Daring Bakers August challenge: Crackers!

I'VE GONE CRACKERS!

Actually, all of us Daring Bakers have gone crackers! 

Blog-checking lines: Our July 2012 Daring Bakers’ Host was Dana McFarland and she challenged us to make homemade crackers! Dana showed us some techniques for making crackers and encouraged to use our creativity to make each cracker our own by using ingredients we love.

This month's challenge was a heck of a lot of fun, and extremely timely for me. Since my cow is off at summer camp with a very handsome bull, I decided to lease a goat.  The ideas was that she'd eat down the pasture while the bovines were absent. This wasn't an animal I'd keep...just a weed eater and a milking trainer for me.  What better animal to learn to milk on than a sweet little goat who loves her job? This way I'd be ready for that crazy cow when she returned home! 

We were NOT to fall in love with the goat. 

Absolutely not...

Anyway, I made two types of crackers and several types of goat cheese. Based on a Smitten Kitchen recipe, I made Crisp Rosemary Flatbreads.  YUM!

Then, based on several different Ritz rip-off recipes, I made some ritzy crackers.

The ritzy crackers were okay, but the flatbreads were divine!  But is there anything from Deb that isn't????  If you haven't made her graham crackers yet, please just do that now. I made those when we did the Nanaimo Bars for Daring Bakers.  Sooooo good. 

To go with the crackers, I made mozzarella, ricotta, and to types of pressed curd cheeses.  If Blogger wasn't such a pain in the butter, I'd show you more pics, but I can't take any more of this!

Tanya: I think you're just about the only person who reads this lost and dejected blog, and this message is just for you.  I'm hosting DB next month, and if you want in on the action you have to sign up before the end of the month! 

Cheese and crackers.

Cheese OR crackers?

Which would you rather be?

Oh, and by the way?  We're keeping the goat.

FFwD: Gnocchi Parisienne

French Fridays with Dorie was, this week, a real winner!  But when you start with copious amounts of grated smoked Gouda and apple-smoked cheddar, plus a little Parmesan to boot, it's hard for a recipe to fail, right?

Also, since Mr. Boom had his two upper wisdom teeth removed yesterday afternoon, this was a nice soft treat.  

 Butter, salt, water.  Such a lowly beginning for a delicious meal.  The rules of the game say we can't share the recipe on our blogs, but the gnocchi in this recipe aren't potatoes, they're actually savory little cream puffs!  Any recipe you find online or on your bookshelf will work. 

Add flour all at once, and stir until you have a nice ball of dough in your pan.

 Add eggs one at a time and beat until your arm falls off.  I switched back and forth between using a wooden spoon and a silicon spatula.  The spoon was best at the initial incorporation of each egg, but the spatula worked well for getting all the dough homogeneous.

Scoop the batter into a pastry bag, and pipe little pieces into boiling water.  I found that by dipping the scissors into the boiling water every five or six snips helped to make a nice clean cut.  Alternatively, you can just scoop teaspoonful-sized bits into the water.

After boiling for a few minutes, the "gnocchi" are soft and pliable, but not rubbery at all.

Butter a baking dish and sprinkle with a little (or a lot!) of Parmesan cheese.

Make a bechamel sauce (butter, flour, salt, and milk).

 Spread a little sauce over the Parmesan, then add the gnocchi, then cover with (lots!) of cheese.

 Bake about 20 minutes until golden and bubbly.

 Serve hot and beware the onslaught of hungry zombies, or medication riddled wisdom-tooth-less members of the household.



Whirlwinds

What a whirlwind weekend!

A new little niece was born, and is wrapped up in a blanket I crocheted. I can't believe it. Either part of it. The fact that A) this little miracle baby was born, and B) the fact that I managed to crochet a whole little blanket. I'll try to post a picture soon....

My city cousin and her boyfriend showed up on Saturday, so we had a big family dinner that night. Salmon, Chirp-chirp's awesome biscuits with some of the last herbs from the garden, a salad with some of the last tomatoes from the garden, and chocolate silk pie for dessert--a feast!

