Corn Bread Pudding with Leftover Cornbread

We love our cornbread here and fix it quite often.  There is nothing better, hot out of the oven, with butter and honey.    Or jam.   

I like sweeter cornbread.   OK, it's basically cake.    Eric likes the regular stuff and especially loves it baked in a cast iron skillet with bacon grease in the bottom.    Heaven.

Occasionally there is a leftover day old piece or two that is just a bit too dry to really enjoy.   My dad used to crumble it up and put it in a glass,  adding a few chopped onions, then fill it up with buttermilk and eat it with a spoon.  He was raised on a cotton farm in Arkansas.  They were poor and nothing went to waste.  Plus, the man loved his southern cooking. 

We don't let ours go to waste either.   We had a couple of big pieces left over from the last batch, so I crumbled them up and made this luscious cornbread pudding.  

It's a savory version with lots of herbs, cheese and extra corn.  [We used what we froze last summer.]  All cooked up in a warm custard.  It was so fantastic we had it for breakfast the next day, too.   

It would be divine with a few strips of crisp bacon crumbled into it, too!

Corn Bread Pudding with Leftover Cornbread

www.rurification.com

4 eggs

2 cups milk
1 tsp thyme 

1/2 teaspoon crushed rosemary 

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt  

2 cups cheese 

2 cups corn kernels [canned [drained], frozen, whatever]
3 cups cornbread crumbs 

4 strips bacon, crisp and crumbled [optional]

Beat eggs well, add milk and herbs and salt.  Stir in cheese. Stir in corn and cornbread. Pour into 8 inch casserole dish. Bake 350 for 50-60 minutes or until it doesn't jiggle and a knife in the center

comes out clean.

Carrot Puff

I don't know about you, but this time of year, I like bright food.   [And brownies.]  

Brownies aside [for the moment], I've pulled out my favorite carrot recipe.  This carrot puff is a quasi souffle.  It's light, but not fussy and no one cares how high it gets or if it falls.  It's that good.  Since I change things up a bit every time I make it, sometimes it's light and airy, but most of the time it's just a good old fashioned carrot casserole.  My recipe marries grated carrots and onions [and zucchini, if you have some in the freezer this time of year] with a delectable cheesy sauce.   Hello, Sunshine! 

This is a terrific vegetarian main dish and an excellent side for potlucks.   It's good warm or chilled.   Personally, I like it just a little warm.

I posted this recipe a few years ago when I started the blog and now that I have actual readers, I thought you might like to see it again without having to fiddle through the archives.   [Though fiddling through the archives is kind of fun.]

Robin's Carrot Puff
www.rurification.com


2-3 C shredded carrots [and zucchini, if you have some]
2 C shredded or chopped  onions
2 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed.
3T butter [yes, the real stuff]

Cook that stuff in a pot until the onions are transparent.  It caramelizes everything and makes it sweeter.  Then add:

1/2 C oatmeal
1 tsp salt
pepper
a shake or two of nutmeg
1 1/2 C yogurt
1 C or more grated cheese
4 eggs, beaten

Put it all in a casserole dish and bake at 325 degrees for 50 minutes.   I always bake mine in a blue dish because the orange and the blue look so pretty together.   Then I serve it on a blue plate.  It just tastes better in the blue dish.

Soup Season

This is the time of year we pull out our favorite soup recipes and I thought you might like them, too.   Here's a quick list of some of our best ones.

Cheesy Chicken Pepper Soup - we had this one with leftover turkey.  Yum!!

Spicy Pumpkin Soup - just a hint of Indian spices and good with any winter squash!

We love this Zuppa Toscana - a great way to cook up those hearty winter greens.

The last soup is one of my favorites!  Bean Soup with Bacon, Chicken and Pesto.  Pesto is guaranteed to perk up cold days and this soup is another great way to use up leftover turkey.

Cheesy Chicken Pepper Soup

I love soup.    I've been trying a bunch of new soups and here's my latest triumph.   It's fabulous.

I know that when you saw the name of the post, you immediately had visions of glorified macaroni and cheese sauce with chicken in it, but really this isn't like that.    It's cheesy and brothy.   It's chothy!

O.K.  That was dumb, but the soup is still delicious.   Even if it does call for processed cheese food.   Stop rolling your eyes and get the Velveeta out.

