Peruvian Dinner

It's been a year and a half since I've posted to this blog.  I've been kept very busy tending to my creations in my kitchen and garden and have spent little time in reflection.  But  I made a particularly beautiful dinner last Sunday and have gotten a few thumbs up on Facebook for my endeavor so I thought I'd log back into my abandoned blog to post a few photos and recipes.  The dinner was for my parents and my brother Chris who had just returned from Italy.  Everyone coming to dinner had travelled to Peru at some point and Peru's cuisine has been coming up for me recently.  I purchased a great cookbook, Ceviche, at a cute new boutique here in La Jolla and had already prepared a meal from the pages of the book.  Another recent inspiration was Anthony Bourdain's Peruvian episode of Parts Unknown.  One dish in particular he was served at a waterfront home in Lima was Causa Limena, and I wanted to replicate what I saw for just a few seconds on camera.

Empanadas filled with Swiss Chard and Fresh Cheese
I prepared my pastry dough of flour and butter and then chilled it in the fridge while preparing the filling.  I've never heard of this particular filling, but I have lots of beautiful rainbow chard growing in my yard that I wanted to use.  My inspiration was the Greek spanakopita, spinach and cheese wrapped in filo.  I basically steamed the chopped chard with a little olive oil, a clove of crushed garlic, and a tablespoon of caramelized onion.  After cooking I chilled the chard and then added a cup of crumbled mexican queso fresco.  I rolled out the dough in a long sheet, scooped 1/4 cup portions of filling, folded the dough to cover the filling, cut into pieces, formed the edges, poked with wholes in the top to vent steam when cooking and placed on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.  This method of preparing the empanadas comes form a short scene in a fabulous series of documentaries on famous chefs called Chef's Table.  The empanadas were in the episode on Francis Mallmann.  I baked them for about 25 minutes at 350.

Salad
Peruvian Beans, Roasted Corn, freshly grated Parmesan Cheese, Butterleaf Lettuce, Tomatoes, dressing of Lemon and Olive Oil.

Mango Ceviche
This was the only recipe I prepared from the Ceviche book.  It is a different technique from how I have made ceviche in the past.  The main difference is creating the Leche de Tigre, which is the Peruvian name for the infused lime juice used to marinade the fish.  In the past I would soak all my ceviche ingredients in the marinade and serve still sitting in the juices.  The Leche de Tigre technique is more refined and controlled.  I took the juice of 7 limes and soaked in it a clove of sliced garlic, 1/4 inch sliced ginger, teaspoon diced jalapeño, a few sprigs of cilantro.  After ten minutes I strained the mixture, the remaining liquid is the Leche de Tigre.  I chose a local black sea bass from El Pescador and diced it into small chunks.  I soaked the fish in the marinade for about 15 minutes and then drained it.  I added to the marinaded fish some sliced purple onion, diced jalapeño, sliced mango, cilantro, juice of half an orange and some salt and pepper.

Causa Limena
This was the masterpiece of the meal and I was proud of my success since it was something I had never actually eaten or even seen before.  I did a few google searches and after looking at lots of photos and a few recipes I created my own variation.  There are hundreds of varieties of potatoes in Peru, they originate form the Andes Mountains.  The Cause Limena seems to always be made by a variety of potato that is very yellow so I used a combination of 6 yukon gold and 2 sweet potatoes to get a pretty color.  Mine turned out a bit more sherbet orange and not the bright yellow I was seeing.  I read of many different variations of fillings such as tuna, chicken, egg, and crab and choose a combination of crab and bay shrimp for my lovely salad loaf!  I started with boiling my potatoes till soft.  After they cooled off I peeled them and mashed them till smooth with a big scoop of greek yogurt, a little olive oil and some salt.  For the filling I combined a can of crab from Trader Joe's, a quarter pound of Oregon Bay Shrimp from El Pescador, a small scoop of mayonnaise, a big squirt of thousand island dressing, a teaspoon of diced jalapeño, a tablespoon of diced white onion, salt, pepper and probably a secret ingredient or two I can't remember now.  To assemble the Causa, I lined a loaf pan with saran wrap and then placed the sliced olives and avocados carefully on the bottom.  Next went half the potatoes, another layer of thinly sliced avocados, the crab filling and then the rest of the potatoes.  I chilled it and then carefully flipped it out of the pan onto a dish for serving.  It was beautiful and delicious!

Herb Salt

I've been listening to a new-to-me podcast lately, The Splendid Table.  I love it and am getting lots of great ideas.  I immediately jumped on an idea for herb flavored salt.  I'm throwing a little party in a few days and want to offer different artisanal food products for sale, like a mini farmers market, and this salt sounds like a perfect product!

1/2 cup Kosher Salt
3-4 cloves of garlic
1-2 cups of chopped herbs

Dice the garlic then begin to chop the salt into the garlic.  Next chop the herbs into your salt mix until a sandy consistency is achieved.  You can create all sorts of herb combinations.  I used fresh herbs from my mom's, my local farmer's, and my own garden.

