Sauerkraut Crock

I am terribly excited to share this new pottery design. I am totally jazzed about sauerkraut thanks to a terrific woman, and German immigrant, at the pottery class. I think she really appreciates sharing kraut with someone and I am happy to oblige! She initially showed me a design similar to this that was the starting point.

I threw the cylinder as straight as possible and then added the lip on the top, which I'll explain a bit later. Additionally I added the handles and threw a lid to match. I glazed it inside and out in the speckled blue and then matched that with a brown tenmouku which turns slightly green at the overlap.



On the inside you can see that I've already filled the bugger with two heads of cabbage. When making kraut quarter the head and then cut off all the large cabbage stems including the core. Then slice the quarters leaving long thin strands of cabbage. Weigh the remaining cabbage and add 2.5% of the total weight in kosher salt mixed throughout. The salt will help draw out the liquid from the cabbage and form a brine along with the salt. I also added three juniper berries, which my German friend says is absolutely essential for sauerkraut. Once I added that all to the crock I added the lid to a plastic cup and the ball jar filled with water as a weight. You can see that after 12 hours or so enough liquid had been drawn out from the cabbage to cover sufficiently.



The lid for the crock itself was designed to fit into the trough on the body of the crock, though I wish the trough was larger. The idea behind this is that you can add water to the trough and form a seal with the lid. The water should allow any excess CO2 to escape while keeping the seal.

Scratch Made Cannoli

I don't know how the simple cannoli clawed its way all the way into my heart. But there it lives, content in the knowledge that it has displaced any patisserie's offering.

When I worked at the Juvenile Court on Roosevelt, we were very near to Taylor and the Ferrara Bakery. At the time they were the best cannoli in the city. After I won my first felony trial I bought a box for the office to celebrate. It was great.

I went back recently to relive the glory days and was sadly disappointed. Maybe it was just a fluke in that particular batch but the cannoli shells tasted like a churro. They had 6x the amount of cinnamon I was expecting. Now I don't have anything against churros but when I want a churro I buy a churro and when I want a cannoli I buy a cannoli. Plus they added peanuts on the outside... cannoli fail.

So I figured it can't be that hard to make them right? ... well... ...uh... ...kinda true.

Quick lessons to keep in mind whenever you're planning to cook. Don't try out your new recipe for the first time when you have company over or you are expected to bring the dish for company. Make it for yourself. Iron out the flaws and get comfortable with the dish. Then, once you've mastered it you can impress company with it. I know this. I recommend this to everyone. However, I often fail to live by this. I just get a bit overly excited... Sorry to everyone who has had to eat watery ricotta or had to wait as I fried cannoli shells like a madman in the other room. Next time, it will be perfect!





Ok so it goes! Scratch made cannoli, inside and out. I have found and mastered the dough, the filling, everything. And the shells do keep, so if you want you can make a batch, freeze them, and then just make the filling fresh. It actually is rather convenient.

Shells...
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/cannoli-2/Detail.aspx
This recipe from Lydia Nacawa is absolutely fantastic. She calls for Marsala wine which I never have in the house. I have substituted with white whine and brandy, which we randomly do have in stock. It adds a wonderful, complex and interesting flavor to the dough that pulls it out of churro land and into my heart. This would also go easier with more than three tubes.

• Shells:
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons shortening
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup sweet Marsala wine
• 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 egg white
• 1 quart oil for frying, or as needed
• 
  
• Filling:
• 1 (32 ounce) container ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup chopped candied citron
• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (optional)

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar and cinnamon. Cut in the shortening until it is in pieces no larger than peas. Make a well in the center, and pour in the egg, egg yolk, Marsala wine, vinegar and water. Mix with a fork until the dough becomes stiff, then finish it by hand, kneading on a clean surface. Add a bit more water if needed to incorporate all of the dry ingredients. Knead for about 10 minutes, then cover and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.
2. Divide the cannoli dough into thirds, and flatten each one just enough to get through the pasta machine. Roll the dough through successively thinner settings until you have reached the thinnest setting. Dust lightly with flour if necessary. Place the sheet of dough on a lightly floured surface. Using a form or large glass or bowl, cut out 4 to 5 inch circles. Dust the circles with a light coating of flour. This will help you later in removing the shells from the tubes. Roll dough around cannoli tubes, sealing the edge with a bit of egg white.
3. Heat the oil to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) in a deep-fryer or deep heavy skillet. Fry shells on the tubes a few at a time for 2 to 3 minutes, until golden. Use tongs to turn as needed. Carefully remove using the tongs, and place on a cooling rack set over paper towels. Cool just long enough that you can handle the tubes, then carefully twist the tube to remove the shell. Using a tea towel may help you get a better grip. Wash or wipe off the tubes, and use them for more shells. Cooled shells can be placed in an airtight container and kept for up to 2 months. You should only fill them immediately or up to 1 hours before serving.
4. To make the filling, stir together the ricotta cheese and confectioners' sugar using a spoon. Fold in the chopped citron and chocolate. Use a pastry bag to pipe into shells, filling from the center to one end, then doing the same from the other side. Dust with additional confectioners' sugar and grated chocolate for garnish when serving.

