Cheesy Goodness – Recipes to Rival: February Edition

There are two kinds of food hate. There’s food that you dislike the taste and/or texture of…liver, lima beans, split pea soup. Then there’s the mental-block food hate…or should I say mental-block food “dislike with the passion of a thousand burning suns” (we don’t say “hate” in this house!) For me, this latter category includes bugs (no matter how much chocolate is involved) and cottage cheese.

While I personally haven’t ever met anyone who thinks the first item on that list is strange, I have met many who are surprised at my devout dislike of cottage cheese. I can’t explain it. I just know that the thought of eating it makes me feel violently ill.

When I was little, Mom used to make cottage cheese salad – a mixture of cottage cheese and fruit cocktail. When this so-called “salad” appeared on the dinner table, I immediately started in with the excuses. I wasn’t hungry. I had a big lunch. My stomach hurt. Anything … ANYTHING to avoid cottage cheese! But Mom wasn’t dumb. She saw right through it and always called my bluff. I was eating dinner, including a healthy portion of the dreaded cottage cheese salad and that was that.

Other than that icky concoction, the only thing my enormous cottage cheese dislike affected was lasagna. Mom’s recipe called for cottage cheese. I didn’t (and still don’t) care that you can’t actually taste the cottage cheese. Just like every kind of mental block dislike, the knowledge of its presence made it inedible. Still does.

I was quite old, probably over 18, before I discovered that lasagna could be made with a cheese that wasn’t cottage. Ricotta became my hero. Ricotta made lasagna delicious. I suddenly knew why everyone went cuckoo for lasagna.

So…fast forward to now. The Recipes to Rival challenge for February was a two-parter. #1 – Make my own ricotta cheese and #2 – Use it in a recipe.

Today…Making the ricotta. Tomorrow…the meal.

Here’s the official R2R post for making ricotta. You’ll need 1 gallon of milk and 1 quart of buttermilk. As long as neither one is ultra-pasturized, it should work.

Follow the directions…it takes about 1 – 2 hours, depending on how aggressive you get with the temperature dial on your stove. Mine was done in just under 2 hours. But it was easy time, just stirring occasionally and monitoring the thermometer.

1 gallon of milk and 1 quart of buttermilk yielded about 3 pounds (6 cups) of ricotta.

Cinnamon can make anything better

It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s more that I haven’t enjoyed cooking lately. Someone in the house has been sick, or work’s been crazy, or something’s been happening and I just have not been inspired.

So a couple of weekends, I was the sick one. Horrible cold – a chest cough, sore throat, sneezes, aches and pains. When Mom suggested chicken soup, it didn’t sound like it would be the magic cure it usually is. You know what sounded like the magical cure?

Cinnamon rolls!

I have issues with cinnamon rolls. They either seem to be too bread-y, so sweet, or don’t have enough cinnamon. There aren’t many cinnamon rolls I like that I haven’t made myself. So, in spite of feeling like I just wanted to roll myself up in a ball and moan, I got my butt in the kitchen and made some delisiousness that would make anyone feel better.

These were soft and full of cinnamon goodness. The bread was wonderful. My only disappointment was that flavor from the orange zest didn’t come through in the end. Next time, I’ll try adding in a couple tablespoons of orange juice and seeing if that kicks the flavor up some.

Now I’m going to be a bad blogger and just give you the ingredient list, but not the step-by-step instructions. If you’ve made a yeast dough before, this is just like that. If you haven’t, find almost any bread recipe and follow those steps. It’s really not that hard!

Cinnamon Rolls
Dough:
1 pkg yeast
1 1/4 c warmed buttermilk
1/2 c sugar
1 t salt
6 T butter, softened
2 eggs
1 T vanilla
4 1/2 – 5 c flour
1 T orange zest
Filling
1/2 c butter, softened
white sugar
brown sugar
cinnamon
nuts if you want ‘em. I used pecans cause Farmer Paul loves pecans in cinnamon rolls.

Again…bad food blogger that I am this morning, follow someone else’s directions for cinnamon rolls. They’re all assembled the same way. Be sure to butter your pans before you put the rolls in. Let them rise, bake until they’re done. I think mine took 35 – 40 minutes.

If you want icing, add it. Maybe make it with a little bit of orange juice for flavor. And eat them warm. It’ll cure what ails you.

A Dinner with my Valentine

I dislike Valentine’s Day. When I was a kid, it was SO MUCH FUN. After all, the combination of pink hearts, paper doilies, crafts and candy brought out the girly-girl in me. But once I got past elementary school, the holiday started to lose its appeal.

Since I’ve had kids, I’ve gotten some of the crafty Valentine’s fun back in my life, as you can see from the winning 5th grade “Funniest Valentine’s Bag” above. But really, I’m perfectly fine if the day passes without a single mention of it. Most years we have no celebration at all. It’s too commercialized for my taste.

This year, however, Paul used Valentine’s Day as the excuse to get me a wonderful, delicious present. A bottle of deliciously aged balsamic vinegar and another of black truffle oil. So of course, I had to create a meal worthy of this deliciousness.

We started off our dinner with shrimp sushi that had nothing to do with either the balsamic or the truffle oil. But it was sure good!

Then, we moved to the salad, which was dressed with the oil and vinegar combination. All I have to say, is Holy Crap! The combination makes for a fantastic dressing! We demolished our salads. Not a leaf was left.

Continuing on, we moved to the main course — Rib Steaks with Balsamic Mushrooms, sauteed spinach with garlic and baked potato. After the sushi and the salad, we were pretty stuffed. Although everything was good, we couldn’t even eat half of our steaks.

We paced the meal out while watching When Harry Met Sally. First sushi, then we started the movie. A Pause after the airplane scene for our salads, and another one after the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene for our steaks. When the movie was over, it was dessert time.

And dessert was Amaretto Souffle with Balsamic-Drizzled Strawberries and Amaretto whipped cream. You’ll notice how yellow the souffle is…that’s cause they’re made with eggs from our wonderful hens. Oh, the wonder of real eggs!

I’ll post later with the recipe for the souffle. Now that I’ve made one and it turned out so well, I’ll be making them often.