Cheesy Chicken Pepper Soup
www.rurification.com

• 3-4 slices of bacon cooked crisp and then cooled and crumbled.  
• 4 Tablespoons bacon grease divided
• 2 chicken breasts [I used boneless skinless for the sheer ease of it.]
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 red or orange pepper, diced
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 chicken bouillon cubes
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• 6-8 oz processed cheese food like Velveeta or that squeezy stuff that you get in Hickory Farms gift boxes [That's what we used.  Yum!] 

Cook the bacon and set it aside to cool.

Brown the chicken and cook it through in 2 Tablespoons of the bacon grease.

In a larger soup pan, melt the remaining bacon grease and cook the onion and pepper until soft.   Add flour and combine well.  Turn up the heat  and stir in the bouillon cubes, stock and water.   As soon as it starts to boil, reduce heat and let it simmer until a bit thick.   Cut up cheese and stir until it all melts.  Add bacon crumbles. 

Delish.

Carrot Puff

It's winter.

[In case you hadn't noticed.]   

The days are really short.

[In case you hadn't noticed.]  

The truth is that short days make me kind of nuts.  We live in a lovely little hollow and there is a big hill with a lot of trees on the south side of the property.   In the depths of winter, it takes a while for the sun to come up behind that hill and then it's blocked by those trees.    It's pretty, but kind of not very sunny.  It takes a long time for the sun to clear those trees.

I like full sun.

I'm going through sunshine withdrawal.   My skin is so pale it's translucent - but not in a vampire sparkle way - in a white grass under a rock kind of way.  

I'm desperate for sunshine.

So desperate that I have even been taking my daily walk in the cold.

In the cold. 

In. The. Cold. 

Eric tells me I'll live.

While I'm waiting impatiently for the north pole to get closer to the sun and for the days to get longer, I've been eating golden food.   Golden soups, golden cheeses, golden vegetables, and this golden carrot puff.   Just to remind me of the sun.     Plus, all those beta-carotenes are good for me.

Here's one of my all time favorite winter dishes.   Golden like the sun plus enough beta-carotenes to give you a fake tan, if you don't mind looking like Anne Hathaway in Bride Wars.

The recipe is very forgiving, so if you add more or less of something, it'll still taste wonderful.  


Robin's Carrot Puff
www.rurification.com

2-3 C shredded carrots
2 C shredded or chopped  onions
2 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed.
3T butter [yes, the real stuff]

Cook that stuff in a pot until the onions are transparent.  It caramelizes everything and makes it sweeter.  Then add:

1/2 C oatmeal
1 tsp salt
pepper
a shake or two of nutmeg
1 1/2 C yogurt
1 C or more grated cheese
4 eggs, beaten

Put it all in a casserole dish and bake at 325 degrees for 50 minutes.   I always bake mine in a blue dish because the orange and the blue look so pretty together.   Also, it tastes better in the blue dish.

This is great served warm or at room temperature.

Chevre

A few weeks ago, my girls and I and Murphala from Flour, Water, Yeast & Salt took a road trip to the Swiss Connection in Clay City, Indiana.    To buy milk.   And lots of it.  I got 4 gallons of fabulous raw milk.   But I"ll tell you about that later. 

On our way to Clay City, we stopped at Freedom Country Store, just north of Worthington.  It's a wonderful Amish store with all sorts of things that I can't find a Kroger.  Like clear-gel.  And bulk grits.  And raw goat milk.  Yep, I got a gallon of raw goat milk there.   I was going to make some chevre with that goat milk.   And I did.   And it was delicious.

With fresh mango and kiwi and pancakes.   Mmmm.

You can get the culture from New England Cheesemaking Supply.  

All you do is warm the milk to 86 degrees, add the culture, stir well, let it sit overnight, then drain in cheesecloth to the consistency you want.   Put it in a bowl, salt to taste and enjoy.    It's fabulous.

We've tried to make it with regular goat milk from the store, but that is generally ultrapasteurized - which means they cook it, then put it in the carton.    It makes a lousy curd.   If you can get your hands on raw goat milk, it's worth the chase.   Fresh chevre is a miracle. 

We eat it plain, by the spoonful.   Or on pancakes.   Or spaghetti with sliced tomatoes and basil.  Or on fruit.   Or on paninis.   And sometimes on all of them at the same time.  

