http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/ en Copyright 2008 Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:39:13 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Goat Cheese and Lemon Cheese Cake, I hadn't considered it's use in dessert. The recipe is both daunting and simple. The daunting part requires a lot of "mise en place" or prep of ingredients. The crust and the filling were your typical, "run of the mill" cheese cake directions (animal crackers and hazelnuts with butter in the food processor for the crust and cheese, cheese, more cheese, eggs, etc. for the filling). The addition of a lemon curd for the topping was a new one for me. The directions given by CI made the process for making a lemon curd sound kind of frightening. I just kept stiring and stiring and hoping I wouldn't end up with a rock hard substance stuck to my pan. Lucky for me it turned out perfectly. I didn't use a thermometer, I just eye balled it, and it was fine. Apparently the direction that alluded us all was the wrapping of the tin foil for the bain marie. I'm not sure how I screwed up wrapping the pan in tin foil, but I did. Yes, my cheesecake had a mushy crust too. Of course, mushy crust aside, it was a tasty treat. The goat cheese added a sharp flavor that paired with the sour/sweet bite of the lemon curd topping was fantastic. Rich but not over powering and just the rich amount of bite. I'm sure the hazelnut crust would have added something to the flavors if it hadn't been such a mess. My final verdict is that the recipe, with some tweaking (ie: indusrial strength foil) is a winner. The lemon curd was my favorite part & I see whipping some of that up in the future for use on lots of things (maybe just to be eaten with a spoon by itself even). Since it makes so much (enough for 12-15 people) by neighbors are all enjoying the cake tonight for dessert. If it's as much of a hit with them as it was in our house I'll make it again in a heart beat.]]> http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/when_i_opened_my_first.html http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/when_i_opened_my_first.html sweet mondays Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:39:13 -0500
Meyer lemons, animal crackers and more = yummy creamy goodness]]> http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/yaianns_gclcheesecake.html http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/yaianns_gclcheesecake.html sweet mondays cheesecake goat cheese lemon Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:15:24 -0500 goat cheese and lemon cheesecake with hazelnut crust for our first "official" bake-together, rangsiwan chose this cheesecake from cook's illustrated. not exactly what I would have picked, I probably would have gone with some sort of entree, but as I read the recipe I got pretty excited nonetheless! part of my hesitation probably came from just trying goat milk yogurt for the first time right before she sent me this link. I love goat cheese, but not in almost-liquid form I found. cake made out of it though? now that's something I could get behind! I actually don't know if I was more excited about the goat cheese, the lemon curd, or the hazelnut crust. it all sounded good to me! I tried to start early on saturday so it would be ready for dinner. somehow 10 or 11 wasn't early enough. there are a lot of lulls in this recipe that make it a "bake-a-day-ahead" one or just get started earlier. each step in the recipe is pretty easy in and of itself. you first throw some hazelnuts, cookies, and melted butter in the food processor for the crust. this smelled and looked so good, with its nice golden color. while that's baking you start mixing all of the cheese....1.5 pounds of it! this was definitely going to be rich. the lemon juice and zest made it fragrant and, this is just my theory, cut through the heaviness of your usual cheesecake. the hardest part of the recipe was the lemon curd. this was the first time I made lemon curd and I was scared of ending up with scrambled eggs. mine was set pretty quickly, probably helped my the little cast iron pot I used and what most likely added to my anxiety. I didn't use a thermometer for this, instead just eyeing up the back of the spoon until I reached the right consistency. I could just make the lemon curd and be happy. this was so delicious, could I just eat it with some whip cream? I would say that this recipe was flawless, but do you see the crust? the yummy hazelnut, animal cookie goodness....gone. water leaked into the springform pan in the water bath and washed away any flavor and texture, leaving behind a bland mushy mess. I covered the pan with tin foil like the recipe suggested, but as soon as I took it out of the waterbath I could see there was some water in the foil. the rest of the cake is fine, so we've just been eating it without the crust. I'm almost tempted to bake an empty crust and just move over the cheesecake to it. or maybe i'll make cookies and drop them in a bowl along with the cheesecake. will I make it again? only for special occasions, since this was way too big for just two people. and I won't make it again until I figure out how not to end up with a waterlogged crust. ]]> http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/mushymushy.html http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/12/mushymushy.html sweet mondays Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:13:50 -0500 The truth is women can’t really cook. All they can do is to cater, and there’s a big difference. The only people who can actually cook on this planet are men, even the ones who only cook once a year when their wife or girlfriend is ill. Women's cooking is often so poor because it is largely performed as a matter of necessity. As well as being incapable of experimenting, women are useless at following written instructions, which in this instance are called recipes. Blinded by a series of numbers and symbols, they get confused, and usually add the wrong amount of sugar or salt, or, more likely, substitute one for the other. sam holden, daily mail my mother was always the cook in the house, spoiling us with home-cooked meals every night from either some revered passed down recipe or something new she saw in one of her magazines or newspapers. anyone else living in this house would have learned to cook simply through osmosis, I somehow managed to let any knowledge to go through me. my mother made sure I didn’t miss this fact, always telling me how she learned to cook by watching her own mother everyday and eventually helping her out. I would bake once in a while at home, but I didn’t catch the cooking bug until I was away at grad school with my own, albeit tiny, kitchen. I found something comforting in whiling away the precious free time I had in the kitchen (when I wasn’t knitting that is). as romantic as I make it sound, it was also about saving the little money I had in my pockets. any spare money I didn’t spend at the supermarket went towards cooking books. every week I would ride my big bike to the store, looking forward to one of my new recipes, and filled my basket with some basics trying to recapture something I was missing from home. cooking and eating was a solitary act then, since most of my grad school cronies would go out to eat for almost every meal or would heat up some pizza they picked up at the market. after moving in with my now-husband, I had someone to share my expanding repertoire and tools with but no one to talk about cooking or cook with. not that he doesn’t listen to me, but sometimes you need that friend to gleam some tricks from or to fawn over that new kitchen toy with. that’s where this blog comes in. living in different states, but talking and emailing every day about our favorite foods, leah and I decided to have one night a week where we both cook the same recipe – a virtual get together if you will. the next day we would tell each other how we liked it, what we would change, and maybe share a photo of our dish. After a while, we wanted something a little more coherent, a permanent record that would allow us to learn from each other and maybe open up our eyes, and stomachs, to new recipes. we then asked baking obsessed rangsiwan to join in this, hopefully fun, journey. as she says “One recipe + three cooks = yummy, fantastic food” we want to show that cooking is an art and a skill and more than just the nourishment of your body, but the nourishment of you soul. ]]> http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/11/mmm_food_is_good.html http://www.defiantlydomestic.com/2007/11/mmm_food_is_good.html Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:14:49 -0500