Vodka Caviar

Last week I decided to show some people the awesomeness that is alcoholic "caviar."

Now this is not some fish caviar, rather little liquid balls that are made with the help of two chemicals, sodium alginate and calcium chloride. For some reason when they react, they harden. when you drop a sodium alginate solution into a calcium chloride bath, you are left with balls that have a fish roe like shell on the outside, but remaining liquid on the inside.

To make it we took some vodka and added berry juice. In past attempts we found out that alcohol alone is too strong to allow the reaction to occur, so it needs to be diluted.

We then dissolved the sodium alginate in the mixture, and added calcium chloride to a second bowl filled with water. Unfortunately we were not sober enough to calculate the correct amounts of each chemical, and went with more of a guess and check method.


Here you can see the three bowls, the one on the left with vodka and sodium alginate, the one in front with the calium chloride solution, and the one in back with plain water to wash the balls after the process is complete. (calcium chloride doesn't taste so good)



In the end they turned out pretty delicious, though I think we added a bit to much sodium alginate because the vodka mixture was very thick.



Here's a video of the caviar creation in action - its also a great party trick!



If you want to try this on your own you can buy the necessary chemicals here
http://www.willpowder.net/products.html

Beef

Somehow I had no finals this semester. It left me with a big empty week laying out in front of me. How did I respond? By taking field trips! I went to the dairy farm twice, to a creperie, planted a vegetable garden, and spent a day learning about butchery at Four Mile River Farm. I felt like it was my job as a responsible meat eater to understand where my meat was coming from and to really understand the link between live cows and filet mignon. In a world with meat presented on styrofoam trays topped in cellophane, it is easy to forget that meat is life. There is a huge disconnect between a cut and where it comes from on a cows anatomy. We rarely think about a live animal and our food source at the same time. In case you are curious, here is a chart detailing that information.


This separation does not exist at Four Mile River Farm. We arrived early in the morning and entered the chilled processing room. There a side of beef was hung by a hook and broken down into all of its various cuts. What really amazed me is the amount of artistry and acquired knowledge that go into the process. The lead butcher has been doing it for 50 years and he was like a ballerina with his knife moving swiftly and precisely. Now I understand why we pay more for meat produced on a small scale. No machine could duplicate the finesse with which this man worked.



The other amazing part was how much respect the crew had for the animal. These steer were raised on pasture by someone who knew them by name. This respect continued after the animal's life had been taken. No parts of the beast went to waste! The organs went into a premium dog food mix that was sold direct to buyers at the farm. Every last scrap of muscle was pulled from the bone to go into the twice-ground meat. I expected to leave the experience cringing into vegetarianism, but my time at four mile river farm really cemented my love for good meat. After witnessing the beef industry on a very personal small-scale level, I can't imagine buying meat in a cellophane package again. I do however look forward to meeting other local meat providers and getting to know them and their product well. This ended up being a very powerful experience.

Check out at www.fourmileriverfarm.com

Source 4 Cake: Proof I haven't done anything in 3 weeks

Last week was finals, of which I had none, leaving me with basically nothing to do. So I decided to make a cake. Since the Valentines one turned out so well I decided that it was time to move up to the big leagues and find a significantly more difficult project. Anna, my cake decorating buddy from last time came over, and we decided to do a cake in the shape of a Source 4, a theater lighting instrument. Our plan was to make a full size replica in cake form.


To begin, we needed an actual light in order to get the dimensions for our project. Source 4's are around 2 feet tall, which we thought was somewhat unreasonable for a free standing cake, so we attached at PVC dowel to a piece of plywood to be the spine of our cake. The plywood was then covered in aluminum foil for sanitary reasons.


Next came the cakes. My estimate was that each cake would be 2-3 inches thick (WRONG!), requiring us to make 12 cakes. We used a basic yellow cake recipe, because we decided that strength was going to be much more important than flavor, though the cake did end up tasting good as well.


Here are our cakes. You may note that there were only 8- our plan was to cut the 9x13 cakes into smaller pieces for the thinner areas of the light. The next step was to flatten the tops of all our cakes, and start stacking. We carved it in sections of around 3 cakes at a time, and placed cardboard squares between every couple of layers for support. Between each layer we spread chocolate frosting- unfortunately not homemade.