Chevre is good.

We love chevre.

Cheese Brine

That queso fresco that I made the other day wasn't salty enough. 

Which I totally don't get, because the recipe called for 2 whole tablespoons of salt, which I put in, but then later I read that sometimes if you put too much salt in, it leaches calcium and for some reason that makes it taste way less salty, which I don't really understand or have the brain capacity these days to investigate until I do understand because it's the beginning of gardening season and we homeschool and I have two other jobs and I'm kinda busy and distracted all the time and maybe the cheese wasn't salty enough because we have hard water or because the whey hadn't finished draining when I put the salt in.   Or something. 

At any rate, the cheese needed to be saltier.    And when we've got this kind of cheese at the store, it's pretty wet and sort of briney. 

So I made a brine for our sad saltless queso fresco.

2 quarts of water
1/2 cups of canning salt.

Boil it all.    It'll make salt marks on the top of the pan because the water is super saturated with salt.

And when you splash some on the stove and come back in a 1/2 hour, there will be cool little salt rings all over. 

It's cool

But then you have to wait until it really is cool.   Down to room temp.   And then you can slice the cheese and set it in the brine to salt up. 

Which is what I did.

I sliced the cheese and put it in a bowl.   Then I sprinkled a few spoonfuls the brine on and shook it around.  I didn't want the cheese floating in really salty brine; I just wanted the cheese a bit saltier.

Then I put the lid on and shook the brine around and upside down to get it all over the cheese.

And it worked.   Everyone gave it a thumbs up. 

So now I can make pressed cheese and fix the saltiness if I need to.   It's kind of exciting.  Eric brought home two more gallons of milk.   We're voting on what kind of cheese to make next.

Queso Fresco

I'll just give you a second to admire this beautiful cheese.


Need more time?   OK.

Last year, I got this gorgeous book and made some feta with it. 

It was good.

But the process was really uncomfortable.   It was all new to me.  Plus there was a lot of hurry up and wait business. 

And the stirring.   All the stirring. 

And more waiting.  

And heating things up just a couple of degrees over 30 minutes.    That one really threw me last year. 

But I made my feta and tried not to whine too much.   And K2 ate it and loved it.  

And everyone was ready for me to make some more.  Plus Eric had made that fabu cheese press and we had to try it out. 

So I closed my eyes and opened the book to this page:

Queso fresco.   And you only have to age it overnight.  

Per.  Fect. 

Because overnight is as long as K2 can wait.

The directions were pretty similar to the ones for the feta, so the whole process seemed familiar.  

And I didn't panic with the whole 'raise the temp 5 degrees over 30 minutes' business.   I just did it.

And this is how:    I was using a huge pot - the same one I use for maple syrup - and I didn't have another one big enough to use as a double boiler outside my cheese pot so I could heat it indirectly, which is the way They recommend.

So, I just turned my burner a little past 1 and watched things very carefully and that did the trick!   I raised the temp just fast enough.  

Whew.   That one step had me pretty worried, so I was very relieved when the curds did exactly what they were supposed to do.  

And now I'm not afraid of that anymore, so future cheeses will be relatively stress free.  

I hope.

This is my beautiful cheese!

It's really good, but not salty enough according to the tasters.

However, no one complained about it in our breakfast souffle [Thank you, Eric!] so I'm thinking it won't last long.  

Especially since I'm going to slice it and brine it and that should make it saltier.

Brine information tomorrow.  

Cheese Press

There are some pretty fancy cheese presses out there.

At some pretty fancy prices.

I neither have the disposable income for a press, nor the place to put it. 

If I had a place to put it, I might be more inclined to find the disposable income needed to get it.   Or beg it for a gift.   Or something.

In the meantime, we...actually, Eric put his head to the problem and came up with this cheese press.

He's freaking brilliant.

Brilliant, I tell you.

And this is how it works:

He got a 6 inch pvc union.   At Menard's.   Where we regularly save big money. 

It didn't matter that there was a ring in the middle.   We were kind of worried about it, but when we put the cheese basket inside it, the top of the basket rested comfortably just touching the inner ring and fitting perfectly right inside it.

Perfectly. 



Here is the cheese in the cheesecloth in the basket in the press.

It's beautiful, isn't it. 

So, after we put the cheese in the cheesecloth and then the cheese filled cheesecloth in the basket and the basket in the press, it was time to put the weights in.


