Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category


Local Cheeses Get Our Goat!

 

Northern California is home to some of the most beautiful and flavorful artisan cheese in the world today. Our perfect combination of geography and climate provide dedicated artisans with the resources necessary to practice their craft. Unlike the Northeast and the Midwest, our mild winters allow animals to spend almost the entire year on pasture, and the wonderful flavors of the terroir and the seasons are expressed in the cheese. Many of these cheeses are only available at the local farmers’ markets, or at select independent retailers throughout the area.

The Mendocino coast is home to the Elk Creamery, California’s first certified organic goat dairy. Cheesemaker Kermit Carter produces a variety of cheeses, including a delicate camembert and the lusty Red Gold, which is dusted in dried hot peppers. By far, Elk’s most popular cheese is the Black Gold, a camembert-style cheese aged under a coating of vegetable ash. The cheeses almost burst when ripe, and are a perfect complement to crusty breads.
 
Further inland, you will find two more top-notch producers of artisan chevre. The newest, Shamrock Artisan, is located outside Willits. Their Bouchon (translated, “wine cork”) is an aged button similar to Crottin de Chavignol from France’s famed Loire region. Few local cheesemakers sell aged cheeses, as the time from milk to market is longer and return on investment is slower to recoup. Shamrock also makes an Ashed Tomette, another aged but flatter disk, with the same nutty flavor and toothsome texture. Along with these, you can also purchase a selection of fresh chevre, both plain and flavored, as well as a tangy goat feta.
 
Yerba Santa Dairy is perhaps one of California’s oldest goat cheese artisans. The farm was purchased from its founders several years ago by bothers Daniel and Javier Salmon, who previously hailed from Bodega Goat Cheese. Javier produces Bodega’s line of cheeses on the farm, located just west of Lakeport, and Daniel produces the Yerba Santa recipes, including the aged Shepherd’s, one of the few raw milk goat cheeses available in California today. Their most unique offering is a Peruvian version of cajeta, goat’s milk caramel, called Natilla. The recipe comes from their father, and the sweet and tangy paste is a natural topping for fig and prosciutto pizza, featured below.
 
Fig and Prosciutto Pizza
 
1 ¼ cups tepid water
1 package instant or fast rising dry yeast
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
3-31/4 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
¼ cup cornmeal
Extra virgin olive oil
2-3 slices of prosciutto or slivered ham
4-5 fresh figs, halved
¼ cup Yerba Santa plain Chevito, crumbled
Bodega Goat Cheese Natilla, slightly warmed in hot water bath
 
Place water in mixing bowl and dissolve yeast in the water. Add the oil and 1 ½ cups of the flour and all of the cornmeal. Beat together for 5-10 minutes to form a sticky batter. Knead in the remaining flour until dough is smooth and elastic. Place on a clean counter or in a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap or towel. Allow to rise until double in bulk, about one hour. Punch dough down and divide into three equal parts. You can roll out the dough at this point and freeze between layers of plastic wrap or in individual zip bags (defrost before topping and baking).
 
To make pizza, preheat your oven to 450F with or without a pizza stone. Roll one portion of dough into a rough circle on a lightly floured baking sheet. It should make a circle about 14” across, depending on how thick you like your crust. Brush with olive oil, and top with meat, figs, and crumbled Chevito. Drizzle warm Natilla over the top and bake either on the sheet or directly on a pizza stone for 10-15 minutes or until crust is browned to your taste and topping are heated through.
Post by Julia Conway on August 14th, 2008

Making Mole

 

The mid-June afternoon is the warmest we have had in a week or two, and I find myself standing next to the stove stirring the lava-like mass at the bottom of the big kettle. It spits and pops and sends small jets of dark red grease upward to catch the unwary forearm. A simmering pot of broth steams on the left burner, making the small hairs around my face curl from the humidity. This is not the type of cooking where one can leave the room and pursue other tasks, no matter how urgent. We will serve this chocolate-laced savory concoction of ground nuts, seeds and both fresh and dried chiles over rice at the annual Taste of Wine, Chocolate and Ale to benefit the Mendocino Music Festival.

