Rusticating, Part II

As I posted a few weeks ago, this has been a summer full of "rustic" activities: gardening, picking fresh local fruit, visiting the Charlottesville City Market, canning, etc.  Two weekends ago, I decided to try my hand at yet another activity that has me thinking that maybe I was actually raised on a farm and just don't remember: cheese making.  For whatever reason, I suddenly just had a burning desire to make cheese with my own two little hands.  Yes, I know, I am a freak of nature.  So, I did some digging around on the internet and found instructions/recipes for both ricotta cheese and mozzarella that seemed relatively straightforward.

I started with the ricotta cheese, which seemed fairly foolproof, even for a cheese-making novice like me.  Basically, you throw milk (which I buy in glass bottles, 1950's style, from a local dairy that supplies Charlottesville Krogers), vinegar and some yogurt into a pot and heat it until it curdles, then you dump the whole thing into a strainer lined with cheese cloth and about half an hour later, ta-da, you have ricotta cheese! 

Ricotta cheese starting to form curds (in my very poorly lit kitchen)

Ricotta cheese straining in cheesecloth-lined collander

Finished ricotta in a container!

Making ricotta was so easy that I felt motivated to try making mozzarella, which requires some slightly more exotic ingredients and a little bit more time and effort.   You need a good candy thermometer (or something else that reads temps under 100 degrees F well), twice as much milk, rennet, citric acid, and salt.  I have never in my life had to purchase rennet before, but fortunately Rebecca's Natural Foods in the Barracks Road Shopping Center carries rennet, citric acid, and cheesecloth.   There are varying "recipes" on the internet, but basically, you heat the milk to around 88 degrees, add the rennet (dissolved in some water), add the citric acid, heat to around 105 degrees, and then scoop out balls of cheese curds and squeeze the whey from them with your hands.  You then place the balls of cheese into the microwave (this is the faster way...if you are particularly industrious, you can dip them back into the whey until they soften) for a few seconds, remove them, squeeze out the whey, knead, and repeat until the mozzarella reaches the texture you want.  You add salt at the second kneading (I am kind of anti-salt, especially since I'm working for a company focused on hypertension and salt sensitivity this summer, but you can't make mozzarella without salt.  Seriously.).   I think I over-kneaded a bit....probably one too many rounds of kneading, because once I had refrigerated the cheese, it came out more like mozzarella that you could grate and put on a pizza than soft "fresh" mozzarella that you would turn into mozzarella caprese.  But that didn't stop me from making a nice caprese with some local tomatoes (only my cherry and grape tomatoes are ripe) and home-grown basil!

Essential ingredients - vegetable rennet and citric acid

Just getting started....

Some nice preliminary curdling action around 88-90 degrees F

The first ball o' cheese

Mozzarella balls, pre-microwaving and pre-kneading

Finished mozzarella balls, ready to go into the fridge

A nice fresh caprese salad platter!

After my cheesemaking, I decided to make some braided Italian herb bread (I like to pack a lot into one day, OK?), and then I packed up the whole lot to take over to Brianne's, where she was cooking up some very tasty pasta with veggies.  We enjoyed the food and then topped off the evening for a trip to Splendora's for gelato.  Tasty, local/homemade, Italian food - what more can a girl want?

That is a good-looking homemade bread if I say so myself

I took a few days off after The Great Cheesemaking of 2010, and then my parents came into town for the weekend.  On Saturday, we grabbed breakfast at Albemarle Baking Company, picked up sandwiches to go at Bellair Market, hit up three wineries (Barboursville, Prince Michel, and Sweely Estate), and topped off the day with dinner at The Bavarian Chef (totally worth the drive, but don't go on the hottest day of the year - their poor little A/C just couldn't keep up!).  Sunday, we did breakfast at a little place down the street from my apartment and then went peach-picking at Chiles Peach Orchard and blackberry-picking at Hill Top Berry Farm (they also have a winery/mead-ery) before the parents hit the road and left me to my own devices.  Naturally, once they left, the hot water canner came out again and I started canning up a storm.  In two evenings, I made peach salsa, peach pie filling, peach melba jam, blackberries in framboise, blackberry syrup, blackberry apple chutney, blackberries preserved in water (for use in baking recipes later in the year...blackberry cobbler in February?  Yes, please!), and maple walnut syrup (because I could...). 