And what weights did we use?    Why the weights that hang out in the back room where they are not used by anyone for upper body development but rather contribute to the overall clutter of the back room, of course. 

Yep.   Those weights.

We have little ones and bigger ones.

And guess what?

They fit right inside the press.

Perfectly.  

But before I put the weights in, I put an old plastic lid over the cheese.

And after that, I put a ziploc bag, so the weights wouldn't touch the cheese at all.

At all. 

And then, finally,   I put the weights in.

I put the little ones in first in case things pushed down below the ring in the center of the pvc union.

Because the big weights fit inside that pvc union just perfectly.

Just like this. 

Those big weights fit right inside, but if they jiggled a little, I was afraid they'd get caught on the inner ring.

And so my cheese got pressed at exactly 35 pounds of pressure for the 6 hours required.

And it was delicious.

And Eric got the first taste because he's brilliant.

Brilliant, I tell you.

Amen.

Mozzarella Curd Cheese

This weekend we scored some more fresh milk from The Swiss Connection, so I made lots of cheese!

The first one was Mozzarella Curd Cheese, which is a new cheese from Suzanne McMinn at Chickens in the Road.  It's a nice change from regular pulled mozzarella, very easy to make, and quite delicious.    Make this one with raw milk.   Raw milk moz acts very different from moz made with store milk.  It's much better. 


Don't worry if you don't have lipase; it works just fine without it. 

This cheese is great with a good olive oil and dipping herbs, and rumor has it that it's great sliced on a sandwich and melted.    Ours never lasts long enough to do that.    If you try it, let me know how it turns out.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

Mmm.   Cottage cheese.   Creamy, a little tart, a little salty.   Great with pineapple.   Or tomatoes.   Or tuna.  Or on salad.   Or salt and pepper the way my dad ate it.   [Come to think of it, that was the way my dad ate everything.   Except pie.]  

Anyway.  I love cottage cheese.  K1 does, too. K2 does, too.  So, I used my last gallon of fresh milk from The Swiss Connection to make some homemade cottage cheese. 

By the way, cottage cheese and farmer cheese are the same thing.    Farmer cheese is British.   I think.   Maybe.    At any rate, it's not Hoosier.   

Making cheese is a lot like making bread.   It's a zen thing.   You have to become one with the curd, one with the dough.   It takes time.   You can't rush it.   You can't force it.  You have to work with it.  You have to let it guide you.   If you do, then the results are spectactular. 

Making cheese is a freakin' life lesson.

Ahem.

Anyway.   I followed the recipe for cottage cheese in Ricki's book, Home Cheese Making.   This is the basic process:

• Heat the milk to 72 degrees.   I used a gallon of fresh milk [minus 2 cups of cream that I used for the mascarpone.
• Add mesophilic culture and stir well.
• Let sit at 72 degrees for 16-24 hours.
• Cut the curd into 1/4 inch cubes and let sit.
• Raise the temperature slowly to 112 degrees over about an hour [Ricki gives explicit instructions]
• As the temp rises, the curds and whey separate.  When the curds are hard enough, put it all in a collander lined with cheesecloth to drain.   Gather the corners and twist around to make a cheese ball. 
• If you want to have less tart cheese, dip the whole ball in ice water a few times.   
• Drain for 5 minutes.  
• Salt [We used about 1 T of sea salt].

You can eat it right away.   I kind of like it very fresh, at room temp.   A lot. 

Fromage Blanc

Remember that fresh milk I scored at the Swiss Connection?    After I skimmed the cream off both gallons and made the mascarpone, I made a batch of fromage blanc with the rest of one gallon of the milk.   Because I was using raw milk, I made the cheese as soon as I got home.   

Fromage blanc is a very fresh, mild, soft creamy cheese.  You don't have to age it at all, which makes K2 very very happy.

I got the fromage blanc culture from Ricki, where I get all my cultures.  It is a direct set cheese, which means you warm up the milk, stir in the culture and in the morning, you're ready to drain it and eat it.

