Simple, easy, tasty, cheesy

Home made queso blanco cheese.

Keeping to the theme of springtime delights, here is a recipe that brings a creamy and delicious cheese for lunches or snacks, and protein packed left overs (whey) for smoothies that you and your kids will love. Or you can go one step beyond, and use the whey to make ricotta.

Queso blanco is a mild, creamy white cheese great as a base for dips, fantastic with crackers as a snack, and a deeply satisfying addition to many Mexican dishes, including my flat food pt 2!

In its simplest form, it has a mild and wholesome flavour like bocconcini - but spreadable. It doesn’t melt, however - until it reaches your mouth!

What do you need to make this treasure? Milk, salt and vinegar. And a piece of cheese cloth (muslin). However, if you like a little extra, this cheese comes to new life if you add herbs or spices such as cumin, chives, pepper … hmm. Nice.

You can make this with regular supermarket milk, but it really benefits from good quality full cream milk. Riverina brand is good I think. But any full cream milk will work.

BTW, I like the pic below, because the cheese in its wrapper reminds me of the face-hugger pods in Alien.

Recipe: Queso blanco

Yields

• 400–600g cheese
• 2 litres whey

Ingredients

• 4 litres full cream milk
• 1/3 cup white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 2 teaspoons crushed cumin seeds
• 1 pinch smokey paprika

Method

Heat milk in a pot (start heat low, then increase to medium if you want to reduce your pot-cleaning at the end) until the milk is just about to boil. You can tell it’s close because tiny bubbles start to rise, there is a shimmering on the surface - and it feels really hot to your pinky!

Then pour in your vinegar and gently stir. Here the magic happens, and the curds start to separate from the whey. The curds (from which we’re making our cheese) are lumpy and stringy, and gently stirring will help the separation process. Remember the separation process? Well, this one ends in cheese! And whey.

Stir gently for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat off, then stir gently for another five.

Line a colander with a piece of muslin about 40 cm square, and place over a large pot or dish to retain the whey.

Gently pour the curds and whey through the strainer Occasionally you’ll need to gather the corners of the muslin and squeeze out the liquid a little.

When all the whey has passed through and all that is left only a little puddle that can be contained inside the muslin line colander, it is time to add the remaining ingredients.

Sprinkle the salt and the cumin, and a little pinch of paprika onto the cheese. Tie the quarters of the muslin using some cooking string and hang over to sink for four hours, or up to 12.

Return the remaining whey to one of the milk bottles and place in the fridge this you can use later for really yummy, protein-packed smoothies.

You can also use the whey to make ricotta.

Now, you will find many recipes on the internet for what is basically my queso blanco, claiming this is ricotta. Wrong! Ricotta (Italian for re-cooked) is not strictly a cheese, but a biproduct of cheese making, by using the whey. They ricotta makes use of a different set of proteins than those that form the curds of the queso blanco.

I have never made ricotta (I generally can’t wait to get the bar mix out for those smoothies!) but here are two recipes for making ricotta from whey.

• How To Make Ricotta Cheese Using Only Whey
• How To Make Great Ricotta Cheese From Whey

Flat food pt 2

Spring is here. Time to start thinking about lighter, sharper, busier flavours. Thank you comfort foods, your job is done. Time for the party plate!

All over Sydney Mexican restaurants are opening like cactus flowers. As a home cook cuisine, Mex is really good fun, and a good combo of plate food and portable food. Diana Kennedy’s “The cuisines of Mexico” is the very best place to start.

In the meantime - here’s my main meal flat food.

Corn enchildas, cumin lime pork, refried beans and white cheese.

I like soft corn tortillas, but they are much harder to find in supermarkets and delis than the wheat variety. Try Senor Nila on the northern beaches, Mexico City in the south, or Fireworks in the west. Otherwise, Woolies stocks the “A taste of Mexico” brand which has white corn tortillas, which I used for this recipe.

The mild white cheese in Tex Mex is Monterey Jack. There are some very funny posts on blogs about how difficult it is to import American cheese into Europe, mostly ending in - what would we need this awful cheese for anyway?

