Free cheese necessitates pizza

Two years ago, while I was still flying high in the world of finance, my fund had a Halloween party accompanied by far too much cheese. My roommate at the time and myself were catching a ride up to Boston for the weekend, but because of traffic (or some other forgettable delay) we were left at work pretty late. With our extra time alone with the massive amount of cheese left over from the party, we hatched a plot. We would bag it up and bring it home. So, into two gigantic ziplock bags went a mixture of fancy cheeses --- some hard, some smelly, some blue... While we were at it I think we also took a case or two of the left over wine :>
In any case, someone the cheese survived the weekend. This is surprising because as I recall, we almost didn't. While driving up to Boston we hit traffic -- literally. The drive was slow to respond to the changing traffic conditions and we were not able to stop fast enough to keep from hitting into the back of the SUV in front of us. Damage done. Then, on the way back from Boston, just a mile outside of Cambridge, the hood of our friends car (which had been damaged in the prior accident) became unhinged and flew up and smashed into the windshield. This left us blind to the highway traffic. We were able to navigate to the side of the road thankfully.

Needless to say, the next day (I took a train home rather than chance a drive in that hell car) when my roommate and I got back from work we were faced with like 5 pounds of random cheese. The answer was to make pizza. We experimented to our hearts content with different types of toppings and cheeses. Even the stinky cheese became manageable once baked in the oven.

Now, in graduate school, the parties are not quiet as decadent, but there still is cheese. Courant, for most of their parties, gets really good cheeses from Murrays Cheese shop in Bleeker near 6th. Yesterday was such a party, but unfortunately it was not well attended. The result was that I was able to bring home two large chunks of cheese: One of Asagio and one of Piave. Asagio is a cheese which is used in some of the more famous pizza joints in NYC and is kind of like Mozzarella when cooked. Piave is a harder cheese, like a young Parmigiano Reggian. In any case, the obvious thing to do today was to cook pizza.

My mother makes a very nice dough, a mix of whole wheat and white, just made with yeast, flour and water. I've been making my pizzas using moms recipe for a while and it is very good. It comes out pretty crunchy and keeps its shape well. However today I wanted to try something different. Yesterday my office mate told me that when he makes pizza he uses an egg, milk and sugar in addition to my three ingredients. I figured that I would try to include that, plus use beer instead of water. I have heard that this makes for very yummy dough.

Well, I warmed up some McSorrley's Ale (1 beer) and then mixed some of it with a single packet of yeast and some sugar. The yeast was a little old so it took like 10 minutes to start to bloom. Meanwhile I mixed one egg and the rest of the beer, plus some powdered milk in another container. This all got mixed together, as well as a ton of flour, some salt and some dried Italian spices. I used too much liquid and as a result needed to use about 5 cups of flour (mixed whole wheat and white). Eventually this formed a reasonably springy dough. This went into a bowl and sat for about an hour.

Meanwhile I threw together a pizza sauce. I was tempted to try to use Persimmon in the sauce, but my sense of propriety got the best of me - darnit. The base was one large onion diced, one head of garlic diced, and one large red chili pepper diced cooked in olive oil with some Italian spices. Once translucent, I threw in a large can of whole tomatoes and their juice, plus one can of tomato paste and one of tomato sauce. The usual suspect spices went into the mix, plus I threw in some grated Piave cheese. This stewed until nice some of the excess water cooked off.

The pizza dough was way too much for me to cook tonight. In all there seem to be 6 pizzas worth. So I cut it and froze four of the balls. I cooked one tonight and will do another one in a day or two. The dough was not as stretchy as I would have hoped and I needed to roll it rather than pull it into its shape. Still it was pretty resilient and it didn't tear. When shaped I threw it onto a pizza pan with some corn meal to keep it from sticking. My oven is great for pizza because it gets really hot. I usually cook the pizza dough without sauce until it is a little crunchy. This time I didn't give it as much precooking time before saucing it. I regret this because the inside part of the dough didn't hold its shape as well as usually. About two minutes before the pizza was done I threw the cheese and some chopped fresh Basil, Oregano, Thyme and Rosemary onto the pizza. Once melted, the pizza was done.

