So we caught the weekly allowance of two hours of sunshine the german weather gave us today and used it to finally try out the tabletop grill. It works well and the insulation at the bottom is very effective – no particularly strong downward heat development, so it seems to be safe to use right at the table. Fotos:
Homemade Codsworth Cheese
Yay, my first cheese is ready! The Codsworth I made about a month ago is done ripening and ready to serve!
I don’t know if everything I did went the correct way, and I certainly don’t know if it tastes even rudimentarily like a proper “Cotswold” since I never had one before. But it definitely is flavourful and – yes – even a little hearty. It does have a hint of a sourly note, not unpleasant but noticeable. It goes well with bread and salad and a drop of olive oil and some pepper also fit it well. I’ll also try it melted in some oven baking recipe.
Until now, nobody got a bad stomach from it and everybody found it at least pleasant enough 🙂
Sauce Vierge
The sauce vierge is a traditional french, meditarranean-style, infused sauce invented by some super important french cooking guy several decades ago. Goes very deliciously with fish, and that’s what I had yesterday.
Rillettes de Poulet
Well, I’m really into cooking, but these days I stumbled upon something completely new to me again: Rillettes. A french type of shredded strands of pork/chicken/duck or even fish as a soft and savoury spread for toasted bread and the like.
Meat or poultry or whatever is cooked over a long period of time until very tender and aromatic, then frayed and mixed with it’s own juices and rendered fat. Stored in a glass jar and topped with a layer of fat for preservation this is a hearty, savoury and addictive addition to a rustic and “good and solid” dinner. Obviously, this is not for the calorie-conscious…
Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Sauce
This recipe is, while a little more complicated, very rewarding and delicious. Yesterday I got hands on a nice piece of pork tenderloin and decided to try this:
How To: Setting Eyelets
The raised beds in the garden dearly needed some protective layer for the still cold nights here in northern germany, thus, we bought some bed liners. They’re sold by the meter, so we had to attach some eyelets for fastening them to ground with tent pegs ourselves. Here’s how:
So how do you insert a grommet into fabric, or in my case, plastic sheets? Well, common eyelet sets come with a number of eyelet parts and some special tools, they’re cheap and convenient and available in every hardware store. Left is an overview of what’s in the kit.
Cheesecurd Stirrer DIY
The last cheesemaking experiment seems to have worked out beautifully as far as I can see. But now, another recipe that I want to try calls for stirring the curds gently but consistently for 45 minutes straight – all my love for cheese aside, I won’t do that. That’s why I made a cheesecurd stirrer:
The principle is stolen from the concept of a wort stirrer for beer making that I knocked together years ago, but this time I wanted it not to stir circularly but to stir vertically. As you can see, the construction is easy, the motor is a 12V low-speed-motor from eBay, the rest is scrap from the shop.
The result can be admired above, I’m dying to try it in reality so I’ll have to go get some fresh milk next week 🙂
Cheese Making at Home
I got an ebook on cheese making for free recently, but honestly, I don’t think it was much of a highlight. Nonetheless, I tasted blood from it and additionally bought myself this book which is much more informative and educational (that guy has an awesome YouTube channel too).
Subsequently, I made a cheese press a couple of days ago and wanted to put it to use now. The first try was a “Cotswold” cheese (seems to be a region in southern great britain that I’ve never heard of before), but as an old Fallout 4 addict, of course I named my version “Codsworth” 🙂