Daring Cooks June 2013 - Meatballs

Rather an open challenge this month...  Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

I told M about the challenge and she got excited, thinking, it turns out, that I would be making Italian style meatballs.  But, I had hatched a plan to make chipotle/spring onion pork meatballs, with a blackened pineapple salsa.  Not exactly what she was expecting.  Oh well.  As it turned out, she liked these too, so it didn't go too wrong.

Chipotle Pork Meatballs with Pineapple salsa, rice and beans.

Take 600gm pork mince, 3 spring onions, 3-4 canned chipotles and a tablespoon of the adobo sauce from the chipotle can.  Combine together.  Add an egg and some wheatgerm (1-2 tbsp) to bind it together.  

Generously coat your hands with flour, and place more on a plate.  Roll meat mixture into balls.  Roll each in flour and line them up.

Drop the meatballs into a pan with a thin layer of oil (rice-bran) in the bottom.  You will cook them long and slow, for 25-30 minutes, shaking them so they don't stick, and turning to brown all sides.

In the meantime, grab some pineapple (I used a tin of pineapple chunks in unsweetened juice.  Drain some, and drop them into a hot hot pan to blacken quickly.  Won't take long at all.

Set the pineapple aside.  Look back at the meatballs, make sure they aren't sticking!

Cook rice.  (You know how to do that. I used brown rice). Warm your beans (1x can, red kidney), with a couple tomatillos (adds flavour to the beans/rice).  Stir rice into beans.

Maybe make some bbq sauce for the meatballs, if you want.

Salsa!  Dice an avocado.  De-seed a tomato, discard seeds, dice the remainder.  Tear up some mint and coriander leaves.  Toss it all together. Squeeze a lime over it.  Add salt (the black here is Falk black salt, it is delicious)

Voila!

Daring Cooks, May 2013

Monkey Queen of Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys, was our May Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to dive into the world of en Croute! We were encouraged to make Beef Wellington, Stuffed Mushroom en Croute... I went for something slightly different, with chicken tenderloins in a mushroom/onion/sundried tomato case, with feta, manuka smoked ham and a puff pastry shell. Oh, and I candied up some persimmon in pastry for a sweet.

 Simple really, one takes a puff pastry case, lays a couple slices of ham into it.  To make 2 pastries, I blitzed half a brown onion, 50gm sundried tomato, and 2 small flat mushrooms in a blender, and spread onto the sliced ham.  A layer of feta cheese, and topped with chicken tenderloins (2 per case).  Folded into the above rectangles, and baked for 25 minutes, ends up looking like...

This.

 Or this.

I also diced a ripe persimmon, dropped it into another sheet of puff pastry, sprinkled with brown sugar, and folded it up.  Dessert!

Daring Cooks, March 2013

The Daring Kitchen is a wonderful online community. It hosts monthly challenges to both cook and bake things you might not have made before.  Sometimes they are very exotic, sometimes quite mundane, but the challenges are always fun, and take you out of your routines and habits.  I haven't been participating in a long while (what with the Philosophy job market, getting my current job, and moving + settling back in NZ after 6+ years in Australia).  But I'm beginning again.

This month, Sawsan from chef in disguise was the hostess. Sawsan challenged us to make our own homemade cheeses. She gave us a variety of choices to make, all of them easily accomplished and delicious.

I decided to make Feta, because... well, Feta is delicious, and it was one of the more complicated of the offered recipes.

Original Recipe from here, modified to use cows milk, liquid rennet rather than tablets.

Ingredients
2 litres cows milk (I just used cheap supermarket milk, worked fine. YMMV)

1 Tbsp plain live culture yogurt mixed with 1 Tbsp milk from above.

6 drops liquid rennet

1/2 tsp salt (non-iodised, Marlborough Sea salt, finely ground)

For the brining solution

5 1/2 Tbsp salt for every 590ml fluid whey

Directions

1.Place the milk in a pot with a lid, warm it up to 30°C . Stir the milk occasionally to prevent the bottom from burning.

2.Take the milk off the heat, add yogurt-milk mixture, stir well, cover with the lid.

3.Allow it to sit for 1 hour at room temperature.
4.Move your pot to an area where it will remain undisturbed.
5.Add dissolved rennet, stir quickly to ensure even distribution of the rennet then cover the pot, and leave overnight.
6.The next morning, check the cheese. It should be set into one large block of curd with a little whey separated on the side.

7. Check for a 'clean break' by sticking your finger into the cheese. If it comes out relatively clean of stuff, you are good. If it looks like yoghurt, wait longer. (2 hours, then try. If still bad, 2 more. If still bad, you messed up, try again with a new batch)

8. Cut your curds up with a knife. Cross hatched into 1.5-2cm chunks.

9. Wait 15 mins, stirring occasionally, so the curds set and some whey is released.  The curds will shrink slightly in size.

10.  Strain the cheese.  Line a colander with a cheesecloth or a clean fabric with fine weave. Gently pour the curds and whey in and allow it to strain. Do not discard the whey.
11. Once most of the whey has been strained collect the 4 corners of your cheesecloth and tie them to form a knot that allows you to suspend the cheesecloth then allow it to strain for 2-4 hours. If you live in a very warm place you may want to allow it to strain in the fridge.
12.The next day remove the cheese from the cloth, break up the curds add 1/2 teaspoon salt.

13.Line a mould with holes in the bottom with cheese cloth, place the cheese in, fold over the cheesecloth place a heavy weight on top of the mold and leave overnight, again if you live in a really warm place do this in the fridge

14.Make the brine solution by adding 5½ tablespoons (82.5 ml) (95 gm) (3-1/3 oz.) of salt for every 20 fl oz. (590 ml) fluid whey and mix it, dissolving as much of the salt as you can.

15. Cut cheese into chunks, add to brine solution. Store in fridge. Eat. (Recipe said brine for 5 days... I wouldn't bother waiting that long before starting to eat.  If it is too salty, you can rinse the cheese to remove some brine, before serving.)