I wish my old (a different old roommate) was hear, because I think he would have really liked this pizza. He was a really pizza snob, but I made this pizza with his tastes in mind. The cheese went really well, and the sauce was a little sweet. I needed to add a little salt to bring out the full flavor. My only change (and I have five more chances to do this) is that I would have cooked it more before adding the sauce. I really did like the dough, though it was nothing like what I expected to get. From the springyness of the dough, I expected that it would be a pretty springy pizza. Maybe I need to let it rise some after rolling it? The dough was very thin and crunchy, and aside from having a little more flavor than my mothers, pretty similar.

Maybe this is evidence that it is the hands that make dough and not the ingredients.

Ravioli or my hands ache

Yesterday was a roller coaster of culinary emotion. I awoke eager to go to the William Sonoma knife demonstration with my roommate. We got there only to discover that what his coworker who invited him there really meant by 12:30pm was 11:00am. Bummed out about this we went to Wholefoods to grab a bite (I abstained having just recently eaten some of my dal stew) where I was blown away by the quantity of prepared food available. Arriving home an hour later I settled into watching the Giants trounce Seattle. I started the game late, so my DVR let me skip through commercials and timeouts. Perhaps it was missing the knife demo, or maybe it was the lack of witty banter by NFL announcers (fast-forwarded over) but when 4:30 rolled around I had an empty feeling in my stomach. The solution: make homemade pasta. This seemed like a good idea since just two hours earlier I had impulsively purchased a block of Pecirino Romano cheese at the East Village Cheese Shop.
The first steps in making fresh pasta are pretty easy. You take about two cups of flour and put it on a counter top in a pile. Sprinkle some salt on the flour and then make a well in the center. Into the well place two (jumbo) eggs. The well is supposed to contain the eggs. Of course my eggs just toppled the well and I needed to rush to save them. Work the eggs into the flour by hand. At first this will seem futile and everything will either be dry or sticky. Eventually the egg gets worked into the dough and after much kneading you end up with a solid piece of dough. The dough should really be dry, or else the pasta won't come out right. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This lets any gradient in moistness resolve itself in the dough.
Now comes the laborious part! Cut a small chunk -- like 1/5th of the dough -- and roll out flat. I don't have a pasta maker, so if you do, perhaps this part isn't as long and painful. When you've flattened out the piece as much as possible (use some flour to keep it from sticking), cut long thin strips. Each strip needs to be rolled out to make it thin enough to cook. When I did this I got about 40 pieces of pasta this way, each about 1/3rd of an inch wide and really thin. I let these dry out on a hanging rack (you want the air to circulate) and then cooked them for a few minutes in boiling water. On top of this I put some of the grated romano cheese and ample pepper, plus a little olive oil and called this Cacio E Pepe.
I was pretty content at this point --- the food had taken a little over an hour to make, but I was full and it had been yummy. Quickly, though, I realized that I had a significant amount of pasta dough in remaining in the fridge. I hate to waste, so I knew I needed to do something with it. The feeling I had was like when you decide your going to clean, you take everything out of the closets and move everything around, and then get sick of cleaning but realize that you can't leave everything scattered around the house. Well, perhaps I was obsessing a little, because I could have just thrown the baseball size ball of dough out the window and been done, but I didn't.
Instead I decided to make Ravioli. First step was to get filling. I went to the corner store to get Ricotta. Yet after seeing their packaged "fresh pasta" for 8$ I got the hell out of there. It was too depressing to see, for sale, something which probably tasted as good as the stuff I made and wouldn't require me to spent the rest of my evening working on. I went to the supermarket and, without much thinking, also bought three pears and a butternut squash, plus the ricotta and a tub of yogurt. I made two fillings for the Raviolis.
The first was a traditional filling. I cooked diced onion and garlic and then added a thing of frozen spinach. Once cooked I added in some fresh basil and other Italian spices and finally a tub of ricotta cheese and an ample amount of the Romano cheese. I put this aside.
Meanwhile, on my favorite cast iron I cook the butternut squash (cubed) and added to it some chopped rosemary and sage (yes mom - I found a use for the sage you gave me). I also added in some garlic here. When cooked I put this into a glass bowl and covered. Then, in my same pan I browned walnuts. To the bowl of squash I added two diced pears, and when the walnuts had gotten nicely cooked, I added them too. This all got nice and mashed, and then a few heaping spoonfuls of yogurt and some Romano. Everything received some salt too.
Looking at these two things of fillings I knew I had made too much. Oh well!
The prospect of rolling the raviolli shells had been looming for a while and finally I began the process of flattening small chunks, applying more flour, cutting into smaller chunks and finally flattening to paper thin pieces. Optimally I wanted pieces roughly 3" wide and 5" long. This seldom happened. I dried these out and once I had a few, I started to fill. I Wet the boundary of the pasta shell and then filled it with one of the two choices. Then I carefully folded everything together and hoped the shell would hold. Generally it did. I repeated this around 50 times before I had exhausted the dough. Using methods advanced mathematical theories on sphere packing I found enough room in my over packed freeze to chill these creations.
Washing dishes was a pleasure now, knowing that I didn't need to worry about pasta dough anymore.
The clock read past 11pm when I emerged from the kitchen, flour covered and hands aching. Even today, as I type, I grimace every time I need to hit the lower keys on the keyboard. Never had I rolled dough for so long as I did yesterday. Enjoyable - Yes, Worth it - Probably not. I haven't taste the creation yet, so who knows...
One side note: The initial creation of Cacio E Pepe comes from the eponymous restaurant three blocks north of my apartment. In retrospect I may have been better off going there, paying the 16 dollars, and then spending 6 hours begging for change on the street.
Post note: I had some of the Ravioli's tonight for dinner. They were good, but not worth 6 hours.