Mmmmm....tasty canned goods!

This is what my coat closet looks like now...anyone need some canned goods?

And that, in a nutshell, is Rustication, Part II. 

If this whole JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I could always become a scullery maid

From medieval times until the early twentieth century, the scullery maid was basically the lowest of the lowely household/kitchen servants, responsible for washing pots and everyday dishes, scrubbing floors, boiling water, and performing other such unsavory tasks as plucking chickens.  The position is one that has (fortunately, I think) generally gone the way of the horse and buggy, but somehow I recently managed to find work as a scullery maid.

The Scullery Maid (L'Ecureuse)
Jean-Simèon Chardin (French, 1699 -1779)
From http://www.corcoran.com/

Yes, that's right - a Brown University diploma, a year of the MBA program at Darden, and impending matriculation into a Top 10 law school has landed me a position as a scullery maid.  Well, technically, the position is "Assistant."  And it's actually kind of fun.  A few months ago, the Wine & Cuisine Club (WACC....B-school humor at its finest - hahaha!  ) at Darden took a cooking class through the Charlottesville Cooking School, which also hires folks to fulfill the scullery maid function in exchange for either pay or free classes.  So for a couple nights in the past month, I've donned an apron and some gloves for 4+ hours after putting in my time at the internship.  While there is a LOT of dishwashing (particularly for the sauteeing class), I also get to listen to most of the class, and the assistant/scullery maid always gets fed part of the meal that the class cooks, too.  All in all, it's been a pretty neat experience (for dishwashing), since I learned some new knife techniques and recipes, and I'm looking forward to signing up to take some classes myself - I earned them, after all!

Now, I signed up for the scullery maid job at CCS, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.  What I didn't expect was that my summer internship would also necessitate serving as combination sous chef/scullery maid last week!  The local biotech start-up that I'm working for this summer hosted its first Advisory Board meeting last week, which was kicked off by a dinner at the CEO (who is technically my client/boss)'s house.  His wife was out of town until right before the dinner, and he needed some help pulling everything off, so I showed up a couple hours in advance to chop and dice and make crabcakes, and I ended up serving as combination cater waiter/scullery maid in addition to "guest" and "company representative" during the dinner. I'm guessing a good number of MBA students would have been displeased with that arrangement, but I enjoy cooking, and my mission this summer was to be as helpful as possible, and that's what the company needed at the time....so I did it, and my help was appreciated.  Like I said....if this JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I'm going to buy a nicer apron and hire myself out.  Anyone else need a scullery maid?  Will work for food...

Rusticating

Let me be clear: I am not typically an overly outdoorsy, tree-hugging sort of person (I did hug a tree once, but I went to Brown, so it was basically required before they let you graduate).  When and if I ever own a house, I plan to hire someone to take care of the yard, because yard work really isn't my thing (and my neighbors would end up stoning me because the place would become an eyesore very quickly).  I think the local food movement is great, but I also like to eat raspberries in January.  However, all those disclaimers aside, I have spent much of the last couple months going all "crunchy granola" and becoming domestically inclined in a thoroughly "old school" sort of way.  Maybe it's just the relative abundance of free time that the summer has afforded me, or maybe it's a result of living in the "country" (or maybe it's both...), but I've been rusticating to an extent that has started to frighten even me. 