As for the filling...
Who knew homemade ricotta was so easy?! Well serious eats ran blogpost on it that caught my eye. They recommend the microwave. However, I'm often trying to make a large amount of ricotta and 10 cups of milk in the microwave seems a bit too much. Besides, I find the stove top method to work just great.

Recipe works like this.
1 Cup Milk (Goat's Milk, 2% Cow, Whole, etc)
1 Tablespoon Acid (Vinegar, Buttermilk, Lemon Juice)
Scale recipe up from here.

Place milk on stove with medium heat. You want to heat the milk evenly and slowly just until it starts to bubble. Stir well and then add acid. Stir in acid very gently, just enough to mix thoroughly. Usually one full sweep around the pot is sufficient for me. Milk should begin to curdle immediately once you've added the acid.

Pour entire mixture over a colander lined with paper towels or cheesecloth. And allow to drain for the amount of time necessary for the desired consistency. For cannoli filling I have been doing about 20 minutes but the density of your paper towels/cheesecloth with affect this time.

Place cheese in fridge until cool. Then, mix cheese with powdered sugar and any other additions (citron, citrus peel, chocolate chips) and stuff in cannoli. Then you may stuff in your face! Enjoy!

Home Fermentation Threefer

It's been a while since I've posted so this is going to be a big one. It's a home fermentation bonanza! I've been busy brewing new batches of beer as well as our first batch of sauerkraut! Details to follow...





But this is the result of our efforts. You've all seen the homemade sausage we made previously. I served it one evening with our fresh sauerkraut and some homebrewed beer. Not a bad outing.

The beer is a kit from Northern Brewer called Dundalk Irish Heavy. They describe it as an overgrown Irish session beer. It's probably most similar to a very big Irish Red. The color appears dark in the picture but it's really just a cloudy dark red. It also is brewed with a bit of corn sugar to boost the gravity and dry out the finish. It's only my second beer but clearly my best. Loved this one but it is little higher gravity. I'm sure you'd feel it if you drank too many...





The sauerkraut came about as a fluke. Since I've gotten into home fermentation I've started listening to a number of podcasts. Podcasts at the gym, podcasts while I run, podcasts while I cook, podcasts all the darn time. One of my favorites is Basic Brewing Video/Radio. They are a series of podcasts run by two guys who break it down fairly well. Recently they've been off track talking about other things rather than beer alone. They peeked my interest for home-fermented cider but I already tried the kraut.

With additional help from the Mad Fermentationist I made the kraut. It honestly was the easiest thing in the world. It's just cabbage and salt. Add the cabbage to a clean (in my case sanitized jar) and add 2.5% of the cabbage's weight in salt mixed throughout. Add weight to push down the kraut and allow natural wild yeast to sour this on the counter until it's as funky as you'd like it. Then place it in the fridge and enjoy. Seems easy huh! I'll add more specific details on this later but that's the basic idea.

Now the favor... oh the flavor. I've always enjoyed a bit of sour cabbage from time to time but like most things it's so much better to have the real stuff. When it's home fermented it's not mushy but persistently crunchy. I've had kraut for weeks (we made it probably over two months ago) and it's still as crunchy as a head of fresh cabbage. In fact it squeaks on your teeth a bit as you eat it, weird!

We let it ferment for approximately three weeks on the counter before slowing down the process in the fridge and it did get decidedly funky, but in the best way possible. We left it so that it still has a bit of cabbage taste left to it. It tastes like a delicious head of cabbage with a soured edge to it.




I'll also tease this. I got so excited about this that I made a sauerkraut crock. But it's not finished so you'll have to keep reading... until then.

Sausage Fest 2011

Making sausages is as simple as grind, mix, and stuff. Though, when you're making 20+ pounds of sausage it still takes a while...





Good news is that the results can be awesome!

Firstly, I have to acknowledge an amazing website we used for all the recipes. http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm This guy has some great recipes available for personal use. We haven't tried any of the dried recipes. But we did make swedish potato sausage, hungarian garlic sausage, british bangers, and a mixture we made ourselves.

First though let's break down the process.

I found it easiest to freeze the pieces of pork shoulder just a bit so they're easier to cut. Then, we cut them into small squares and threw 'em into the grinder.





I'll admit, the grinder was kinda gross. Lots of squirting and sputtering sounds as fat and meat is made into delicious sausage...





Andrea threw around a lot of meat science and I'll admit most if it went over my head. But one thing I did catch was that the mixing is really important. After all the spices, potatoes, whatever have been mixed completely we kept going to really begin to break down the meat. Andrea said this helps the final product stick to itself and stay cohesive.





Everything up to now doesn't seem really complicated but it did take a while. Next up was the easiest part and the most fun...





Special thanks here have to go out to my parents-in-law for picking up the hog casings. We had to soak the casings over night to remove the salt. Then we simply placed them on the sausage press and we were off to the races...





It took a while to get the pressure right. And honestly it's easier if one person just takes over because it's too hard to coordinate the timing.

But thankfully all the work was totally worth it. And if anyone comes over they are welcome to which ever is your favorite... british bangers, hungarian garlic, swedish potato, or curried pork.





