

On the trail, we mostly saw Red Oaks, Swamp White Oaks, and Horse Chestnuts. Like all Illinois trees, they were tall and terrifying.

About half a mile in, we reached the Dying Centaur.

The trail was muddy and the mosquitos thick before we got to the Centaur. After we continued, the forest became boggy with small lakes standing among the trees. The trail was so muddy, even the deer had trouble keeping their footing.

We eventually came to a point where the water completely covered the trail as far as we could see and the mosquito clouds were so dense, we couldn't stop moving for pictures or piddles, so we flailed our way down a smaller trail to the road.

We followed the road for another half mile or so to see the Sun Singer.

This monumental statue of Phoebus Apollo had a miniature Pegasus on his helmet.

And around the pedestal, a base relief of the Muses.

We didn't take any pictures from the front because he was, shall we say, pretty much naked, and this is a family-oriented blog.

More very pretty flowers had been planted around the monument. I learned these from Dad on my last trip to Austin: Coneflowers.

And these are Butterfly Weed?

Then, on the mile and a half walk back to the car, it started raining. Aside from the mosquitos, the humidity, the mud, and the rain, we really enjoyed this hike. We'll definitely go back!

Blues, Brews, and BBQ 2013
We met Amy and Sebastian by the Blind Pig and walked over to the festival. Everyone was there. We saw yuppies, hippies, hipsters, trailer trash, chicago trash, bikers, kickers, students, and blues musicians.

They had a motorcycle show.

And this weekend coincided with the first annual Corvette Festival.

Our first goal after gaining admittance (it was free, but they hassled us for donations), was obtaining the eponymous Brews. Ignore the advertising on the sides of the collectible mugs. We started with Blue Moon. Then I moved to Crispin Hard Cider.

As soon as I got my beer, a band started playing a cover of Jimmy Reed's Big Boss Man and I knew that everything was right with the world. Except for the weather.

This being Illinois, they had the obligatory Sweet Corn Booth.

We all opted for Barbecue, to round out the trifecta. Sebastian got BBQ Nachos and Amy an Italian Sausage Slider, both from Chester's BBQ. Aine and I got the Tips and Taters from King Biscuit. That's right. King Biscuit.

Then we ate barbecue and drank beer while listening to The Blues (Chicago Blues, of course, remember where we are) on one of the four stages. Pretty much everything the festival promised.

The bass player in this band had the most epic tassels of all time. John Wayne ain't got nothing on his fringe game.

We had a great time.

But then it started raining. Again. Only one of us came prepared.

Parting Shot
I am Catladriel. Queen of the Groceries. Beautiful and terrible as the Noms. All shall love me and despair.

Don't Stop 'til You Get a Neuf

a.k.a. How I Win at Cheese
I finally got a clean break. The liquid animal rennet made all the difference. Since I'm in a better mood, I explain How Cheese Works.

The Basics
Scientists call milk a complex biological fluid. Here's why. Milk is a solution, basically. The serum (whey) contains protein (caseins), sugar (lactose), and fat (butter). To make cheese, you curdle the milk and drain the whey. In sciencey terms, you precipitate the casiens from the solution.

Proteins consist of long, long chains of amino acids. The amino acid chains get precisely folded into specific shapes to perform a specific job. Imagine a knitted hat: the long thread of yarn has been knitted and purled into a shape that keeps your head warm on chilly days. If you took a pair of scissors and snipped the yarn in a few places, the hat would unravel into a tangled, useless wad of yarn. The tiny scissors we use to snip proteins are called enzymes. This unravels (denatures) the protein in milk (casein) and it clumps together into wads we call curds.  

The Process
First I diluted .25 tsp of calcium chloride in .25 cups of cold water and added that to the milk. Caseins use calcium like glue, so if you need them to clump together into curds, you need calcium. Raw milk and pasteurized milk have the same amount of calcium, however the heat used in pasteurization changes the chemical makeup of the calcium, making it unsticky (insoluble). If your calcium isn't sticky, it won't glue the caseins together. Raw milk proponents argue pasteurization makes calcium more difficult for the human digestive system to absorb (it doesn't stick to your ribs).

I used .25 cups of buttermilk as a starter. Buttermilk is a fermented dairy product. Which sounds gross. Back in the old days, when people had cows, buttermilk was the liquid left over after churning butter. It got its bacterial culture from the milk pail or the butter churn or wherever. These days we pasteurize cow's milk to kill the bacteria then add the bacteria back in to clabber it (Clabbered milk is thick and sour: yogurt and buttermilk are both clabbered milks). Thanks to technology, we can now do with a complex process what we used to do with a simple process.

