Hand Churning Butter

Last week I ran into the old glass and wood Dazey butter churn from the family farm, so I decided to try it out with a pint of non-homogenized cream from a local dairy.

After 40 minutes of hand churning the curds appeared in a puddle of buttermilk. Draining the curds didn't make them look much like butter, so I grabbed a circa 1880 cookbook for instructions. Wash the butter in water. So I did and then stirred and pressed it.

How was it? Sweeter and creamier than any butter I've ever eaten, be it local, Plugra, Irish, French butter in Normandy, English dairy butter in Stratford, Polish butter in Lancut, Poland and what have you. And rather than the fatty mouthfeel and neutral taste of commercial unsalted butter, this all-Jersey cream butter was silky and ethereal.

Its pronounced sweet taste, though, was what surprised me most of all. The cream it came from wasn't sweet, the whey/buttermilk it made wasn't even tangy, so something really good happened during those long minutes of hand cranking. All that remains to see is if I can get the same effect with my standing mixer. There’s a good reason those old butter churns aren't used anymore.

Rum, rye and beer for the 4th of July

The signers of The Declaration of Independence were fervent beer and rum drinkers back in the day. In the European tradition, and with 18th century water purity often dicey, the new Americans knocked back beer for breakfast and rum as often as they could.
To this end cocktail savant James MacWilliams of
Seattle's Canlis Restaurant gives us a proper potion for the 4th of July: the Declaration Cocktail. So much more than a boilermaker, the rye, rum and beer are melded by the goodly amount of brown sugar syrup. Keep the rest of the beer in a pewter vessel and you’re very 1776.
If you can’t make it to Canlis for this jubilant quaff you can make it at home. Here’s the recipe in James’s own words. Here’s to America – Happy Birthday!



The Declaration:
In 12 oz glass, mug or glass drinking boot pour:
- 1oz. Pyrat XO rum (any fruity rum will do but we did commit mutiny after all)
- .75oz. Rittenhouse Rye Whiskey, high proof and spicy.
- .75oz. brown sugar syrup (simple syrup made with brown sugar)
- 6 oz. Ale ( I like something malty with some body. Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale is my choice, and is close to the beer Thomas Jefferson might have brewed. - James MacWilliams

Jersey Sweet Milk

Beautiful bottles of local Jersey cow milk – with the cream floating on the top – are at the local market and we’re on our first couple of bottles. The milk is pasteurized but not ultra-pasteurized, and that’s so good for flavor and for cheese makers.

But the fun thing is that it's not homogenized. There’s a good 1-2 inches of cream at the top of the bottle and so you get to shake it before you pop the cap. Even the 1% milk has a cream cap so that nearly-nonfat milk is an adventure instead of a penance.

The milk is rich in your mouth and you can taste a splash of green meadows in each sip, which makes me think of milk ages ago on our family farm in Harrah, Washington.

The dairy has Jersey cows, and this milk is a unique experience because haven’t we all wondered how pure old-fashioned Jersey milk tastes? It’s long had the reputation of being the finest in flavor, as long as you don’t ask a Guernsey fan.

All in all, on busy days when I hurry into the neighborhood market with a short list like MILK EGGS BREAD it’s nice to have this thoughtful choice. It’s not earthshaking but it makes an everyday food taste wonderful.

Rhubarb Pudding Pie for a rhubarb jones

Spring, actually every spring, is when this rhubarb jones hits, flattening me like a falling sequoia. Last Thursday I bought a piece of artisan rhubarb pie at a fancy pants market to quell my madness, but it was so good it only increased my longing. That night I ordered a grandmotherly rhubarb cobbler at dinner. It was so big I took half home and ate the rest the next day.

Yet the rhubarb love is still pestering me. I went to the market again and found others had the longing, because the market was sold out of local rhubarb.

Today I made this Rhubarb Pudding Pie that has its own sweet sea of lushness. The custardy pudding envelopes the tender rhubarb and lends comfort while keeping the sour pie plant from being too tart. It's a recipe I came up with a few years ago during my spring jones.