‘Monterey Jack’, or the more Mexi ‘Questo Blanco’, are pretty bland cheeses that can be substituted with bocconcini, or other mild white cheese. OR you could make your own! Easy and so tasty! See our next exciting recipode for home made Queso blanco. I am eating it spread on crackers right now, and it’s yum!

Recipe: Lime pork enchiladas

Ingredients

Yields 8 enchiladas

• .5 kilo pork mince
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 8 soft corn tortillas
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 brown onion
• 1 red onion
• 4 tablespoons canola or other vegetable oil
• .5 cup chicken or vegetable stock
• fresh coriander
• ground cumin
• pepper
• juice 1 lime
• 1 cup grated or crumbled mild white cheese
• .5 cup grated cheddar cheese

Method

Preheat oven at 160 degrees Celsius.

Finely chop tomato, coriander and red onion. Set aside

Pan fry the pork mince in the vegetable oil with pepper, and coarsely ground cumin. Add juice of lime, stir until evaporated and pork is browned. Set aside.

In the same pan, using the oil left over from the pork, sauté diced brown onion.

Add the red beans, including the broth, stir and mash. After a while, they mixture will start to gather into a kind of pancake. Once you can roll it off the pan, it’s ready.

Set aside.

In the same pan, bring stock to a simmer.

Rest each corn tortilla in the stock until they soften (about 30 seconds).

Place on each tortilla a tablespoon of the pork, beans, tomato, and white cheese. Roll each tortilla and place on an oven tray. Sprinkle with yellow cheese. Place in oven until the yellow cheese starts to brown and the inside juices start to bubble from within - about 30 mins.

Flat food p1

Last Sunday was fathers day, and my boys suggested, as a fathers day treat, that I make them pancakes.

Actually, the request was more specific. The word was crepes.

Flat breads of various kinds are incredibly useful bachelor foods for breakfasts, snacks, work and school bags.

And for dinner? How about corn enchiladas with cummin-lime pork? More on that in Flat things pt 2.

Crepe or pancake. Basically the difference is a pancake includes a raising agent and a crepe doesn’t.

Crepes are more likely to be eaten folded or rolled, while pancakes are more likely to be eaten with syrup or salsa.

Smaller pancakes (flapjacks) can be eaten in a stack.

If you add extra caster sugar (and some vanilla essence) as well as a raising agent and make smaller cakes, you get pikelettes, which seem to be an Australian / New Zealand invention.

Wikipedia has a really good discription of pancake styles around the world at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake

Crepe recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1.25 cups milk
• .5 teaspoon caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon butter

Yields 6–8 crepes

Method

The most important thing is not about making the crepes, but keeping them warm. Put the oven onto 60 degrees now, and pop in a dinner plate.

Mix all ingredients except the butter in a mixing bowl using a whisk. The mixture needs to be smooth. When you lift your whisk out of the mixture, it needs to run, rather than fall in blobs (not too thick), but leave ripples where it falls back in the bowl that stay for a moment or two (not too thin).

Heat half the butter in a frying pan. The heat needs to be high enough for the butter to melt and start to bubble, but not so high for the butter to burn.

When the butter is melted and coving the pan evenly, add the batter, just enough to almost fill the pan. I like to leave about a cm of space on the outside to the edge of the pan because I think the slightly smaller size looks better on the plate, and that bit of extra space makes turning the crepe a little easier.

When the edges of the crepe start to turn up, and small air bubbles start to pop in the mixture, it is time to turn them. Add extra butter as required.

Remove them one by one to the warming plate.

Serving

My boys and I like sprinkling with raw sugar and lemon juice and rolling them up. Yum!

A side benefit to crepes is that it is one of the few ways my kids will eat eggs without the slightest hassle.

What about the little dudes?

An adult interlude ...

Results for previous entry Adult food were quite satisfactory. Couscous is a lovely stuffing medium, and the combination of lime and dried fruit works very well. A jar of whole spice garam masala should be placed along side of my Good old standbys of a previous post. The rice was yum and well received. Relief!

Adult conversation turned (inevitably) to feeding kids.

