Fondue

We were in Montana a few weeks ago for a Wilderness Medicine conference for me and skiing for everyone else.  I skied, too, but since the optional workshops at the conference are so cool, I didn't want to miss them and so I didn't ski as much once it started.  But the skiing was wonderful, and the workshops educational.  The highlight was when we simulated a hotel fire and climbed out of a hotel window, with smoke and everything and stood up to see... the pool.  With my husband and the kids in it.  Saying, "Hi, Mommy!  What are you doing here?"

(In case you're wondering, that workshop was "Urban and Travel Survival."  I also took "Backcountry Dentistry" and "Ropes and Knots.")

Anyhow, one of the things that happened when we were there was we had an amazing dinner at a fondue restaurant.  It was a themed thing, with an emcee dressed in lederhosen.  Each of the 6 tables was a team and we basically had to amuse the emcee for points.  It was rowdy and loud and amazingly fun!  In between shouting out things and singing and even getting up for acrobatic tricks, we ate cheese, oil and chocolate fondues.  I was reminded how much we love fondue and resolved to make it when I got home.  Which I did.  Two nights ago.

For the cheese fondue, I made a roux with a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of flour.  Then I added 1 cup of boiling white wine.  Once that thickened I added 8 oz. cheddar, and similar amounts of gruyere and emmentaler.  Then I stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred until the cheese was melted and the fondue was thick.  I left it on the stove, over very low heat, and stirred it occasionally to keep it smooth, while I made the chocolate fondue and get everything ready.

The chocolate fondue is essentially a ganache.  There's that word again.  Ganache... OK.  I'll stop.  I heated one and a third cups of light cream to almost boiling then whisked in 10 oz. of dark chocolate chips and 10 oz. of milk chocolate chips.  Whisked until it was all smooth and then kept that warm while we ate the cheese fondue.  I could have cut that recipe in half, we have so much left over...

Believe it or not, I had a fondue pot.  My aunt gave us all fondue pots one year for Christmas, and I tucked mine away.  I remembered I had it about a month ago, so found it again and it was perfect!  Thanks, Auntie!  With the cheese fondue we ate bread, chicken nuggets, and steamed broccoli florets.  With the chocolate fondue we had strawberries, raspberries, marshmallows and 'Nilla wafers.  It was amazingly good!

Oh, and that competition?  We won.  Here is our trophy:

Yum.

Freshly made goat cheese on toast with peach-orange marmalade.  'Nuff said.

Feeling Inadequate

Have any of you read An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler?

I haven't finished it yet, but I feel remarkably inadequate in the creative cooking department as I read about how economical she is with her food.  Not financially economical, although that's part of it, but waste-economical.  She saves every little bit trimmed off everything and uses it for something.  Croutons, bread crumbs, parsley stems for stock, other vegetable odds and ends.  It's inspiring and scary and all the more impressive in that she makes it seem so simple, really.

This week, in response to her book, I purchased a bunch of parsley.  And I've been using it - mainly on baked potatoes and broccoli (drizzled with olive oil, not melted butter, another suggestion straight from the book).  The 10 year old has gobbled up everything I have presented.  The 6 year old, not so much.  Although the lasagna I made yesterday was a hit for the first time.  Usually pasta needs to be plain, with butter and parmesan cheese only.  I was shocked to see the empty bowl when I got home!

Today I made a sausage-kale soup.  I browned 5 sweet Italian sausages, removed from the casings, with chopped onion and celery in a little olive oil.  I then added 2 pints of chicken stock, 2 cans of cannelloni beans with their liquid, 2 cans of water, and half a bunch of kale, chopped.  I even added some minced parsley stems.  I did not add any salt or pepper because the sausage was spiced enough.  This simmered for about a half an hour and then I added some ditalini pasta and let that cook.  It was nice and stew-like and we ate it with chunks of fresh bread.  And a bowl of blueberries.  Because I suspected (correctly) that the 6 year old wasn't going to eat a lot of the soup.  We just picked out the pasta bits....

Cake!