A beginning and a failure

I am totally out of food. Despite having spent 150$ in the past few days on groceries, I have nothing to eat in my kitchen. The reason is that most of my purchases were canned goods or dried fruits and nuts. I have enough food to last me for more than a year. In fact, after carrying like 100 pounds of cans home from the associated supermarket, I may be laid up in bed for a year with back problems.
Anyway, I'm going to start to write since my friends Jarid and Sarah (whose apartment I had dinner at last night) convinced me its worth posting some recipes and failures.
Of failures I must relate my attempt to make Paneer (indian cheese). My sister-in-law Lori showed me the basic steps a few weekends ago. Essentially you slowly boil whole milk and right as it is starting to boil you denature it with lemon juice (or lime juice or vinegar). This causes the, already excited and likely unfolder proteins to denature even more and form a mesh with the fat in the milk --- essentially forming curds. Then you drain and wash away the acid, leaving just the curds. The curds are wet and need to be squeezed of their water and then pressed into a block for frying.
My first attempt was precipitated by a purchase of 1.5 pounds of Jareslburg cheese I got for 4 bucks at the east village cheese shop. The cheese was starting to go, and I had too much left, so I figured I would use non-fat powder milk and melt the cheese into it to create my own version of whole milk. Well I did this, but the cheese didn't really go into any solution. All the seemed to happen was that all of its flavorful oils left it. I was left with a very pale, stringy piece of cheese, with a similar feeling to mozzarella cheese. Nothing like paneer at all. I ended up just throwing it in with some white beans, garlic, basil, pine nuts and pasta mixture I made the next day.
My second attempt was less of a failure at first glance. I got proper whole milk and created the curds. They were not as big as Lori's and I didn't have a proper device to drain such small curds. I ended up using a slash guard to drain and wash the curds. This process ended up costing me a lot of the curds and I was left with a fist full of curds. Then I tried to squeeze them with a kitchen towel, but the knit was not tight enough and som curds squeezed out. Finally I pressed the remaining amount of curds and tried to fry it in my small cast iron. The result was a mush of cheese and oil, plus a bunch of stuck burnt cheese. I threw all this into a cauliflower, peas and cashews mixture I made in a spicy indian tomato sauce. The final product was fine, but the cheese had no real positive impact on the dish, and had wasted over an hour of my time. Next time I want to add cheese I'll either get farmers cheese from the cheese shop, or go to the indian store and get proper paneer.