Farmer's Market Tomato salad with homemade ricotta salata

OK, so I was a little impatient with the cheese. It seemed like it had sweated enough moisture, so I rinsed the rind, dried it well, and rubbed it down with herbs d'provence (minus the lavender). Then it was supposed to age for a couple of weeks. It didn't get the chance.

I stumbled across the Reston Farmer's Market today and got some really beautiful produce from a grower named Jose; big red and yellow heirloom tomatoes, bell and long peppers in red, yellow, green and orange, and some nice sweet onions. I simply sliced the tomatoes, then grilled and sliced the peppers and onions. Everything got tossed with the simplest balsamic vinaigrette ever and then plopped onto a bed of baby spinach. On top of this beautiful pile went fresh ground pepper, basil and parsley chiffonade and half of my wheel of homemade riccotta salata sliced thinly.

The cheese itself turned out like a slightly creamy feta. When I sliced it to top the salad, about 3/4 of the sliced were perfect slices and the rest became crumbles. It has enough body that it is still nice and firm after being dumped into tupperware for storage (I have been picking at the salad as I write this). Since this is a salted cheese, I did not use any additional salt with the salad and it was perfectly seasoned.

This is one of those dishes that probably tasted even better to me for psychological reasons. It was made with ingredients that are in season, grown locally by an independent farmer, and accented with a complex ingredient made by hand in this very house. That kind of pushes all of my buttons. Having said all that, I would still have loved this if it were served to me at a restaurant. The tomatoes were revelatory, the peppers and onions smoky from the grill and the cheese made a nice salty, creamy accent to the whole bowl of Summer goodness.

The next time I try a cheese I think I need it to be not so thin. Because the wheel I did was very wide and thin, I think it allowed the salt to permeate more of the cheese. Not bad for a salad cheese, but could be an issue for a "cheese and crackers" cheese. Other than that, GREAT SUCCESS!

Now I need to get some Chevre culture. I met some nice young Mennonite gentlemen who can get me some whole goat milk next Wednesday.......

Adventures in Amateur Cheesemaking (an ongoing and possibly terrifying series of posts)

So I decided to try making cheese.

I really enjoy making something from the rawest ingredient available into something wonderful. Making cheese at home will either be like that...or I will die from some kind of mutant cheese spores.

For my first attempt at a cheese, I chose a riccotta salata . For this cheese, you basically make a ricotta but after draining as much liquid as possible from the curds, you then salt the curds and press the cheese to form a wheel and eliminate more moisture. You then salt the cheese daily while turning it so that it can shed the moisture that the salt draws out.

For the ricotta, I used the recipe at The Splendid Table because it uses lemon juice rather than rennet to break the milk into curds. (I know that there are vegetarian friendly rennets...I just didn't have any on hand when I decided to try this out) The recipe calls for whole milk; I used a combination of whole milk and half and half, so we should get a little creamier cheese. I also used some nice Hawaiian seasoned sea salt that Gillian gave us to make the ricotta, figuring it's a really simple cheese and can probably use a little flavor boost that isn't simply salt.

For the riccotta salata steps, I followed the steps outlined by David Greenberg on the very cool blog I Make Cheese . For the daily salting, I am using a non-iodized small grain sea salt.

Lessons learned:
1. No matter how firm a cheese is, it can still sweat out more fluid.
2. There is no reason that everyone doesn't just make ricotta when they need some. It is fairly quick and the result is super fresh and delicious (I tasted mine before I pressed it).

Right now the cheese is 6 days old. It is pretty firm and is beginning to develop a bit of rind in a spot or two. It smells really good. In another day or two I will be finished salting it. At that point, David rubbed his ricotta salata with paprika. I am debating paprika or herbs de provence. Either way, it will be a two week wait to let the thing age after that.

If this works out, my next attempts will be fresh mozzarella and chevre (I found a source for the culture online and I think I can get fresh goat milk at the Herndon farmer's market).

And yes, I will be trying out the fresh cream cheese from Splendid Table. More cheese tales to come.......

Beetly Rabe...Broccoli Beets....let's call it Giovanni Ri"beets"i

Ok, so Nancy made this great mixed grilled veggie dish the other day that included grilled peppers, potatoes, fennel, and beets. The beets she got for the dish came with full, healthy looking tops that towered 20 inches over the tubers.

A little googling and I found that not only are beet greens good food, but swiss chard is basically just beets grown for above ground food rather than sweet tubers.

Now, how to cook the darn things....

I ignored all recipes and suggestions from the web and simply treated them the way I do broccoli rabe.

Wash the greens well and then roughly chop greens and stems. Don't dry them well; you will want the little bit of water that clings to them to help them cook.

In a heavy pot (make it a big one...my bunch of raw beet tops/stems probably came to about 8cups) heat some olive oil over medium high heat. Maybe 1/3 cup.

Once the oil is good and hot, toss in about 6-8 cloves of garlic roughly chopped and a couple of shakes of red pepper flake. Let this cook until the garlic is just beginning to brown and very fragrant, then dump in all of your chopped beet tops.

Once the beet tops are in, toss the whole works (tongs work best for this). Your pot will have cooled down quite a bit from all of the cold ingredient you just dumped in. Leave heat on med/high until you see/hear signs that it has heated back up. Once the pan heats back up, bring the flame down to medium and let the whole works cook, covered, for about 12-15 minutes.

MUST USE SALT...Do not think of your blood pressure with this. Give it a generous pinch of good quality sea salt, taste, etc.

This turned out really good. The beet stems have a little bit of earthy sweetness, but the greens have a nice bitter bite. We both agreed that this could easily be our new regular broccoli rabe substitute. If one were a meat eater, a bit of bacon or fatback would probably pull this together nicely and eliminate the need for additional salt.

Raw veggie salad with mustard vinaigrette

A tasty side dish that takes about 10 minutes to make. Salad dressing is best if made the night before (the mustard seeds absorb the dressing and pop in your mouth).

Ingredients for salad:
- 1 head of savoy cabbage
- 1 red bell pepper
- 2-3 zucchinis
- 6 carrots
- handful of cilantro
- 3 tomatoes, chopped

Ingredients for dressing:
- 1/2 cup dijon mustard
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup of olive oil (or less, for lower fat)
- 3 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
- Juice from 1/2 lemon

Mix all salad ingredients except for tomatoes in food processor. Pieces should be around the size of a thumbnail or smaller. Set aside in serving dish.

Whisk all salad dressing ingredients in bowl. Stir into veggie salad. Top salad with chopped tomatoes and sprinkle with kosher salt.