A few weeks ago, my husband, a friend, and I went to a chocolate themed cooking class at Le Cordon Bleu.  We made truffles, a flourless chocolate cake, and learned how to make ganache.

Ganache.  What a wonderful word it is.  Say it with me.... ganache.  C'est merveilleux!

It's such a fun word, the 10 year old has been walking around for the last few days saying "ganache" over and over again.  And then we giggle.  Because it's a word that just makes you smile.  How could you not?  It represents such wonderful things!  Cream, chocolate, vanilla and butter.  That's all it is.

To make ganache, you heat cream to boiling and then pour it over the chocolate in a bowl.  Stir until it's melted and well combined and then add the butter and vanilla.  Cool slightly so you can work with it.  When we made truffles, we used a pastry bag filled with the stuff and piped truffle sized amounts onto parchment paper and chilled, then we rolled the truffles after it had set up some more.

More ganache for the rosettes and a truffle in the middle!

So I made a cake for a birthday; a sour cream chocolate cake.  It's much denser than most bakery cakes and very moist.  Then I made a dark chocolate ganache for the frosting.  For the middle I used 1/2 c. heavy cream, 4 oz dark chocolate chips, half a teaspoon of vanilla and a tablespoon of cold butter.  For the top I used the same except it was 6 oz of the chocolate chips.  After I made the filling-ganache, I chilled the cake until I was ready to make the frosting-ganache.  I set the cake on the rack in my roasting pan and poured away.

It was a really great cake.  I'm sorry I don't have pictures.  By the time I thought about it, the cake was almost gone!  But I'll leave you with a photo of the cake I made at the class, which is prettier.

Drinking Day

It's terrific!  Nice little "pffft" when you open the bottle and it's just fizzy enough and tasty.  Hooray for homebrew!

Bottling Day

This evening, while everyone else in New England was watching the Super Bowl, we bottled our beer.

After sterilizing everything (again) we siphoned a little out to check the specific gravity: 1.012.  This translates to an alcohol content of 5% or thereabouts.  We were ready!  Since we didn't have enough bottles my husband bought a case of 1 liter bottles with the snap-top caps and gaskets so we cleaned and sterilized those and decided we'd fill those first.  That's 12 liters.  That's a lot of beer.

After dissolving the priming sugar (necessary so that once in the bottles the carbonation step happens) we added it to our bucket and siphoned the beer into it to mix.  (We did taste a little.  Yep, tastes like beer.)

Filling the bottles with a flashlight to see when it's full

Then we moved this bucket up to the counter and got our bottles ready.  One of the more interesting things about siphoning is that if one of you is not paying attention, the other of you will end up spraying beer all over the kitchen and yourself.  Twice.  Heh.  Sorry....the clip is there for a reason!  It was around this time that the conversation went something like this:

Husband: Who's idea was this, anyway?
Me:  Um, yours?  Remember?
Husband:  Why didn't you talk me out of it?

Other than that, there were no major disasters, and we got all 12 liter bottles filled and capped and moved on to the standard bottles.  For this we needed a few more hands so enlisted the help of the 10-year-old to do the capping with the very large and scary looking bottle capper.  It took a few tries but eventually all went smoothly and we ended up with 12 of those bottles and then a half-bottle that we decided to cap anyway and taste it first.

For that, we have to wait 2 weeks.  Then it will be time to chill and serve!

Still Fermenting

The other day we transferred the proto-beer to the 5 gallon carboy (the second rack).  It's specific gravity was 1.015, which means it was not quite ready.  Our problem has been that we rarely see the little bubbles coming through the airlock so it feels like nothing is happening at all.  We even moved it closer to the boiler so it would be warmer, thinking that maybe the basement was too cold.  Regardless, I think we're close to bottling day so I spent this morning washing labels off a dozen beer bottles.  I have another dozen to go and then we might buy a few growlers since we don't have enough 12 ounce bottles.  (We need around 50-55 bottles for a batch.)

It's been a busy couple of weeks otherwise, so there isn't a whole lot of cooking going on.