The bacteria used in cultured buttermilk, Streptococcus lactis, does what all Strep bacteria do: it eats sugar and poops out lactic acid. When used as a starter, the buttermilk bacteria lower the pH of the milk. The simplest definition of acid is any chemical with extra hydrogens that pop off the molecule and float around free as you please. You measure the strength of an acid with pH. pH is an inverse log of hydrogen concentration. All that means is the lower the number, the more hydrogens and the stronger the acid.

Why do we care? Rennet is the enzyme (scissors) that snips the protein (yarn). Hydrogens act like little Energizer batteries that speed up the enzyme. Milk comes in the jug with a pH of 6.7 to 6.5, but rennet works best at a pH of 6.0. I added the buttermilk and brought the milk to room temperature to make the S. lactis happy. Once they were happy, they started eating lactose and pooping out lactic acid, lowering the pH. Then I added the rennet.

After that, it's just a waiting game. I let the pot sit at room temperature for 12 hours before checking the curd.

Here's a quick overview of what just happened:

1. Added calcium and buttermilk to the milk.
2. Brought it up to room temperature.
3. Added the rennet.
4. Let it sit for twelve hours.

The Results
Then I checked for a clean break:

The curd was actually more firm than it looks in the picture. I cut it into cubes and ladled it into some sterilized cheesecloth.

I let it sit for a while to drain the excess whey.

Then hung it in the fridge overnight to drain the rest.

The next day, I folded 2 tsp of salt into the cheese and enjoyed it on a Triscuit.

It tasted vraiment superb. This Neufchatel has the consistency of cream cheese or one of your soft cheeses like Chevre or Skinny Cow or Boursin. William Lawrence (of New York) started marketing cream cheese in the 1870s after messing up a batch of Neufchatel. True Neufchatel (made in Normandy) is aged for over two months so that a soft rind of mold forms on the outside like Brie or Camembert.

What's Next?
The next cheese Dr. Fankhauser has us make is a hard cheese. Like cheddar. But first, I'll have to build my own cheese press. And buy some cheese wax.

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm

Jabbo Goes to Africa

A friend of ours shared these two recipes. Both are muy delicioso.

West African Peanut Soup
This dish originates in Mali, where it's called Maafe (French) or Tigadenena (Bamana). It traveled to the US on slave ships and the name changed to Virginia Peanut Soup.

I used the recipe from Cookie and Kate:
http://cookieandkate.com/2013/west-african-peanut-soup/

It sounds a little gross, at first, but I was assured by said friend as well as a renowned papyrologist that it would be worth my while. It smelled gross: like peanut butter and chicken broth. But I served it over brown rice and garnished it with peanuts and it's one of the best dishes we've tried.

It's supposed to be vegan, but I used chicken broth. The available chicken broth at our grocery store has less sodium and cholesterol than the available vegetable broth, which sort of defeats the point. I could technically make my own vegetable broth, but who wants to spend that much time in the kitchen, am I right? Also, we used kale instead of collard greens, because kale is awesome.

Moroccan Chicken
This is a basic North African Tagine that uses eggplant and chicken. I cut this recipe in half and used a pound and a half of boneless thigh meat.

It uses basic spices, but in a distinct North African blend that makes this taste pretty exotic.

Here are the recipes:
http://www.eatgood4life.com/2013/01/moroccan-chicken.html
http://homecooking.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/r/blv291.htm

The completed dish tasted a little sweet. More sweet than savory, in fact, but that's common for North African cuisine, I think. I liked it. Aine liked it not as much as I did. But we'll probably do this one again.

By the way, eggplant basically tastes like a purple squash (or cucumber), although it's the same genus as the potato and the tomato. It stays firmer after stewing than squash does, so I might substitute this next time I need squash in a dish.

This Week for Lunch
Not African. Italian. A slightly modified Caprese Sandwich, based on the salad from Capri. The basic ingredients are whole wheat bread, pesto, basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes. We smear the pesto on the top bun like a condiment. Schnucks was out of fresh basil, so I used some crinkly Savoy Spinach. Also, Aine doesn't like tomatoes, so she substitues cukes.