Rosemary
Tarragon
Oregano
Sage
Lavender (just a little)

Photo to come...

Granola

Light, crunchy and tasty, this granola is divine!

I found this granola recipe and used it as my jump off point.  I had made fresh yogurt for the first time and wanted something special to eat with it.  It was easy and made my house smell great!  I choose what I had, so feel free to change this recipe to suit your needs and resources.  Combine the oats, nuts and cherries.  Stir together the oil, syrups and vanilla and then mix that into the oats.  Spread out on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and mix up then bake for another 15 minutes.

2 cups of oats
3/4 cup coconut flakes
1/4 cup hazelnuts
1/4 cup candied pecans
1/2 cup dried cherries

1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Here's how it looked before it was baked.

It was delicious served warm over fresh yogurt.

DIY Home Made Yogurt

Fresh yogurt in a glass jar, soon to be repeated!

Yogurt is really easy to make, I tried it yesterday for the first time and it turned out great.  Tangy and thick, almost like a sour custard.  Making yogurt is similiar to making goat cheese, which I have been playing with lately.  The final product comes from your precision of technique and not the ingredients in that there are very few ingredients.  In stead it is temperature and time control that bring so much distinction between different dairy products.  To make yogurt you need some milk and little bit of all ready prepared yogurt which is called your starter.  That's it!  But you'll need a lot of kitchen equipment, mostly basic stuff.  Very important is a cooking thermometer to measure the temperature of the milk.  You need covered glass containers for your yogurt like mason jars.  You need a container to incubate your yogurt, I used a big pot but read recommendations for using a cooler.  And you need a pot to heat the milk.  Similar to making cheese, it is important to sanitize everything that comes in contact with the milk.  I do this by pouring boiling water from an electric kettle I have on hand all over everything I use prior to letting it touch the milk beginning with the pot I will heat the milk in.

1/2 gallon milk
1/4 cup organic plain yogurt
4 12 ounce jars with lids
2 pots that fit into each other
thermometer
big spoon

sterilizing the yogurt jars

heating the milk to 180'

Begin by heating the milk slowly over a low flame until it reaches 180'-185'.  While heating the milk stir it gently to prevent scalding or coagulating of the milk.  As it got close to the desired temperature I slowed down the process to promote evaporation as I wanted a thick yogurt if possible.  While the milk is heating you can prepare the jars by filling them with boiling water to both sanitize and heat the jars.   When the milk reaches 180' remove it from the heat and allow the temperature to drop to 115'.   Remove one cup and blend it with your starter (get your yogurt out of the fridge early so it has time to warm up to room temperature) and then stir this back into the milk.  Pour the milk into the jars and cover tightly.  Submerge your jars in water at 110'-115'.  Hold the yogurt at this temperature for four hours adding more hot water from time to time to keep the temperature at 110'.  When the yogurt has reached a consistency you like remove from the heat and place in the refrigerator and allow to chill before serving.

Submerging the yogurt in warm water to maintain 110'

The cream top milk pastured milk gave me cream top yogurt!

Under the cream cap the yogurt was firm, white and tangy. 

The first serving looks great! 

Topped with granola warm from the oven was AAAAmazing!

News from the Homestead

I haven't sent an update to my Kickstarter followers in awhile.  As I interact in the community, surfing, going to events, it's amazing how often people ask me how things are going with the beehives or with the chickens.  It's like another unexpected effect, the parade of families or folks walking dogs who make it part of their journey to give the chickens a visit.  I see children talking to the chickens every day!  So to my community of readers on the internet...whomever you may be...here's the update.

Topbar Hive inspection with friends from the Bee Society

The bees have proven to be a complicated and slow endeavor with much wonder and exploration but very little honey.  You can catch up on my bee chronicles by reading this post and this post and this post and this post and this post.  Where we stand today is total loss of Hive #1.  It has been dismantled and awaits a new colony next Spring.  Hive #2, the topbar hive, is thriving.  The bees have built out several new frames of comb and the Queen is busy laying eggs.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of honey, so I haven't harvested any comb and have basically left this hive untouched.  My plan is to give these bees this first season to establish themselves and then next year I'll probably be able to harvest honey twice, once early in the season and a second time towards the end of the season.  There is a little bit of a mothy, sticky insect laying eggs with little white worm larvae.  I am encountering them in the spaces between the wooden bars, the area where the bees fill in with propolis.  I seem to split the little larvae's bodies open when I use my hive tool to pry the bars apart.  But it is so far only a minor infestation and I have left the bees to deal with the problem themselves.  This weekend I will be getting some much needed training.  A topbar hive specialist, Les Crowder is coming to San Diego to offer a two day workshop for members of the San Diego Bee Society.  So I will spend the weekend immersed in all things bee and I will have a lot more to say about my own hive next week after an inspection with all my new bee knowledge.