Here are the steps:

• Warm the milk to 86 degrees.
• Stir in the culture.
• Keep in warm place overnight. [We keep ours in a cooler full of old towels.  That's where we batch our yogurt, too.]
• In the morning, pour the curd into a colander lined with cheesecloth.  Tie the cloth up and hang it to drain.  If you don't have a place to hang it, you  can just twist/wind the ends of the cloth tightly so that there's pressure on the cheese and let it sit that way.   It'll be fine.
• When it has drained for an hour put the cheese in a bowl.  The longer you drain it, the drier and milder it will be.
• Salt it if you like.   We use kosher or sea salt.
• It's ready to eat right now!    Great with fruit, eggs, by the spoonful....

Homemade Feta

This is the first time I tried an aged cheese.   I'm trying to do the easy ones first so I feel comfortable with the process.   By the end of the year, we're going to try to have some sort of cheese cave rigged up somewhere and do some long term aged cheeses.    That's the plan, anyway.

Feta is an aged cheese.    It ages for 5-7 days.    Yes, you read that right.  

It's a good thing it doesn't age any longer, because K2 flatly refused to wait that long.   She is by far my most vocal supporter in the whole cheese manufacturing process.     She loves it.   All of it. 

I got the recipe from Ricki Carroll's  Home Cheese Making book.    I love this book!    If you have been thinking about making cheese, get this book.    Even if you're not ready to actually buy the milk and the cultures, get this book.     Having it in your house will accelerate your readiness.   Really.   I'm not kidding.   

We used store bought whole milk for this cheese, used mesophilic culture and rennet that I got with the cheese kit.  I followed the directions in the book and voila!   - feta cheese!

The basic process:

• Warm the milk
• Add the culture
• Let sit for 1 hour.
• Add the rennet
• Let sit for another hour.
• Cut the curd and let the curds drain in the pot for 10 minutes
• Stir for 20 minutes.
• Drain curds in colander/cheesecloth for 6 hours or longer.    The longer, the drier.
• Cut into cubes
• Salt generously.
• Store in covered bowl in the fridge.   
• Salt again in a couple of days.   Shake the salt around so it gets to all the cheese. 

1 gallon of milk yields a pound of cheese.  

The real shocker:  it actually tastes like store bought 'official' feta. 

Fresh Mascarpone

Mascarpone

As I mentioned a couple of days ago,  I scored some fresh milk at a dairy nearby.    I bought two gallons.   Both gallons had loads of cream and the first thing I did when we got home was skim it off.    By hand.   Actually, by spoon. 

It was a zen thing.

I got a full quart of cream and promptly made Mascarpone with a Creme Fraiche culture I got from Ricki, the cheese queen at New England Cheesemaking Supply.

These cultures are EASY to use.

• You heat the milk or cream to 86 degrees.   
• You stir in one packet of the powdered culture.   
• You let it sit overnight.   
• In the morning, you gently dump the whole thing into a big colander lined with cheesecloth and let it sit and drain until it's a consistency you want.   The longer it drains, the drier it is. 

Get the cheesecloth from Ricki, too, when you're getting cultures.   

Mascarpone is a cream cheese.   We like it just a little sweet, so I added a bit of vanilla sugar to it.  The batch in the pic was drained for a couple of hours in the fridge and was a bit drier than I would have liked.

No matter.   It's delicious with fruit or  Hot Cross Buns. [recipe coming soon!]

Crazy Aunt Sally Saves the Website

Three cheers for Crazy Aunt Sally!     The updated website is up and actually works! 

You need to go check it out right now.  www.robinjedmundson.com

Really.   I'll wait.

...

Pretty good, isn't it.    And she built it from scratch.   To celebrate I'm going to go shopping for a cheese press from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.  

Then I'm going to go work in the garden.    And haul some wood.   And probably help Eric dig on the septic system.    Crazy Aunt Sally will probably show up sometime, too.

Cheese, cheese, cheese

I love making cheese.   I have made lovely, lovely chevre from the milk of my SIL's goats.  Food. Of. The. Gods.  Really.  I had superpowers after I made and ate the first batch.    I have also made mozzarella and ricotta.  We regularly make yogurt - which is really just very very soft cheese - you could drown in it, it's so soft, but that would be a waste of really good yogurt.  

We get all of our cultures from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

Go to their site now.   Be amazed.   Start thinking about cheese.   Read their blog:  http://cheesemakinghelp.blogspot.com/ .   Get inspired.   Pick the cheeses you want to attempt. 

Now let that lovely cheesy information culture for a while in your brain until my next post on cheese.  Then let's try them!