Just make sure Fiona watches you eat it...

Brewing Day

With my brother in town brewing day finally arrived! Our first attempt will be a dry Irish stout in the tradition of Murphy’s or Guinness. We used the extract kit from Northern Brewer here…

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/dry-irish-stout-extract-kit-2.html

Frankly the brewing day was uneventful. We added our grains to a mesh bag and steeped then as the water began to boil. The heavily roasted barley imparted flavor and color to the liquid.

Once we hit 170 F we removed the barley and brought the mixture to a boil. We then added the malt extract which is essentially syrup provided in a half gallon container.

Once the mixture was brought back to a boil we added the hops and boiled for 60 minutes as stated in the directions.

Finally, we plopped the wort outside to cool. It was about 20 F that night so it didn’t take long until it was cool enough to touch. We poured the wort into a carboy and added water to make a five gallon batch. We then took our original gravity readings.

After much debate and testing we determined our OG was 1.043. Lastly we placed a simple water valve to seal it and set the entire thing to begin fermentation. But not before we drank our unfermented wort. It was really sugary and despite Tim's acting will never get you drunk...

Fermentation was ridiculous! I woke up the next morning to an explosion of beer. Apparently the fermentation was so vigourous that the valve couldn’t keep up and my kraeusen had literally blown the bung off and created quite a mess!

So I had to attach my blow-off tube. The pressure in the carboy began to push out the extra foam slowly through the hose just as I expected. With the second end of the tube under a couple of inches of water I still had a good seal and there was no chance the kraeusen could clog my Thankfully I was fully prepared and knew how to handle the situation. Thanks Northern Brewer!

I would like to thank all those that made this brewing day possible. Especially Fiona who oversaw the entire operation...

Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemon

I made this exciting chicken the other night for a weekday dinner and am just now getting around to posting it. Admittedly, this was a lot of work on the front end but I was surprised how little work it was near the end. Recipe to follow...



Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemon

1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorn
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon whole clove
3 tablesppons extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon ginger
2 bay leaves
1 large pinch saffron
3.75 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt and pepper
1 medium onion
4 preserved lemons
1/2 cup dried green olives
1.5 cups chicken stock

I added the cinnamon, peppercorns, cumin, paprika, red pepper flakes, and cloves to a skillet dry skillet and cooked them over medium high heat until they started to smoke. Then I grinded them in out spice grinder.

I cut the chicken into 10 pieces and added the smoked spice mixture along with the oil, garlic, bay leaves and saffron. I tossed this until the chicken was thoroughly coated though I wish I would have tossed and then added the bay leaves because they got a bit crushed in the process.
I then allowed the chicken to marinade for two hours.

In a large pot I browned the chicken and then set it aside. In the same pot I added the onions rough cut and browned on medium high. Then I added the 2 preserved lemons cut into strips with the flesh removed. Then I added the olives and chicken stock and re-added the chicken. I covered and cooked on low for about 30 minutes.

I served it with quinoa which I made with 2 more preserved lemon and a handful of tart dried cherries. Andrea thought the lemon was good but after half a bowl she thought it was too much. Not surprising because I quadrupled it from the original recipe. Maybe next time I'll leave it out of the quinoa.

Later, I'll have to post about preserving the lemons. I did it during the late summer and it couldn't have been easier.


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Celtic Knot Border

Remember how I said I found some new books from the library from my new favorite author, Aidan Meehan? Well, I love em! I've been learning a lot and seriously recommend any of his books to anybody interested in Celtic art. They are approachable and extremely detailed. Truly a wonder to use.

I thought it might be fun if I posted some of my recent work. I worked through much of the book on Celtic knots and finished with a border. But instead of just showing you the pretties I thought it would be even better to show you how much work goes into the process...




The first thing I must do is draw my primary grid. The intersection of this primary grid are the basis for the whole pattern.





Then I am able to add my red dots for the secondary grid. I draw these in red because I think of the secondary grid as a no-go area. My knot pattern should never intersect these spaces.





Finally, I added the tertiary grid. I draw these in green because my knot pattern will flow from tertiary intersection to tertiary intersection in an alternating over under pattern. Meehan argues that one needn't draw the tertiary grid but I am finding that it's a nice crutch to have. Plus I am interested in this work with an eye toward pottery as the eventual application. Thus I don't need to worry so much about cluttering the space because all the grid dots and line breaks will burn off in the kiln, leaving my knot pattern alone.





Finally I am able to draw in my line breaks. I determined my pattern and then drew in primary and secondary grid breaks to make the pattern I wanted.





All that was left was to begin to follow my pattern. It's always over under and never cross a line break. Thus the path is clearly marked.


Nevertheless I did make two mistakes... In the bottom right of this image I have a red, secondary, line break which is one unit too far to the right. Notice that it made the only s-curve in the pattern. Also, in the upper left of the image I drew a over/over/under knot. Oops...

Otherwise I'm extremely pleased. And it was good practice. I think it's real safe to say that pie plates, pasta bowls, coffee mugs and all other variety of pottery is likely going to have a knot treatment in the near future!