The recipe for this complex and labor-intensive stew comes from the state of Puebla in Mexico. It has been lovingly and awkwardly translated from its original Spanish, and modified to reflect the types of chiles available at my local Mexican market. As most of the Mexican immigrants here on the coast hail from either Oaxaca or the Yucatan, substitutions from the original are mandatory. The actual types and proportions are a guarded secret, but the process itself is the real story.
 
One begins by charring the fresh vegetables, tomatillos still in their husks, white onions, and fresh Poblano chiles. Traditionally, this is done on a comal, a cast iron griddle the size of a garbage can lid. To hasten the process while still preserving the flavor, I roast each of the items in a very hot convection oven until the skins are blackened and the juices ooze and caramelize on the pan. Fresh corn tortillas and a torn-up stale bolillo (soft roll) are fried in pork lard and set aside to cool. The dried chiles are soaked in boiling water to soften them for handling. Blanched almonds and pumpkin seeds are also fried until toasty brown and fragrant, and whole cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds, cloves and allspice are toasted in a dry pan.
 
The first ingredients to be pureed are the onions and the tomatillos, husks and skins removed. Next the tortillas and fried bread are ground to fine crumbs and stirred into the vegetable mixture. The nuts and spices are combined and processed to a powder, taking care not to process so long that almond-pumpkin butter results. When combined with the other ingredients, the mixture looks like some type of dough. The roasted Poblanos are stemmed, pureed and added as well, darkening the mixture with their almost black-green hue. The soaked dried chiles are also stemmed and carefully seeded so the finished stew is not fiery hot. Plastic gloves are required for this procedure, as it is too easy to inadvertently touch lips or eyes with fingers infused with the potent oils. A handful of the seeds are toasted and added back to the chiles for just a bit of heat. The mixture is drained and then fried in more lard until the dark red chiles turn almost black and their pungent oils fill the air. The thick paste is scooped into the food processor with water to thin, and pureed until it resembles brick colored paint. When everything is combined, the raw mole is faintly reddish and flecked with darker specks of chiles and spices.
 
Though this process takes over an hour, it is not the most time consuming part of preparing mole. The woman that gave me the recipe told me that the most important part is when the love is added to the stew. Heating more pork lard in my biggest kettle until it froths; I prepare to finish the mole. When I add the raw paste to the fat, everything boils and bubbles frantically. I must stir almost constantly at this point, so that the paste browns but does not burn. Soon I add large ladles of hot chicken broth, alternately thinning and thickening the mixture as it cooks over a period of hours. Halfway through, I add several rounds of chopped up Mexican chocolate, allowing it to melt into the paste. Now stirring is non-negotiable as the chocolate will burn if left sitting on the bottom of the kettle. This is where the love comes in, as the mole must be nursed along, stirring constantly, as it darkens and continues to thicken. I imagine Mexican women, mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers, taking turns stirring the mole through the afternoon as they laugh and talk and share the joys of the kitchen. Unfortunately, my only companions this day are my dogs, sitting patiently at my feet hoping for a small taste of what is to come. The final ingredient added is a glass of white vinegar, the acid providing a necessary counterpoint to the richness.
 
Dishes like this take much too long for most of us to prepare in our modern, hurried world. Even the Mexican grocery store sells mole in a small glass jar, to be seasoned with the cook’s own variations on spices, often reminiscent of her mother’s recipe. There is something elemental about preparing a dish that takes most of a day to cook. There is an intimate connection between the cook and the kitchen, and the love and attention that is required to transform the mundane ingredients of an everyday salsa into a complex and heartening Mole Poblano. Spicy, savory, bitter, sweet, and sour; the flavors that punctuate every region’s culinary traditions meld together in a dish that warms the hearts of all of those who partake of its magic.
Post by Julia Conway on June 13th, 2008