Failure Part 1: Cashew Cheese

Lest you devoted readers begin to think that my time in the kitchen and in the creative world of cookery is all sunflowers and rainbows, let me share with you a two-part story of failure (Part 2 to come tomorrow, so stay tuned).

The first part begins with an e-conversation I had with our friend Kroy, who had been living in India at this awesome sustainable community Sadhana Forest, where he'd participated in this vegan cooking workshop that he told me about. In the workshop, they'd made a cashew cheese, which he raved about. And so I thought I'd try it. The recipe was very straightforward:

Vegan Cashew Cheese spread

This recipe makes a healthy cholesterol free cheese which tastes amazingly like cheese. It needs to be made before hand as it takes 2 days to get the mature cheese.

INGREDIENTS
½ cup wheat berries (whole wheat grains that have not been milled)
1 cup whole or broken raw cashews (or any other nut)
Salt, pepper and herbs to taste

METHOD
Wash the wheat berries and soak them in a jar in 1 cup drinking water. Leave this jar open for 24 hours in a cupboard or keep it lightly covered. In case of very cold temperatures it could be left a little longer.

The water will turn a little yellowish or serum colored and will have a sweet fermented smell after 24 hours. (This is called Rejeuvelac and is supposed to be a very healthy drink, which you can make and drink everyday.) Pour this rejeuvelac into a glass. If desired another cup of water make be added to the wheat berries to produce more rejeuvelac after another 24 hours. It can be drunk or used to make still more cheese. After 2 such uses the wheat berries are usually thrown away.

Grind the raw cashews to form a powder (it does not need to be absolutely fine) and then put this into a jar, which has at least twice the volume of the cashews. Pour Rejeuvelac over the cashews so that they are covered with it. There may be some extra rejeuvelac, which can be drunk or thrown away. The whole mixture will now ferment and grow so if the jar is too small it can overflow. Do not cover the jar or cover lightly.

After about 6 – 8 hours the cheese is ready. Add salt, pepper and herbs or other seasonings. Serve.

So, I soaked the wheatberries:
Ground the cashews:
And combined the cashews and the wheatberry juice:
Although everything seemed to be in order, the cheese somehow never really set and so I ended up leaving it out a little longer before refrigerating it. After another day or so in the fridge, it began to have a ricotta-like consistency and definitely took on a flavor all its own. I thought I might have gotten it to work (!), but within an hour of that potentially-successful tasting, I tried it again only to find that it had totally soured. The whole thing tasting more like sour milk than cheese and it only increased in sour-ness over the next couple of hours. I was a little sad to have had my experiment fail, but I sucked it up, washed the cheese down the sink, threw the wheatberries in the compost bin, and went on my merry way.

What did I do wrong? Any ideas?

(And any ideas on what the second part of my failure might be?...)

The culinary adventures begin...

After a full day's work on Sunday, I decided it was time to dig into the yumminess of that CSA box. So, I went downstairs to the kitchen with an open mind and some stocked-up creativity. Out of those two ingredients, along with the help of Harmony Valley, I came up with this:

Although the photo doesn't fully capture the excitement of this plate, our dinner included roasted root vegetables (burdock, sunchokes, parsnips, sweet potato, onions); a sorrel, ramps, and sunchoke gratin; sauteed asparagus with lemon and garlic; a quinoa, black radish, carrot, jalapeno, and apple salad (a slight modification of the recipe in this post) and an overwintered spinach salad with cranberry walnut dressing. The new vegetables took a little bit of adjusting to, along with a little research into cooking times and so on, but I would say everything turned out yummily! I'd love to share more specific recipes if anyone wants them (and I'd be really happy if anyone wanted them)...

Return of the vegetables

After a long, long winter, fresh local vegetables are now back in my life! Our CSA (community supported agriculture) share started today, so for the rest of the summer and fall, every other Saturday, we'll be picking up a box full of delicious organic vegetables from a local farm, along with recipes and information about the Wisconsin agricultural scene. I can't wait to try out all this exciting stuff. Today's box included: red sunchokes, rhubarb, sweet overwintered parsnips (all seen in first photo), and chives, ramps, sorrel, burdock, and a black radish (all in second photo), along with some decorative willow branches and overwintered spinach.



As soon as we find some time to cook, culinary adventures are ours! If anyone has any good recipes to share, please do pass them along!

Yom Huledet Same'ach!

I hit the quarter-century mark last week, and although the end of the semester always conspires against my birthday festivities, I managed to get in some good old-fashioned celebrating and happiness anyway.