We realized pretty quickly that the cakes were not actually 2 inches thick, and that we were not going to reach our goal of 2 feet. We also decided to keep the cake wider than the actual light because it was harder to carve than we had expected, and we didn't want to waste too much cake. Here is the cake will all of the layers.

The next step was to frost the cake to get it ready for fondant. Once again we used store bought frosting. Quick side note: not only did I have nothing to do last week, but I also had an unreasonable amount of meal points left, which is what allowed us to purchase all the ingredients we needed along with a Brita water pitcher and basically a lifetime supply filter replacements.



The frosting did not turn out that pretty, since it was only there as a glue for the fondant. We also removed the top two layers of cake since they were significantly smaller than the others and we thought it would be easier to put fondant on them separately.

Next came the biggest challenge- the fondant. We made our own with marshmallows because it is easier and cheaper than purchasing it. The recipe we used can be found here. We think our marshmallows were having some issues, because the fondant did not come out nearly as durable as it had for the valentines cake. The other major problem was that we needed to make it black. Doing a bit of research on the internet, I found out we either needed to buy black food coloring powder, prepared black fondant, or possibly add black icing to our fondant. Unfortunately, even after calling nearby bakeries, we were not able to find any of these ingredients and did not have time to order online.

Instead we decided to experiment with different mixtures of food coloring, all of which failed. We went with this greenish blue color because we thought we could possibly get the fondant darker on a large scale and then gave up partway through.


Here I am rolling out the fondant to place over the cake - note the color of my hands from all the food coloring experiment. The fondant was not nearly as sturdy as last time, and when we began to place it over the cake it started to fall apart, requiring us to do significant patching on the sides.

We then added on the top layers, also covered in fondant, and decorated the cake. The shutters were made from pieces of cardboard covered in aluminum foil and then fondant.



We even made a safety cable out of a necklace covered in fondant, and placed a C clamp on top for effect. (Had the cake actually been 2 feet tall then it would have gone all the way up to the clamp, but between the thinner cakes and the weight of the cakes and frosting we made it around 18 inches)

A tale of Mango-Ginger Scones

Have you ever gotten to that point where too much of a good thing can be a stressful thing? The fruit and veggie co-op gave us mangoes two weeks in a row recently. I shouldn't complain. I really really love mangoes. Still, it was distressing when we had 3 mangoes going past their prime on the bottom of our fruit basket. I had decided days before that the mangoes would be perfect for some mango scones, and even went so far as to hunt for recipes. Somehow life got the better of me though, and I hadn't executed the plan.


Once upon a time, Avi and I were hanging out in our very messy kitchen wondering what to eat for breakfast. We made a deal. I would do the dishes and he would make mango scones. I had been thinking about them for too long to get a kick out of making them. Luckily eating them was still delicious. We used a crystallized form of ginger that added a sweet and tangy flavor to the scones. Yum, Yum Yum. Eating the scones was like living happily ever after.

p.s. Sarah liked them too!

Shawarma pie

I was fortunate enough to dine with Avi and Julia yesterday evening, when we had a quite tasty shawarma pie. The pie was a simple yet effective way to use up left-over shawarma from a party on Saturday (catered by Aladdin in West Hartford).


Pie-master Avi included, along with the shawarma, sauteed green peppers, red onions and cherry tomatoes, as well as turkey broth (left over from an experiment with Turducken, so I'm told) and his first attempt at a full-fledged roux.


The result... delicious! (and quick - done in time to go see a great percussive dance show)

Lamb Burritos

We had some leftover lamb chops which I was afraid were going to go bad, so I decided to cut the meat off them to make burritos.


I started by sauteing a red onion in some olive oil. I then added some cumin, chili powder and coriander, and threw in a red pepper and the lamb meat. We let it cook until the meat was brown throughout- they had been cooked to medium rare.

The burritos were constructed with some lettuce, the meat mixture, salsa, and some cheddar cheese.

Xiaoxi-Fest!

Xiaoxi turned 22 on Cinco de Mayo, so we made a feast in her honor. X is from South Carolina and little bits of the south are endearingly part of her persona like the y'alls that slip out of her mouth and her appreciation for truly good food, even if the recipe calls for a bit of lard. This made for the most amazing birthday meal!