My most intensive cooking time for my boys (until bachelorism, where cooking is making a comeback) was from late nappies to kindy - them, not me.

Rule 1: Size matters
Rule 2: Time matters
Rule 3: What matters, matters

The most important thing you can teach a child about food, is how to eat something they don’t particularly like.

Size matters

This is so easy to forget. We see it every day. But children are ... small.

Some children of course will just eat what’s put in front of them. They feel hunger strongly and will only complain if what you dish up is truly disgusting. Most, though, find mealtime a challenge for various reasons. Back to size.

Place your hand, fingers stretched out, on the kitchen bench. That is about a meal. A little less than a meal maybe, but in the general neighbourhood. Now think of how much smaller a four-year-old's hand is compared to yours.

For a little dude about 1 metre high, an adult size serve of food looks like a sack of potatoes. Even if they know they can eat it, it just looks … big!

Time matters

I remember a friend remarking on her beloved grandmother’s perception of time passing. She was so used to it, time slipping by: “it’s like, every 15 minutes, you’re having breakfast again”.

It takes time to learn about time. For children, a week is a month, a day is a week. Five minutes is an hour.

Put something in front of them that they know will take half an hour to eat … it’s not so much the food, it’s getting their heads around anything that can take so long.

For both rule 1 and 2, my advice is think small. By all means, cook what you think they’ll eat. But don’t serve what you think they’ll eat. Serve them half first, and let them eat it, and achieve it. Let them take a break, leave their seats, see if the rain has stopped or what the sunset looks like, then come back to the table and have a second helping.

What matters, matters

The most important thing you can teach a child about food, is how to eat something they don’t particularly like.

This is something that “cooking for children” books don’t tell you, because all of their recipes are so great that any child will love it (unless you’ve been a bad parent, which you probably have been…).

Managing likes and dislikes is exactly the same as managing emotions. A huge amount (possibly the full helping) of growing up is about finding a way to distinguish between minor and major catastrophies - can you be the judge?

It is important to recognise that kids have a right to likes and dislikes. It’s also good to teach them to make decisions and judgements. Their likes and dislikes really matter to them, and they should really matter to you. It’s also important for children to learn that not every dislike is a game-breaker.

If there is a plate of food that contains stuff your child likes and stuff your child doesn’t, you can say: Which is the stuff you will eat all of, which is the stuff you will eat some of, which is the stuff you will eat a tiny bit of…? If they make these decisions easily, good. If they are really stuck, you can offer them something on the plate that they don’t have to eat at all, provided they eat more of something else. You just need to be giving them healthy options.

Conclusion

The most important of these is - What matters, matters. Learn from your child, and your child will learn from you.

Adult food!

Cooking for adults

At last the spice cabinet comes out. I have discovered a wonderful Indian spice shop close by - you know the kind, DVDs, rice sacks, and lots of whole spices in plastic bags sealed with a staple. Fresh curry leaves too!

I have chicken stock in the freezer, so I’m thinking: the bird!

I want a roast chicken, but also want some aspects of the Malaysian staple (get it?) chicken rice.

Here’s the plan.

Roast chicken with stuffing

Stuffing

• couscous
• pan-browned rice, cracked in a mortar
• buised cardamon
• lime wedges

Rice

Steamed with chicken stock and whole-spice garam masala

Roast Veggies

• Spanish onion
• Baby carrots
• Garlic
• Cayenne chilies

Finely slice bok choy, blanch and sprinkle over the top last

I’m thinking, little cupped rice mounds, all neat and prissy, with chaos of bird bits, veggies and bok choy.

Bring on the grown-ups. Wish me luck!

Golden and crunchy

Guess what we're having for dinner? Two guaranteed to get a yay and a victory fist pump from my boys is cottage pie, and lemon-seasoned fish fingers.

Tonight I made cottage pie (I generally do it with cubed chuck steak, but this time, on request because we hadn't had it for a while, I used the traditional lamb mince).

Last week, though, I wheeled out a favourite from their preschool days. Lemon-seasoned fish fingers.