On Wednesday, the night before my birthday, my two favorite Daves came over and cooked me and Justin one of the best meals I've had in a really long time. The menu: macadamia nut-encrusted tofu steaks, roasted asparagus, roasted new potatoes, and Sticky Date Pudding with Toffee Sauce for dessert (Justin models a plate with the entrees in the second photo). It was high-class and delicious dining, to say the least, and I couldn't have grinned more cheerily about having such awesome (Wash U-transplant) friends here in Madison:




Then, on my birthday itself, after a day of breakfast at our favorite diner, a quick bike ride to a lakeside park, and lots of phone conversations with friends and family (and some work, of course!), Justin was going to take me to dinner. He said we had to catch the bus by 6:30, and that he'd told our friends the Barkers that we'd stop by to say hi to them and their baby, James, on our way to the bus stop. Of course, when we got to the Barkers' place, what should I find but a surprise potluck party just for me! After some tears of happiness and overwhelmed-ness (the second set of such tears for the day), I proceeded to explore the AMAZING spread my amazing friends had prepared for me. Justin had prompted them by suggesting that I love "colorful dishes with lots of vegetables and/or fruits." And everyone was in their best form, with a meal that included, going clockwise around the plate, staring at 12 o'clock: yellow rice with zucchini and vegetables, caramelized beet and goat cheese pizza, roasted potatoes and white beans, tricolor rotini pasta salad, spicy bulgur pilaf, noodles with tofu, artichoke brownies, fresh guacamole with tortilla chips and (not pictured) two cakes--orange chocolate and raspberry chocolate! It was just right.


Me, looking happy and well-fed, with baby James:

And the fun continued for days to come, as I received so much e-love and tele-love and postal-love from my friends and family near and far: a story written just for me, home-baked lemon bars, music of the bluegrass and indie varieties, Alice Waters' cookbook, gardening tools, coupons for gardening help, craft scissors, a super-cool pencil photo craft, a vintage beaded purse, gift certificates, thank you cards, homemade candles, and lots of hugs.

As I said to Justin after reading one particularly poignant card, "People really do like me!"

This reminder couldn't have come at a better time. Thank you to everyone who made me feel so special, both with material objects and with your presence in my life.

Making Frozen Burritos

Justin really loves burritos. He and his brother Jason spent their childhoods lusting over tortilla-wrapped goodness. Although burritos are generally a speedy thing to make, in our whirlwind work of school and stress, Justin particularly appreciates the quickness and efficiency of a frozen burrito. Out of the freezer, into the microwave, and into the belly in five minutes flat. But the Amy's burritos we usually buy, although delicious, are also pretty pricey.

So, for a while now, I've had it in my head that I would try my hand at my own frozen burritos to give to Justin as a gift. I scouted the internet for ideas on how to do this, but finding little of use, I ventured out on my own into the world of burrito making. Here's what I found: It's pretty easy to do. Just gather your ingredients (whatever makes your tummy happy), wrap them up in some tortillas, place the wrapped burritos on a cookie sheet so that they're not touching each other (otherwise, they stick together, like Jeff Daniels's tongue to that pole in Dumb and Dumber), and put in the freezer for a few hours or overnight. Once they're good and frozen, you can take them off the space-hogging cookie sheets and put them in a ziploc bag, all piled together. After that, at your leisure, you can just remove a burrito, put it on a plate, microwave for 2ish minutes, and have yourself a great snack! Justin has found that because of some mysterious alchemy during the freezing process, the tortillas hold together really well after re-heating (even better than fresh!), even though I didn't do such a great job of wrapping them in the first place.

So, without further ado, photographs of my burrito-making process (although I'm sort of embarassed by the mediocrity of my food photographs, especially as compared to Heidi Swanson's of my favorite cooking/food photography blog, 101cookbooks):

My first burrito in the process of composition: refried beans thinned with soy milk, frozen corn, black beans, and mashed sweet potatoes creamed with a little sour cream.
Scrambled eggs and fried pieces of Gimme Lean, ready to go into my breakfast burritos (I made lunch and breakfast versions, on both white flour and whole wheat tortillas):

In most of the lunch burritos, I put this mashed sweet potato mixture, which also had some black beans, soy milk, cumin, coriander, garlic, cayenne pepper, and salt mixed into it. In the colander you can see the wealth of fresh cilantro I used in just about every burrito:

Here are the refried beans and sauteed onions and garlic that I used in most of the burritos, along with my two piles of tortillas (both wheat and white versions from Trader Joe's--which are among the only tortillas I've found that don't have partially hydrogenated vegetable oils):

And finally, the homemade salsa that was in all the burritos (and, I think, the real key to their yumminess). The salsa contains Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes, fresh diced onion, lots of fresh cilantro, a few chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper:

A photo of the whole work station:

I just realized I don't actually have photos of the finished product. Sorry. But, happily, Justin loved his surprise frozen burritos and has been enjoying them for the past few weeks!