Anyway, here I am again, letting you know that this blog will remain alive, well, and loved, but...it might just go through long (specifically 3 months at a time) periods of inactivity until I graduate.
Regardless, merry Christmas! Today Jared and I made a dinner which we agreed to make a tradition from now on. It was also our first Christmas dinner made by ourselves together, so it was somewhat a surprise that everything worked out PERFECTLY. Besides the part where Sheila jumped up and ate all of the cheese off our freshly stuffed mushrooms...But we fixed that (restuffed, rather), so it really was great.
Here's what we did:
-Roasted and stuffed duck
-Baked acorn squash
-Stuffed Portobello mushrooms
Here are the details:
First....WE MADE CHEESE. That's right. It's been a goal of ours for many months now, and we finally did it. And it was easy! And it worked!! Here's a link to an absolutely amazing website, that is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in making cheese, yogurt, or doing other homestead-related things. And the guy is also a chemistry professor. (this is a fine example of the type of polymath I want to be "when I grow up"). Here's the link to the specific Neufchatel that we made:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/neufchatel/neufchatel.htm
We followed his recipe exactly, I believe, plus we added 1/4 tsp of Calcium Chloride, because we used store bought whole milk, in which the calcium is destroyed by the pasteurization/homogenization process. (Something I recommend reading up on, because unless you're actually drinking fresh, raw milk straight from a cow, you're actually not getting that "calcium for strong bones" bit at all. That's basically a joke on consumers.) Anyway, once we woke up to the successful curds this morning, we cut them, and then strained it bit by bit into a sterilized (boiled) handkerchief. We found we had the best luck if we used a handheld strainer first (the kind with really fine mesh) to get out the majority of the moisture, then put the curds in the handkerchief. Once all the curds were in the handkerchief, we squeezed out a good deal more of the moisture (whey), tied the bundle up in the fridge as per his instructions, and left it only for a few hours. We went out adventuring, walked all over a frozen lake and stuff, and came back in only 3 hours or so, to find that it was already done! By straining by hand, and getting out as much of the whey as possible, we reduced the waiting time from overnight to a few hours. YAY, Christmas cheese! We mixed in a bunch of dried basil and garlic salt, then rolled it into little balls. It ended up tasting like that really fancy, expensive cheese that we always fee guilty buying. All in all, it was a super achievable thing. We spent probably half an hour cumulatively, working on it, and a gallon of milk is only a few dollars.Anyway, I might as well now segway into the stuffed mushrooms:
We bought portobello mushroom caps, removed the stems, and stuffed them with a 1:1 ratio of white cheddar cheese, and our Neufchatel, along with crumbled bacon. Really basic. Just add enough cheese to fill them up, then put them in the oven on a cookie sheet for about 15 minutes at 375 degrees. You can stuff them with anything- different kinds of cheeses, veggies, the options are probably limitless!
The acorn squash recipe is one of the easiest out there:
-Cut an acorn squash in half, scoop out seeds
-Fill each half with a reasonable amount of butter (plus optional other seasonings- I usually love to add some brown sugar, some people like to add herbs to get a more savory thing going on. But the squash is so delicious even just with plain butter or coconut oil)
-Put the halves cut-side up in the oven, and bake at a medium temperature, between around 350-375 degrees, until they're tender all the way through.
Then you can either just scoop out the meat, or you can slice them up into smaller servings.
Finally, the duck:
We followed the cooking time and temperature recommended on the wrapper...375 degrees, and about 2 hours for a 6.5 lb duck. We cooked it in a large ceramic pot, where it was able to stew in it's own juices (I'm so sorry for using such language but there's really no better way to say that).
The preparation was fairly easy, we made sure it was cleaned out, rinsed off, and we tried to pull out most of it's quills (Unsure what these strange poky things would do to our mouths, I was getting obsessive about this, but it turned out that they soften when cooked, and weren't a problem to eat at all). I cut diagonal lines about an inch apart along the top side (breast side), just through the skin and fat, above the meat. I read that it's good to do this, in another recipe....I assume that it helps the flavor/cooking process somehow. Then we stuffed it. We cheated on this part, pulling the newbie card....we bought boxed stuffing. It was a terrible choice. We were in the store, comparing two brands and asking "MSG or High Fructose Corn Syrup?" So guilty. Next year, we'll make our own.
We then baked this beautiful bird, breast side up, for an hour (and threw the acorn squash in there too). After the first hour, we checked it, took out the squash, then continued baking the duck for another hour. That's two hours total. Then I made a glaze for it, which we spooned all over the top and sides, and baked for a last 15 minutes. The glaze was:
3.5 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp hot sauce
1/4 cup honey
Simmered until it was thick and syrupy.
And that was it! So yes, now I have documented this meal to recreate next year. Future Mia, please put the mushrooms somewhere safer when you leave the room. Sheila does love that cheese.
I hope anyone else out there who might stumble across my sleepy and quiet blog will find inspiration, too! Happy Christmas.