It started innocently enough, I suppose.  When my parents and sister came down to visit for Easter (yep, I cooked Easter dinner this year), my father brought with him some tiny little mint plantings for me.  Mojitos are one of my favorie summer time drinks, and I maintain that you shouldn't be permitted to live in Virginia if you don't have all the makings of a mint julep on hand at any time, so this seemed like a good idea.  Plus, I already knew that I'd be spending my summer in the Charlottesville area rather than abandoning my apartment for the summer like many of my classmates with exciting jobs in exotic locales, so that meant I'd be around to water plants and all that stuff.  Well, the mint seemed to start me down a slippery slope.  I decided that if I had mint, I might as well have basil (for homemade pesto, another my summer favorites) and other herbs, too.  And while I was making the trip to Lowe's for window boxes and potting mix and seedlings, I might as well buy one of those nifty little upside down tomato growing pot thingamajigs, too, right?  Right.

Three months later, I have realized that there is either some sort of plant equivalent of steroids in the water here, or I actually may have a wee little bit of a green thumb.  Who knew?  The herbs are out of control, I've had to repot the tomatoes because they over-grew their original hanging pots and became slightly suicidal (one of the two pots spontaneously plunged two stories to its almost-demise), and I decided to diversify into peppers, too. 

Yep, I'm basically running a garden/mini-farm off of my little apartment porch.   My tomatoes have been very tasty...

...and I've been trying very hard to be patient while this guy ripens (but I am not naturally a patient person):

I've really been enjoying having fresh herbs for the aforementioned summer cocktails and pesto and other tasty treats, and I also bought an ice cream maker and made fresh homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (and strawberry frozen yogurt with fresh-picked strawberries).   I brought the tasty frozen products to a BBQ a friend hosted, and they got rave reviews.  Yay!

In addition to my sudden urge to become a gentlewoman farmer (inspired by our man Thomas Jefferson, but minus the whole land-owning part) and purveyor of frozen delights, I developed an almost unhealthy obsession with the ancient art of canning.  By canning, I mean preserving various tasty foods in glass jars, of course!  I don't exactly know what inspired my desire to take up this new hobby, but it *may* have been related to my childhood love of going to pick fresh fruit.  Picking (and eating) locally grown fruit with my own two grubby little hands has always been a summer-time ritual in my family.  Now that I live alone in a climate and location that again permits me to partake in said activity (Rhode Island and Massachusetts were great for apple picking, but not much else), I needed a way to ensure that the fruits of my labors (literally and figuratively) didn't go to waste.  Because really, in my mind it's not worth it to drive out to the middle of nowhere to spend time picking fruit if you're only going to pick what you can eat in the next day or two.  Plus, homemade jams and jellies are both tastier and healthier than the ones you can buy at the store.  And I like to cook and bake, so canning seemed the next logical step in my own personal domestic diva development project. 

So I invested in a boiling water canner ($20 at the local Wal-Mart) and all the little necessary gadgets like jar lifters and lid lifters and canning funnels.  Oh, and the jars (which a friend of mine had to special order in Massachusetts but which are sold in grocery stores and WalMart here in more sizes and shapes than you might imagine).  I purchased so many jars at Wal-Mart that the cashier closest to the door by the housewares section and I were on a first-name basis.  For my first attempt, I chose strawberry jam.  It went so well (and tasted so good), that naturally I had to go cherry picking and make things with the cherries, so I made preserved cherries in almond syrup (delicious spooned over homemade vanilla bean ice cream) and cherry raspberry compote.  And then, because I was feeling pretty good about my mad canning skillz at this point, I made bread and butter pickles.  Yes, I did this all within the first week of owning a canner.  I may or may not be slightly obsessive about new hobbies (and again, I don't have homework, so what's stopping me?)

 

The results of my first week of canning: jam, compote, preserves, and pickles

Week 2 of my new addiction - er, hobby - conveniently coincided with the start of peach season and raspberry season, and Week 3 marked my first trip to the Charlottesville City Market (the big Saturday farmer's market downtown).  During these weeks, my canning repertoire expanded to include dill pickle slices, Oktoberfest beer mustard (no seasonal ingredients involved, but who cares?), golden relish, raspberry jam, chocolate raspberry sauce, peach salsa, berry wine jelly, and blueberry chutney.  Brianne even came over for a canning "lesson" (I use the term very loosely) when I made the chutney. 