It's an old farm-style pie and it is a dandy.

Rhubarb Pudding Pie
Serves 8

It's easy to make – just mix and bake. The whipping cream and rose petals make it even prettier.

Ingredients:
1 unbaked pie crust in a 9.5” deep dish Pyrex glass pie plate

Filling:
1 cup whipping cream
6 farm egg yolks, beaten lightly
4 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 4 tablespoons warm water
1 teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups sugar
8 16” stalks of local red rhubarb (4 cups) cut in ½” pieces
Topping:
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup sugar
1 handful of fresh, unsprayed rose petals or pansies

Oven: 375 degrees

To make filling:
Blend the egg yolks and heavy cream with a fork.
Thoroughly mix corn starch and warm water in a small bowl until smooth. Add to the egg/cream mixture and stir gently, then mix salt and sugar in.
Add the rhubarb pieces to the egg/cream mixture. Pour filling into the unbaked pie crust.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Then cover pie crust edge with aluminum foil or a pie crust ring so it won’t get too brown. Turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake for 45 minutes, or until filling is just set. It will wiggle a little when shaken, but it should not be liquid. Cool on a baking rack for about an hour.

To make topping:
When pie is cooled, whip the cream at high speed on a mixer, or by hand. As it thickens, add the vanilla and sugar and continue whipping the cream until it is thick.
Spread the whipped cream on top of the pie, sprinkle with rose petals and serve.

Recipe and photo (C) 2005 Alicia Comstock Arter. Use only with written permission of author.

Bobby Flay and Columbia Crest Winery contest put your recipe and video on Foodnetwork.com

If you’re an amateur cook the “Flayvors of Washington” contest wants your original recipe inspired by Columbia Crest Grand Estates wines and made with local Washington state ingredients. Drunken Draper Valley Chicken? Wenatchee Apple/Riesling Pie? Your recipe entree must also have a two-minute video showcasing the dish.

What’s pretty cool is that everyone who submits will have their recipe and video appear on the Food Network web site, where web visitors will vote for them.

What are the steps to quick fame? They’re in the contest rules, along with a sample video of last year’s winner to help you get started.

All entries must be submitted by June 8, 2009. To submit an entry and find out what you need to know go to www.foodnetwork.com/columbiacrest.

Happy Ham Days

Pounds and pounds of joy here, all in a Bavarian Meats cured ham. It took five hours to cook, 10 minutes to carve and it may be around the house for a week, even though we gave away half of it. It was the center of our Sunday breakfast party, and when we eased it out of the oven and our friends could see what they’d been smelling for an hour they ran to the cutting board to grab first greedy bites.

Smoky, porky, juicy and a little salty, it jazzed up perfectly the plates of grits, poached eggs, citron buns and tender blueberry sour cream coffee cake.

The Controlled Chaos of Homemade Fromage Blanc

…and mascarpone, ricotta, mozzarella, cream cheese and thick buttermilk have been glupping along in the kitchen and tasting spectacular. They have a freshness and loads of flavor levels not found in commercial varieties.

Gil (le hubbeau) has a math and science mind and has taken his precised-ness into the area of fresh cheese lately. It’s like seeing the ages-old story of cheese evolve as he happily moves from one recipe to the next, mixing milk, lemon, rennet, cream and what have you and cooking them into formed tastiness. Even he is thrilled with how little a large lump of the stuff costs when you make it at home: about $3 for several pounds of fresh cheese.

And then someone has to eat it. We’ve mounded it on a plate, then drizzled honey and salty pistachio bits on top, and slathered it on toast with a thick frosting of homemade raspberry jam. Sometimes it’s lunch – just big blobs of delicious white cheese.

Anyone who says these cheeses practically make themselves are not presenting the entire picture. This is controlled chaos, and the cheese maker carefully manages the curdle, the temperature, the bacteria. He measures, follows instructions and obeys the thermometer – there’s nothing slapdash about this.

But in the end a gallon of milk has blurped into a plump, beautiful, incredibly delicious mass of radiance and joy.