My cousin brought some very fancy milk over from a natural foods market, and we made two batches of mozzarella cheese. It's odd that they can get whole unpasteurized milk in the middle of the largest city in the northwest, but here on the rural side of the state I can't get it. Of course, I'd never pay $10 dollars for a gallon of milk, plus a bottle deposit, even if I could get it here, which is why I can't, I suppose. If there were enough consumers for milk at that price, it would be available. As it is, I'll just have to look back fondly on the weekend I made the BEST cheese ever, and made it twice in a row. The curds were firm, the cheese glossy and elastic, and we were in heaven. City boyfriend ventured out into the yard and picked the very last of the tomatoes, a few pea shoots, and minute bits of arugula and put together a caprese salad of sorts for dinner on Sunday. He also had me show him how to make homemade tortillas.
Oh, and soap.

He'd been dying to learn how to make soap ever since he heard that it was something I'd been trying my hand at (or, for the grammarians, at which I'd been trying my hand).

So, we made soap as well! I showed him the soapcalc website and gave him a list of oils I had on hand. Three hours later (0bsessed much, city boyfriend?) the recipe he put together consisted of castor, olive, and coconut oils. I'll post the whole recipe later if it turns out to be a keeper.

The boyfriend is definitely a keeper. If he doesn't propose to my cousin soon, I'm going to do it for him.

French Fridays with Dorie: Gougeres

This week is the first French Fridays with Dorie challenge, and boy am I glad to be a part of this!  I've been practicing my poor neglected french skills for the past couple of weeks.  Mr. Boom and Chirp-chirp are just about at wits end listening to my conversations with myself, the cats, the fish, the bees, and any other creature caught in my evil french aura.

The look on Mr. Boom's face as I was leaning over the bridge the other night, counting spawning sockeye salmon in a sort of frenchy Count from Sesame Street voice...well it was just something.  That's all I'll say about that.

This is not sockeye salmon, rather it's wild Coho.  And that's the last of the broccoli from this year's garden.  The gougeres really stole the show, though.  And my friends, I'm not kidding when I say it's a real feat to top fresh Coho salmon.

The recipe called for any type of sharp cheese.  I used an applewood smoked natural cheddar.  The smokiness went really well with the salmon and held it's own against the almost peppery taste of the late season broccoli.  The recipe also called for five large eggs.  One of my young hens is laying cute little eggs now, so I used up seven of her eggs to equal the five the recipe required.  One large egg, without its shell, weighs 50 grams.  So, I just kept cracking the eggs into the bowl until I hit 250 grams.  The yolks are just a bit bigger than my thumbnail, to give you a sense of perspective that the photo is sorely lacking!

So, first challenge was a total success.  I can't wait for next week!

Homemade cannelloni with homemade fail-mozzarella (by Kat)

The hardest part of homemade cannelloni with fail-mozzarella is spelling the title correctly.

I blithely went about making some mozzarella a few weeks ago. Everything was going well--too well. That's always the warning, isn't it?

At the last moment, my entire batch of mozzarella became ricotta. Well, no. It was not quite ricotta. My dairy product landed squarely between the realms of ricotta and mozzarella. Think grainy mozzarella, or stringy mozzarella. Either way you have a tasty mouthful of strange dairy texture.

So, when life gives you fail-mozzarella, make cannelloni. (That won't work on a t-shirt, will it? I need a better slogan, obviously).

In a large bowl, dump your pile of cheese,
add herbs from last summer's garden,
then crack in an egg if your hen will give you one.

Stir the whole thing up pretty well.

Make yourself some pasta dough, and roll it out nice and thin.
Cut into rectangle shapes, boil a few minutes, then cool.

Slather the cheese onto the (cooled) pasta.
(owey, owey, hot! hOt! )

Dump spaghetti sauce on top, and pile on the Parmesan cheese.
Bake at 350 F until it's bubbly and you're so hungry
you just can't wait any longer.

When people say yummy and inquire about the type of cheese you used,
smile knowingly and reply...





"homemade."