lives: I offer you my life history through some of my favorite recipes. As you can imagine, quite a few of my creations will feature cheese, but as importantly, they will feature the region that I once couldn’t wait to escape but eventually embraced wholly: it’s my grandmother’s legacy on my hands and now on your table.
Lastly, I am thankful for “you, me, and the beautiful day.”
Bon appétit.
My favorite T. S. Eliot poem, “Four Quartets,” which had no small part in luring me to where I am today, states in the most beautiful of ways that the exploration which seems like the end is really the beginning, “costing not less than everything.”
Homemade Goat Cheese
I submitted a recipe to ReadyMade magazine for making goat cheese at home. It truly is a fun thing to do. My goal with this cookbook is to have you realize how lovely and healthy and versatile goat cheese is— whether you make your own or use one of Belle Chèvre’s goat cheese or any other goat cheese. I want you to enjoy and feel at home with this beautiful cheese! Note: Don’t toss out the whey when you are done. Whey contains milk sugar, albuminous protein, and minerals. Leftover whey can be used as a liquid substitute in bread-making. Additionally it can be frozen to use at a later time.
Serves 2
1 quart goat milk
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper
Fresh chives, chopped
Cheesecloth or cotton kitchen towel
In a heavy-bottomed pot, bring goat milk to a boil over medium heat. Take off the heat. Immediately stir the lemon juice into the milk. Let stand for a couple of minutes, so the milk can curdle.
Lay out a cheesecloth (or a cotton kitchen towel) in a bowl. Pour in the milk-lemon mixture. The curds simply resemble curdled milk at this point so don’t worry that they will pour right through the cheesecloth— it will catch them. Tie the ends of the cloth together so it becomes a bag. Hang it on a wooden spoon over the bowl or over your sink and let the bag hang free. The whey should strain out of the cheesecloth for at least two hours.
Before taking the cheese out of the cloth, squeeze the cloth to extract more liquid from the cheese. Transfer the cheese from the cloth to a bowl and season it with salt and pepper and fresh chives. Ready to serve.
A NOTE ON TECHNIQUE
My Food Rules
I have a friend that I fussed at so continually about “technique” that he now says, instinctively, after any recipe question, “I know, I know, it is technique!” Another friend will roll her eyes at me when she asks, “How long do I leave it in the oven?” She is searching for an exact time, and I will undoubtedly respond with, “Until it is done.”
I am a firm believer that if one masters a few solid techniques then recipes will forevermore take a back seat to that concept of technique. If you know the technique for a great omelet, for instance, then you don’t need a recipe— just creativity to put in whatever strikes your fancy. The same is true for techniques and principles of grilling, sautéing, braising, poaching, pickling, soup making, etc.
This book is a collection of some of my favorite things that I like to bring to the table to share with family and friends. It is my hope that if you learn how to make one of the frittatas in this book that you will have learned the “technique” to make any kind of frittata, limited only by your own creativity and availability of ingredients. My favorite cornbread recipe is a foundation for you to understand how you can improve it or make it your own by adding jalapeños, cheddar, or, of course, goat cheese.
My philosophy is Food Is Fun— being playful in the kitchen is a requisite to creating great memories at the table. Experiment with these recipes and have fun!
EASY SUBSTITUTIONS
How I Use Goat Cheese at My House
Goat cheese is one of the most versatile cheeses on the planet. It’s soft, easy to work with, and its mild flavor makes it perfect for use in a wide variety of dishes, from breakfast to dessert.
You can also feel very good about using it in various ways because of its unbelievable health benefits. Goat cheese is lower in fat and calories than cow’s milk cheeses, higher in protein, lower in lactose, and actually supports a healthy digestive system. And if that wasn’t enough, goat’s milk is said to be good for your skin, hair, and even libido! Armed with all of that great information, I see very little reason for you not to enjoy it every day in more of your favorite dishes.
Here are few ways that I use it and substitute for the old stand-bys that call for:
1. Mayonnaise— Try a BLT with a delicious goat cheese spread on your bread instead of mayo. I use it on rustic French bread for my leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches.
2. Sour Cream
3. Cream Cheese— My favorite shrimp dip now has goat cheese as its base instead of cream cheese. Add a healthy twist to cream cheese with pepper jelly dip by using goat cheese instead. Want a truly delicious cheesecake? You get the idea.
4. Butter— Crumble goat cheese on your favorite steamed veggies instead of butter; add a little lemon zest to it to make it even more special. Love a compound butter on top of grilled meats? Make herbed compound “butters” with goat cheese instead.
5. Make whipped cream by using half the amount of cream with goat cheese for a gourmet twist.
6. Spread goat cheese on your bagel with smoked salmon, capers, and red onion.
7. Use goat cheese in your icing for a favorite cake or cupcake.
Breakfast
I love beginnings. Beginnings are full of promise and a kind of energy that is hard to replicate. It is important to think of how, before you begin, you wish the end to look, to feel— and for us in the kitchen, to smell. The beginning of the day or the beginning of a meal is a sacred time and should be honored, even in small ways.
Breakfast is my favorite meal and one in which there is an infinite amount of creative room to play with traditional ingredients. I like to give the morning its due with a meal— a real meal. More often than not, what was enjoyed at the dinner table the night before finds itself reinvented at the breakfast table— the asparagus is now in my frittata, the potatoes and pork loin have been turned into a hash, chile verde is topped with a fried egg on a tortilla with chopped onion and cilantro. It is like being handed a palette of colors and you get to make a painting— even better, since the painting is edible, no?
I encourage you to sit down at the table and begin your day with good tastes and wonderful sustenance. I love breakfast so much so that if given my choice of any restaurant, it would most certainly be one known for its breakfasts. While I was in culinary school in New York, breakfast was the meal I did not miss— no matter how tired I was. All of the culinary students had to do a stint working