Two things the meals have in common is they're golden and crunchy. The lovely mashed potato with bread crumbs and grated parmesan from the oven, or the seasoned bread crumbs from the wok.

I like to give my kids fish once a week, but they're not mad keen on it. They'll eat it, but you have to ride 'em a little. Not with this meal though.

Recipe: Lemon-seasoned fish fingers

Ingredients

• 1 cup bread crumbs
• .75 kilograms boneless fish fillets (orange roughy is perfect, ling is also very good. I prefer orange roughy because of the texture, its more sustainable fishing status, and because it's a member of the slimehead family)
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Grated zest of one lemon
• 2 cups canola oil

Method

Combine bread crumbs, lemon zest, salt and garam masal. Spread this out evenly on a dinner plate.
Beat eggs in a bowl
Slice fish fillets into thickish fingers
Dip the fish fingers into the egg, then roll them in the bread crumbs so they have a nice even covering
In a wok for frying pan, bring oil to a high heat just before smoking
Deep fry three or four fish fingers at a time until they are golden brown (texture like sun)

Serve with steamed rice and stir-fried or steamed vegetables.

This is one of those meals that has something for both kids and adults. I found it a good way of introducing my boys to some new flavours. It's also fun to make, with a little fish finger production line, with someone dipping the fish in the egg, someone rolling the fish in the crumbs, someone laying it out neatly ready to be fried.

Another key to gradually expanding children's taste boundaries is condiments and sides. Children can find a big, busy plate quite confusing and daunting... but that is another blog post I think.

Taking stock

There's nothing like making stock for taking stock.

On a rainy Sunday, and my boys returned to their other home, it's time to prepare for when they're back again.

Yesterday I used my trusty slow cooker to make for my boys and me, chicken and tomato rice. I like to buy a whole, chemical free chicken (don't you love it when they are labelled "chemically free"?) and cut it in pieces myself. It makes me feel like Kitchen Man.

Here's the technique I follow. Note, that the chicken back is retained for later stock making.

The exception to this method the way I do it, is that I keep the bone and gristle on the breast, and cut the breast halves across the bone, so that the breast is quartered. That way you get 10 evenly sized pieces.

As this is more about the stock, I'll whiz over the chicken casserole, except to say that it's made with my good old standby tomato salsa, and that about 1 hour before you want to eat, you pull out all the solid ingredients with a slotted spoon, and pour in enough medium grain rice so that there is only a fingertip of liquid above the rice layer. Then place the solid ingredients back and re-cover.

My freezer bag was now full of chicken backs, ready for taking stock and making stock on a rainy Sydney Sunday. Here goes.

Recipe: Chicken stock

Yields 11 cups stock.

Ingredients

• About 1kg chicken pieces
• 2 carrots
• 2 onions
• 1 leek
• 2 stalks celery
• 1 clove garlic
• 6 pepper corns
• 4 tablespoons canola or olive oil
• 2 litres water

Method

• Preheat oven to 200º
• Roughly chop the veggies, and put everything (except the water!) in a roasting pan and into the oven for 30 minutes
• Remove the contents to a large, heavy based pot
• Use some of the water to make sure you get all the bits and pieces (and flavours) from the roasting pan. Add this water and the rest to the stock pot
• Raise heat to full and bring to boil
• Drop heat back to a simmer
• Simmer for 2 hours, occasionally skimming off the brownish grey film that forms on the surface
• When the 2 hours is up, remove all the solid pieces (do not discard - these are your dinner, and just reward for an arvo of stock-making goodness. Once cool enough, strip off the good meat from the chicken bones, and put this with the tasty veggies. Fry up some ginger and chili in a pot, add the stock bits and some fish sauce. Add 2 cups of your stock and bring to boil, then add a handful of rice noodles - and there's your dinner. Yum!)
• Strain the stock (I use a mesh strainer lined with a paper towel). Strain twice.

I think storage amounts of 1.5 cups is most versatile.

These will keep in plastic containers in the freezer for several months. Make sure you put a date on the label or lid.

And there you have it. Lovely, healthy homemade chicken stock.

First destination? Malaysian chicken rice.