From left to right: (front "row") Oktoberfest beer mustard, berry wine jelly, golden relish, blueberry chutney, peach salsa; (back "row") chocolate raspberry sauce, raspberry jam

Once I had made all of these tasty treats, I had to figure out where to store them.  I already keep a fairly well-stocked pantry (no real surprise there), and since most people don't have a root cellar these days (you should store glass jars of fruits and vegetables in cool, dark places so that the light doesn't lead to discoloration), I had to clean out the shelf in my coat closet in order to hold lots and lots of jars.  I also put together a gigantic basket of homemade treats as a gift for Father's Day (my mother hates sugary sweet things like jams and jellies, so she got a jar of bread and butter pickles and Dad got everything else).  Everyone else should be forewarned that I will be gifting canned goods from now and until eternity...

My last domestic rustication effort of the summer (so far) has included making all sorts of side dishes and tasty morsels for barbecues and picnics and whatnot in town.  One of my friends threw a surprise b-day barbecue for his girlfriend, and I offered to make the cake (this same friend once challenged me to a bake-off...after two months of talking smack, he finally forfeited after the aforementioned b-day barbecue).  Since I was feeling particularly ambitious, I actually decided to make a round layer cake AND to hand write the birthday wishes; I usually cop out and make a sheet cake, frost it in the pan, and buy "Happy Birthday" candles.  My focus is taste, not appearance.  But I think that this one looked pretty good (and certainly tasted good - red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting....mmmmmm), if I may say so myself:

I've been taking some time off from rusticating due to travel plans for the last three weekends, and I've been spending several of my evenings doing fun exciting things like organizing my case materials, ironing, and all that other stuff that you can do inside in the air conditioning (it was one of the hottest Junes on record in Charlottesville).  Since I'm in town again this weekend for the first time in a while, and I hear that it's blackberry season, I'm thinking I might need to bust out the canning materials again...

Smörgåsbord

I have always been a huge fan of buffets. When I was a kid, one of my cousins and I used to be brunch buffet masters – we’d load up our plates with Belgian waffles, made-to-order omelets, fresh fruit, salads, freshly-carved meats, etc. And then we’d take a second, third, or fourth trip to the buffet line. I have no idea how we managed to eat so much, because I certainly cannot eat that much anymore; I just don’t have the stomach capacity for it (yes, for all you operations fans out there, my stomach is the Herbie when it comes to buffets). Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t try to relive my youth at the Darden International Food Fest…

The International Food Fest (IFF) is an annual Darden event sponsored by the International Business Society. Students form teams to represent countries or regions, and then they prepare traditional delicacies to serve from a decorated table/booth to the whole Darden community (you pay a flat fee for a wristband, and then when you show up, you get a plate and a fork and can eat all you want). After everyone has eaten themselves into food comas, many of the teams put together a performance of some sort.

While my heritage is German, there was, sadly, no Germany table at the IFF this year. Instead, I was recruited (during Orientation) by Team Italia. (Apparently, if you invite people over for a lasagna dinner during International Orientation, they will tell Irene , who will promptly recruit you.) We made a whole host of tasty food, including lasagna, tiramisu (I need to get that recipe from Irene!), polpette, bruschetta, insalata caprese, etc. My house and hands smelled like garlic for a week after my sub-team met to make the insalata and bruschetta….but it was delicious! Team Italia also sang some apparently traditional Italian songs during the performance section. Yes, even I sang, though I have a horrible signing voice and don’t speak a word of Italian. It was certainly interesting!

Although Team Italia didn’t end up winning any awards, this year’s IFF was a great chance to meet some new people, taste some new foods from around the world, and reminisce about how I used to be able to eat soooo much more food when I was younger. *sigh*