The Menu included: Five Cheese Macaroni

The secret to a really good macaroni is using an interesting blend of high-quality cheeses. This particular version included garlic cheddar, brie, plain cheddar, Parmesan, and Gruyere. Making the cheese sauce is very simple. Melt some butter in a saucepan (I think 4 tbs) and then put in a 1/2 cup of flour to make a roux. Allow the roux to cook a bit before stirring in about 2 cups of heavy cream. Once the cream got nice and hot, I dumped in the heavy cheeses and stirred. I seasoned the sauce with salt, pepper (ideally white pepper, but we didn't have any), and nutmeg. Nutmeg may seem a bit counterintuitive but it truly is the secret to amazing macaroni. Once the sauce is made, it is very simple. Just mix al dente pasta with the sauce and put in a baking pan. Right before baking top the dish with bread crumbs and little slivers of butter. We baked this for 20 minutes at 450 while covered with tinfoil and another 10 uncovered.

Collard Greens

Emily truly worked magic with these collards; they were delicious! The secret is hers though since I was too busy with other preparations to notice what went into them.

Pork Tenderloin

The pork tenderloin is only as good as the pork itself. No matter how skilled you are, you can not make bad pork sensational. Knowing this, I went to Stew Leonards with Grace and Olivia to get "Naked Pork" aka pasture raised pork with minimal processing. Olivia marinated the meat about 3 hours before cooking time. The tenderloins were cooked at 450 for about 20 minutes.
Red Velvet Roulade

There were many attributes that had to be combined to make the perfect cake for Xiaoxi...it couldn't involve frosting, it had to be texturally complex, and it had to stick with the southern theme. This led us to a delicious red velvet roulade with a white chocolate cream cheese filling. The filling had chunks of chocolate in it to help with the texture. Xiaoxi loved the cake even though she is violently attacking it in the above picture!

Pizza and Pet Therapy

Diversionary tactics of some sort were called for in the midst of the tension and uncertainty that shrouded the locked-down Wesleyan campus the day after the shooting that took the life of a fellow student. Sarah J.’s father, Andy, renowned in our family as the “Camp Counselor,” announced he was arriving to provide the sorely needed diversion. As a man who would happily consume pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week, Andy declared that our mission was to find the best pizza in Connecticut!

As we prepared for the mission, Sarah W. placed a quick call to a friend in the French Quarter, because doesn’t everyone call New Orleans to get the name of the best pizza joint in Connecticut??!! Sarah’s source is a Wesleyan alum, so he knows his pizza and declared that we should head to Frank Pepe’s in New Haven. Eight adults, a sizable body pillow (hey, we only had seven seats) and one large wet dog piled into our well loved mini-van and we stealthily drove off campus under overcast skies toward Rt. 91. Otherwise known as “R” “T” 91 by Nicole, Andy’s trusty GPS guide with the sultry Australian accent, who led us more or less directly to our destination. (Those narrow one way streets are a bit tricky in the Little Italy ethnic enclave of New Haven.)

As we parked (somewhat illegally?) in the lot for Sally’s Apizzeria, Avi’s eyes lit up and I could tell he was entertaining thoughts of dining at Sally’s instead. Apparently there’s a never ending debate over who makes the best pizza – Sally’s or Pepe’s – but our taste of Sally’s would have to wait for another day. As it turns out, Sally’s is open for dinner only so we trooped to the opposite end of Wooster Street to devour Frank Pepe’s legendary “tomato pies.” We were fortunate to walk right in and sit right down. No lines, no waiting, which is not typical of your usual Pepe’s experience. A sign of the economic times or just three o’clock on an overcast Thursday afternoon??

A word of caution: don’t go to Pepe’s if you think you’d enjoy a salad, bread, pasta or any conceivable dish other than pizza. Frank Pepe’s sells pizza. Period. But as Sarah J.’s Dad is fond of saying, “You’re good at what you do a lot,” and Pepe’s “tomato pies” are worth the trip!

Our waitress informed us that a large pie serves three to four. Our party of eight decided to play it safe and up the ante. We ordered three large pies – a white clam pie that is Pepe’s signature dish, a plain cheese pie for the pizza purists at the table, and a half veggie special (onion, spinach, broccoli, pepper, mushroom) with half meat overload (bacon, sausage, pepperoni, salami) for the ultimate contradictory mix on a single pie.

The people who devoured the pies (l to r): Avi, Maggie, Katherine, Andy, Sarah J., Emily, Sarah W. and Dorothy (the photographer and guest blogger).

