Monday, June 9, 2008

Latest Cooking

3 ingredients

My friend told me about this delicious easy dessert and as soon as I heard the ingredients, I knew I had to try it. It's super easy. Three ingredients. Coconut butter melted in double boiler and add agave nectar and fresh lime juice to taste. Poor into greased/parchmented pan to cool at room temperature then store in fridge. If you send it straight to the fridge it will separate. I got the coconut butter in the bulk food section of my local health food store. I used a pound (@ $10/lb = ka-ching!) of coconut butter, about a cup of agave nectar and about 4 limes. It fit into an 8x8 pan nicely. It is super rich (little fudge size pieces go along way) with the consistency of cheese cake. My mind is whirling with all sorts of variations to try with it. I thought of semi-sweet chocolate for a fudgey version. And the coconut makes me think of pureed bananas. My husband suggested berries blended in then swirled for marbled effect. My friend was thinking of the cocoa nibs. So I'm definitely going to try again with a few different ideas. Its rich enough that I can probably get several versions out of the next batch.

Finished Cocolimeagavedessert

I've also been doing some somewhat unusual by my standards cooking. I like to cook entrees and desserts. And if you've been following the blog, you'll see I've been doing more in the baking department. But the latest stuff falls into "miscellaneous". I wanted to try a few things with whey. So first I had to make it. Easy enough, a bunch of yogurt poured into a linen cloth and then left to drain. Stuff that comes out of the bottom is whey, the stuff that stays in cloth is cream cheese. I used goat milk yogurt, because that's what I had on hand. So its seems that the cream cheese has a bit of tang like chevre. You can also use soured raw milk. But it was super smooth and creamy. Better than the store bought stuff, but I'm a bit biased. I don't know how often I'll be making it in the future; I don't really know how much whey I'll be going through, so I might just buy cream cheese in the future if I need it. But it was definitely easy and fun for the novelty of it all.


With the whey I made mayonnaise and sauerkraut. Mayonnaise is egg yolk, an egg, mustard, salt, whey and alot of oil. I used a custom blend of olive oil (monounsaturated fat), sesame oil (polyunsaturated fat) and coconut oil (saturated fat) in equal amounts. The mayonnaise again was interesting for the novelty of it and tastes good. Distinctive and rich like aioli. Although wee too mustardy for me. However, to make it work, you need to add the oil (3/4 cup) drop by drop into the food processor. So its running forever. And in the process, freaks out the dog and the baby. So I doubt I'll be making it again.


Finally, I wanted to try some lacto-fermented food so I made some sauerkraut. This falls into the very easy to make category. Head of cabbage thinly cut. A bit of whey. Some caraway seeds. A tablespoon of sea salt. Then meat tenderizer it to death to help release the juices. Stuff it into a mason jar with liquid covering all the cabbage and lid on tightly. Leave on the counter top for 3 days then into the fridge until you are ready to enjoy it. I tried a bite and its definitely sauerkraut. There is something fun about leaving food out on the counter when you've been conditioned to put everything in the fridge to keep it from spoiling. It makes bubbles so you know its doing its thing. While it was really easy to make, I realize I'm not a huge sauerkraut fan. Perhaps trying different seasonings? I recall having it at a German restaurant and the cabbage almost melted in your mouth. Mine had the tart taste but was much more like coleslaw in the crunch department. Perhaps with time it gets softer? Hrmm, I haven't really had a chance to research it to much, so I'm far from an expert on it.


Left to right: Mayonnaise, sauerkraut, cream cheese

Funky cooking

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

how do you make mayonnaise and sauerkraut look pretty?