The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

As mentioned in my last entry, I made butter. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly tipped me off that I wanted to make butter. I dunno if it was a sudden rememberance of making it in the first grade, or just the need to be all old fashioned, or what, but the desire was there. And so, I bought myself a couple of cartons of heavy cream, a container to shake it in, and yesterday I got down to the ancient art of butter making.

For the benefit of the studio audience, a brief overview of the evolution of cream -> butter:
--Cream
--Thick cream
--Whipped cream
--Dead whipped cream
--Protobutter
--Butter and buttermilk

Yes, that's right, if you were to keep whipping that homemade whipped cream you make, you would eventually end up with butter, even if you used 'whipping cream'. So anyway, since I had two cartons of cream, I made butter in two different ways.

First: The oh so nostalgic put-it-in-a-glass-jar-and-shake-the-bejeezus-out-of-it method. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on a glass jar, so I got a plastic container instead. In retrospect, I think I can see why glass jars work better, as the glass is less forgiving than plastic, and it allows more clashing of the cream against itself. It took a lot longer than I expected--almost an hour. I don't remember it taking it that long when I was wee. Then again, I think we all sat in a circle and took turns shaking the jar, so the amount of time I took shaking it wouldn't have been that long. Either way, I was quite happy when I finally heard the sloshy sound of the butter separating out, especially after a long time of the cream being impossibly thick.

If nothing else, it's quite a workout.

Second: Hand mixer! The procedure went a *lot* faster this time, and it seemed to me that it produced more butter. The downside, however, is that you don't get the butter in a nice, happy lump in the middle. Instead, you kinda have to mold it together so you can separate it out from the buttermilk. But, it's a good way to do it if you're in a hurry.

After making said butter, I added some salt and Italian seasoning to it, and sent it off with my family to Thanksgiving whilst I spent it with Eien-chan's family. According to my family, it went over extremely well, which is good. Luckily, however, there was a little left over so I could give it a try. While it's rather hard to manipulate when cold, it's pretty durn tasty, if I do say so myself. It's not something I'd want to make every day, since I imagine full-on butter would really pack on the pounds (we use a lowfat margarine for breads and stuff most of the time). However, for holidays and the like, it's a nice thing to do. <3

Hoo boy. I'll fully admit to the fact that I rarely (actually, never) follow a recipe to the letter. I look at a recipe and go, "Hey, I think this needs x spices, and I don't want capers in there. I'll replace them with olives." Usually, this works out fairly well, especially when a recipe's spices are salt, pepper, salt, and maybe a little white pepper, for the really adventurous. I'm not a fan of OMGSPICY, but I do like my dishes to have flavor. Italian seasoning is the best.

However, the dish currently in the oven marks the first time I've really screwed with the infrastructure of a recipe. I've adapted a recipe put forth by one of my cousins, and blended it with another recipe (then added my own mutations), resulting in a creature that should hopefully be something like a taco with potatoes in a dish with veggies and tater tots on top. The thing is, making it has really required some thought on my part as to how to make it, as I need to rethink how to cook the potatoes, and when the other ingredients should be added so the potatoes have enough time to finish cooking, and at the same time, the tater tots will have enough time to cook as well. I honestly have no idea how it's going to turn out. Either way, I'm thinking of calling it the Very Veggie Tater Tot Taco Bake.

The funny thing is that his recipe is adapted from *another* recipe. It's like culinary evolution in action! The question is, will the dish survive the wilds that is the dinner table, far away from the safety of the oven, long enough to pass its recipe on?

ETA: I think it's a keeper. The only thing I need to change is how long the potatoes bake before adding everything else to it. They were a wee bit raw. Luckily, they cook by themselves, so it's easy enough to fix--just leave them in a bit longer so they have extra time.

#5 isn't something I personally did, but I was nearly witness to what would have been a flavor atrocity had it actually been done. We were standing in line at the local Bruegger's to get lunch when the girl in front of us ordered a BLT. Nothing unusual about that, until the bagel-assembler asked what sort of bagel she wanted, and she replied with chocolate chip. While we were all inwardly going "Ew ew ew ew ew!" she started to come to her senses and asked if a BLT on a chocolate chip bagel would taste good. The bagel-assembler wisely suggested to her that she might want to try something different, and settled on plain. Thus was a culinary crisis averted.

For #6, I found a really spiffy recipe in the newspaper for vegetarian bean soup. What caught my eye about it was that it had noodles in it, and I'm a sucker for noodle soups. So I decided to make it tonight for dinner. While making it, I learned that it's both extremely easy to make, and *fast*--I had to keep it on simmer for an hour or so while I waited for people to come home, because I thought it was going to take much longer than it did to cook. I think it was because of this that it lost so much water and eventually became more stew-like. Either way though, the flavor didn't seem to be affected (I added a bit more italian seasoning than what it called for), and it was rather tasty. It's also incredibly healthy--very little fat and no cholesterol, and since we used all low-sodium things for the canned beans etc, it was pretty low salt too. And thanks to the beans, it was very filling. All in all, I think it went well. ^_^

In a fit of inspiration, I decided to play Iron Chef: Lunch last night, and came up with what I think was essentially tomato-motzarella salad on a bagel. I like tomato-motzarella salad, but the oil can wreak havoc on my stomach, so I figured I'd take the good parts from it and make it into a sandwich type thing. The result was motzarella cheese on a sesame bagel that was then popped into the microwave for about 30 seconds, then followed by sliced roma tomatoes and a few basil leaves. The result I found to be rather tasty, though the basil was somewhat overpowering. I think next time I'll use less. It was, however, a yummy change from the egg salad kick I've been on. <3 <3 <3

I've decided to start documenting my adventures in cooking in a more formatted way, and as such are naming them as experiments, seeing as many of them really are. I think even new recipes out of a cookbook are experiments in their own right, since one's trying them out for the first time, and you never really know how they'll turn out, in that instance.

But in this instance, this is something I've created on my own, modifying a key lime pie recipe and adding a second recipe to it. I took the normal key lime pie recipe I've been using, and instead of putting it into one big crust, I put them into 12 little tart crusts. After baking them, I made some chocolate ganache using a second recipe I found, stuck that on top, and then threw them into the fridge to chill.

My initial reaction to this experiment is that they baked okay, and I think I have something here, as indicated by my own tasting and through the analysis of my official taste tester (who goes by the name "Dad"), but the chocolate portion needs work. As is, it's much too weak to stand up to the intense limey flavor. I'm guessing I need to either find a stronger chocolate, or decrease the amount of cream in the recipe. Hm. This'll require some more experimentation.