My personal favorite was the white clam pie - just crust, olive oil, oregano, grated cheese, chopped garlic, and fresh clams. Turns out that the clams are shucked on the premises and they are as fresh as it gets. The crust was amazing! Crispy with blackened bits from the intense heat of the coal-fired oven, yet chewy and neither too thick nor too thin.

Running a close second in my book was the plain cheese pizza, which is ordinarily my pizza of choice. Other hungry diners in our cozy booth groaned in ecstasy as they devoured blisteringly hot slices weighed down with so many toppings that keeping them all on the crust prior to getting a bite into one’s mouth was a serious challenge. But sometimes you just have to let a little cheese slide and step right back into the ring!

In the end, our waitress knew her stuff and we walked out of Pepe’s with three boxes of leftover slices and a few cheesy crusts for Roxie, who was waiting patiently for us in the car. Perfect, actually, since everyone was able to go home with supper or a late night snack already prepared!

With very full bellies, our Camp Counselor declared it was time to carry out the pet therapy portion of our mission. Nicole guided us across town to the Yale campus, where we thought we would easily find a park to walk off some of our pizza coma and toss the Frisbee for Roxie. In the end, we didn’t locate the elusive park before the raindrops began to dominate the scene, but we did manage to provide Roxie with a romp and the opportunity to pee on the Yale campus!

Mission accomplished!

Kebabs and More

Some of my friends from Boston came down for the weekend, and since it was nice outside we decided to grill. We were also planning on having dinner with another house leaving us with a mix of vegetarians, kosher meat eaters, and people who eat anything, and rather than make one item that would satisfy everyone, we ended up making a bunch of different things.

As an appetizer, we grilled some polenta slices with cheddar cheese

We then made veggie and chicken kebabs
the chicken was marinated in heavy cream, orange blossom water, sumac, chili powder and salt

Since the chicken wasn't kosher, we also threw on some hot dogs and veggie dogs


For dessert we made a cast iron skillet peach cobbler

We didn't really use a recipe; the peaches were mixed with brown sugar and lemon juice, and the topping was made with flour, vegetable shortening (to keep it non-dairy), brown sugar, salt and nutmeg

And the people who ate it

perfecting popovers

The popovers Avi made for Sarah's birthday were so good and the recipe was so simple that I decided to try it myself. I made two batches for comps cafe (food for CSS sophomores, who are having the worst week ever), and discovered a few things that I thought I might share:
-like Avi, I found that the popovers needed significantly less time at 375 than 20 minutes. Both batches were at the peak of golden crispiness around 10 minutes, and our oven doesn't run hot. I think it's probably a good idea to start checking around 10 minutes.
-I ran out of flour for the second batch, and ended up with 1/4 cup less flour than the recipe called for. Interestingly, the second batch popped higher and had a fluffier texture. I want to experiment further to determine if less flour really does consistently produce a better popover, but as of right now it seems like a runnier batter might not be a bad idea.

Baking up a storm and working it off

These are my favorite cookies. The recipe is here, but Becca and I decided that next time we would cut the sugar down to half a cup, because it was so so sweet. I could feel the cavities forming.
Matching shorts make going to the gym fun!

What we feed our pets

It's about time this blog met Brunnhilde, our dinosaur. We made her for my opera, but now that the opera is done and she's retired, she just hangs out on the front porch. When the weather is nice we take her out for walks. She likes meeting new people, and enjoys the attention. And by that I mean we enjoy the attention.
Anyway, it's been so long since this dinner that I don't remember what we're eating in this picture anymore. I think it's this, but I'm not sure what this is:
Looks like cous cous and collards? Whatever it is, Brunnhilde enjoyed it.

Sarah's birthday

For Sarah's birthday we woke her up with H&H bagels (Emily made a trip to New York and brought these back), baked her a cake in the shape of a jellyfish, and then cooked a celebratory dinner with her favorite foods. The cake recipe is from (where else?) the Smitten Kitchen, and we topped it with some homemade bubble candy that Emily made. The tentacles are made of bubble tape.

For Sarah's birthday dinner, the main course was lamb loin chops. I put them under the broiler for about four minutes on each side, and they turned out bleedingly rare, just the way Sarah likes them. I marinated them in olive oil, salt and pepper, minced garlic, cumin, coriander, and fresh chopped mint (all to taste) Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but here's the raw meat:
The best part of this whole dinner was that we ate it outside and played frisbee after dinner: Becca is now good enough to go pro. Finally, it's spring.