The chickens are doing great.  With the weather getting colder and the days shorter two ladies have stopped laying eggs, but two are laying daily.  My babies have grown up so much.  They are almost 5 months old and so far it looks like they will both be keepers, I think they are both hens and not roosters.

Here's my Yellow Baby

And here's my Grey Baby

Eating fresh grass makes for deep yellow yolks rich in beta carotene.

Goldie is joining in the Fall Spirit with some pumpkin scraps.

A proud mom with her best egg layer, Goldie!

Pumpkin Pie

It's been about two months now since we joined a friends CSA program for his small farm.  It has been really opening up my creativity in the kitchen, challenging to cook with ingredients I might not normally pick out.  The last two weeks I have been delivered butternut squash, and last week I got a sugar pumpkin.  When I was a kid my mom would bake butternut squash and eat it out of the shell with some butter.  I hated the vegetable and she wouldn't force it upon me and just split the lovely gourd with my father.  I have tried baking them, as my mother would do, but they always seem to turn out a bit hard and dry and cooking them seems to take forever.  So when searching on the internet for recipes on making pumpkin pie from scratch and not from canned pumpkin pie filling, I stumbled upon this informative Pumpkin Pie Recipe that explained several different ways to cook pumpkin, one of which was steaming.  So I thought I'd give that technique a try.  I also read on that website that most canned pumpkin products are made of butternut squash and not pumpkin, so I went ahead and cooked one of each and decided to use a combination of the two.  

The first step to prepare my pumpkin and butternut squash was to slice them open with a serrated knife and scrape out the seeds and stringing fascia that coats the meat of the vegetable.  I separated that pulpy goop from the seeds and fed it to my happy chickens and soaked the seeds in some water to further rinse them.  Later I rinsed those seeds off, salted them and roasted them for about 10 minutes at 350.  I sliced the squash and pumpkin up into smaller chunks and steamed each separately for thirty minutes.  I was really happy with how they turned out, moist, well cooked, and not taking too much time!

My jungle fowl, Penny, snacking on some pumpkin scraps.

Butternut Squash cleaned and cut up and into the steamer for 30 minutes.

When finished cooking I allowed the squash to cool and then I removed the skin.  Next I mashed up the flesh with a heavy duty whisk.  You could use a hand mixer or blender instead.  I could see why butternut squash is used in canned pie filling instead of actual pumpkin.  It created a much smoother pulp with a more vibrant orange color.

Removing the skin from the pumpkin, let it cool first!

Mashing up the pumpkin with a heavy duty whisk.

Left: Butternut Squash, Right: Pumpkin

Once I finished my two squash pulps I got started on my pie crusts.  Pie crusts are made of pastry dough with is a rich but simple combination of mainly flour and butter.  Here is a recipe for Pastry Dough from Martha Stewart that I consulted.  I start by dicing up butter into little pieces and then place that chopped butter into the freezer for a few minutes to make it firm.  I used about:

1 2/3 stick of butter

2 cups flour, I sifted my flour for smooth consistency

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of sugar

Once the butter is firm begin to work the pieces through the flour mixture, flattening and crumbling the butter and flour together.  You are looking for a bread crumb consistency.  Once you reach that add in 3-5 tablespoons of cold water, working the dough with your hands until a smooth even texture is reached but don't over mix.  Separate the dough in two pieces, form into round disks and wrap in saran wrap.  Let rest for thirty minutes.  If you won't use it all you can refrigerate and use in the next week or freeze and use in the next few months.  Just defrost or remove from the fridge and allow some time to soften before working the dough.  From this batch of dough I made four pies, two open topped pumpkin pies and two covered chicken pies.  

Once the pie crusts are ready, it's time to mix the filling I made a variation on the recipe listed at the top of this post.  I whisked together:

2 cup pumpkin pulp
1 cup butternut squash pulp
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 eggs
12 ounces whipped coconut milk

And then I poured it into my pie crusts.  I made two small pies.  I baked them for 15 minutes at 400 and 30 minutes at 325.  We ate the pie with vanilla ice cream.  Delicious!  I made the two pies I second time the next week (because my farmer kept delivering pumpkins!).  I skipped mashing the pumpkin up into a pulp and instead I just placed the skinned pumpkin chunks in the blender with all of the other ingredients for the filling and gave it a whirl!  So easy!

Here's the roasted pumpkin seeds, I snacked on them as I finished the pie.

Showing off a pretty braid for a wedding...

Here's the technique for this lovely up-do.  I parted my hair in two and did two french braids with each section all the way down to the tips of my hair, binding the ends with little plastic rubber bands I buy at the horse tackle shop!  Then I tied the two long ends of my braids in a big knot (you need long hair to make this happen).  There was still a lot of braid left after I tied the knot and I continued the momentum of the braids, tucking the hair into a figure eight.  Then I secured all over with bobby pins and secured a big rhinestone brooch that my sister gave me years ago.  Hopefully the braid will be a blessing on the newlyweds, infinite love, infinite blessings.