A Taste of Texas

These are the taco meat and salsa recipes I use. I got the salsa recipe from a girl I work with and I found the taco meat in a Google search. I've modified both recipes a bit after making them several times. I've typed out my version, but I'm including the originals to give credit where credit is due.

Originals
http://www.food.com/recipe/taco-meat-55575
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/01/restaurant-style-salsa/

Taco Meat
Recipe:

• 1 lb ground beef
• .25 cup flour
• 1 tbl chili powder
• 1 tsp salt
• .5 tsp onion powder
• .5 tsp garlic powder
• .5 tsp paprika
• .25 tsp cumin
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro (cut off the stems, finely chopped)
• .5 cup of water
• 1 lb new potatoes or yukon golds (skin on, chopped very small)

Directions:

1. Mix the beef, potato, and all the spices together like meatloaf.
2. Add the water to the pan before the beef.
3. Cook it until the beef is done and the taters are soft.

Note: I use whole wheat flour. Tapioca flour is a little sweet and adds an interesting dimension (it works if you're entertaining someone who can't eat gluten).

Salsa
Recipe:

• 28 oz can whole roma/plum tomatoes (with basil)
• 2x 10 oz can Rotel (original)
• .5 yellow onion
• 2 cloves garlic (2 heaping tsp chopped)
• 2 med jalapeno (seeds and all)
• .25 tsp sugar
• .5 tsp salt
• .5 tsp cumin
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro (cut off the stems)
• 1 tbl lime juice

Directions:

1. Coarsely chop all the ingredients and combine in a food processor.
2. Process to desired consistency.
3. Put it in a bowl.

Note: Drain excess water from the tomatoes before adding them. You don't have to, but it makes the final salsa watery.

Texas Pride

I forgot to mention this in my Anniversary Weekend post. We were on our way out of Monticello, when I saw this from the road. I had Aine pull over so I could get a picture.

Up here in the Monsanto Fields of the North, a Lone Star shines.

Results Not Typical

So, Cheesemaking 2013 has been a debacle. I've tried four times to make neufchatel, the beginner rennet cheese. I haven't achieved a clean break once.

I followed Dr. Fankhauser's instructions to the letter. No dice. However, I'm using store-bought milk and rennet tablets (both of which, he says, are okie dokie). After scouring his site for possible causes of my failure, I realized he uses fresh goat milk, straight from the teat. And he makes his own rennet.

Here's what I've learned so far:

1. I let my milk sit overnight for the curd to form, as he suggests, but you really only need a couple hours to form a curd. 
2. Rennet tablets are designed for custard, not for cheese. For cheese you need liquid rennet. Liquid rennet has 80% chymosin and 20% pepsin. Chymosin comes from the fourth stomach of a calf where it curdles digested cow's milk. You can find pepsin in any stomach, it chops up proteins and digests food. The word pepsin comes from the Greek word pepsis, or digestion. Hence, peptic ulcer and Pepto-Bismol. Rennet tablets are 80% pepsin. They are not as strong and don't form the curd as cleanly.
3. It takes time to culture the milk. I'm using active buttermilk as a culture. Dr. Fankhauser suggests warming the milk and buttermilk, then adding the rennet right away. I think you're supposed to add the live culture, then let it sit for a while before adding rennet.
4. Store-bought milk is nearly pointless. Pasteurization heats the milk enough to kill bacteria. However, the bacteria gives milk and cheese made from that milk its flavor. Also, pasteurization wrecks the calcium content of milk, so that to make cheese, you have to add calcium to get the curd to form correctly. Homogenization mixes the fat evenly through milk, to give it a uniform (homogeneous) texture. This also adversely affects flavor and curd formation. 
5. Most serious cheese-makers online only use raw milk. So, I'm going to try again with store-bought milk. But I think I need to find a raw milk hook-up if I want to do this long term.

According to the Fankhauser website and instructions in the Junket Rennet box (written by Fankhauser), you need these ingredients:

You bring 1 gallon of milk and 1/4 cup of buttermilk with an active bacterial culture up to room temperature.

Then mix 1/4 rennet tablet in a 1/4 cup of cold water and add that to the cultured milk and let it sit overnight.

The next morning, you should get a clean break. The good doctor says if you don't, let it sit for another 12 hours. I've tried 4 times and not gotten a clean break.

I finally bought some decent cheese cloth, calcium chloride, and liquid rennet. If this next go doesn't make cheese, we're dropping the cheese experiment and we're going to start pickling.