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Warning! This is not a food post. Proceed with caution...Meet Skyclo. Skyclo is the ultimate, low maintenance pet.
More expensive than a chia pet, but so much more appealing.
We picked up Skyclo for a song (the Beatles complete anthology, for price reference.)
Kidding, but still, Skyclo wasn't cheap.
I was lingering a bit too long over the little guy and the boutique shop girl came over to ask if I was interested in buying him.
Me: "How much?"
Her: "$5."
Me: "Five bucks??!!"
Her: "Uh, no. $500.00"
Me: "Holy @#$%!"
And then I walk away, dazed and confused. I look around the adorable little dog shop on Main Street in Park City, thinking I should trade in my chef's knife for a hunk of clay.
A couple minutes later, shop girl says, "My boss really wants to move these things, so I can offer you a deal on the little Westie." Really, I say, looking around at approximately 30 other dog breeds sitting on shelves.
I spot the hairless dog. Funny, it's the only ceramic sculpture with hair. A little tuft protruding from his little skull.
"How does $300.00 sound?" she twerps. Uh, no, I say, although I am beginning to realize that these are really works of art.
"OK! $200.00. That's as low as I can go," she says. SOLD! I say. And that's how we acquired our third dog. We named him Skyclo, after our other two, um, more vocal Westies: Sklyar and Chloe.
A couple days later, I wandered back to the pet boutique, only to discover that it had closed. I forgot to get information about the artist, and after an exhaustive internet search (5 minutes), I can't seem to find anything about this artist, so I can't point you in the right direction in case you were interested in having one of your own.
$200.00 isn't cheap, I know, and my friends have laughed at me for spending that much, but it is still cheaper than having a real dog. I know because I still have two. Now, if I can just get them all three to sit together for a family portrait.
Well, it would be, if anyone bothered to package and sell it. It could also carry the moniker, "World's Best Granola."
The recipe is in two of my cookbooks, and I'm quite certain that the five tons of granola samples I handed out hocking my books all over the country is the reason I sold so many books.
The original recipe came from Martha McGinnis, a former chef at the world-class Triple Creek Ranch in Montana. I knew it was great granola after the first bite, but there was something about it that bothered me.
You have to roast hazelnuts. Have you ever roasted hazelnuts? What a pain in the ass butt. Papery flecks of skin float all over the place. I'm sure, if you looked hard enough, you could find a piece of hazelnut skin somewhere in my kitchen and I've not roasted hazelnuts in 5 years.
So I tweaked Martha's recipe, replacing the hazelnuts with walnuts. Much easier. I also tweaked the sugar composition. She originally called for honey OR maple syrup. I use both because I love the stickiness from the honey and the flavor of maple syrup. And I use Grade B maple syrup because, as Christopher Kimball so eloquently says, "no self-respecting Vermonter would ever use Grade A." I'm not from Vermont but if I was, I wouldn't use Grade A either. Grade A is for wimps.
I also only use dried blueberries and dried tart cherries, compounding the expensive part. Enough blabbering... here's my recipe from both The Great Ranch Cookbook and The Cool Mountain Cookbook, with my newest tweaks. Just promise me that you won't sit down and eat the whole batch at once -- a promise that is actually harder than it sounds.
Triple Creek Granola (with a few tweaks)
Makes 18 cups
1 (18-oz.) container of old-fashioned oats (not quick cooking)
1-1/2 cups sliced raw almonds
1-1/2 cups raw pepitas*
1-1/2 cups raw walnut pieces
1-1/2 cups sweetened coconut
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
3/4 cup honey
3/4 cup Grade B maple syrup
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1-1/2 cups dried blueberries
1-1/2 cups dried tart cherries
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the first 7 ingredients (oats through brown sugar) together in a large pot. Heat the honey, maple syrup and oil in a small sauce pan over low heat just until warm. Pour over oats mixture and stir until all ingredients are coated. Spread on two lined baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and stir and return to oven in 5 minute increments, stirring after each 5 minutes. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes in total. Remove from oven and scrape each baking sheet contents into a separate, large roasting pan. Divide the dried fruit evenly between the two pans and stir. Continue to stir occasionally as the granola cools to break up lumps. Cool completely before storing in an airtight container. You can freeze the granola for up to 3 months (like it's going to last that long.)
*pepitas are green pumpkin seeds (actually, they are the inner seed of a pumpkin seed, which is white, and you can find them in health food stores if your grocery store doesn't carry them.)
If there was an awards ceremony for vegetables, spaghetti squash might just win the most underrated category. It's one of those vegetables that looks harder to cook than it actually is, so I think cooks bypass the squash bin at the grocery store, heading instead for sweet potatoes. The truth is cutting it open is the most difficult part of cooking the it (any winter squash, really, and among the winter squashes, it's one of the easiest to cut, you just need a big chef's knife).
After cutting the squash in half and scooping out the seeds, place the squash cut side down on a lined baking sheet. Pour in about 1/4 of water to keep it from burning and roast in a 350 degree oven for roughly 30 minutes. While the squash is roasting, you can whip up a few other ingredients and in the end, you'll have a vegetarian spaghetti with a simple marinara sauce, and get a good dose of greens, too, in about 45 minutes, or less.
My marinara sauce is embarrassingly simple. Dice half a large onion (any color, I used red because that's what I had) and saute it in a healthy splash of olive oil. Once it's tender, about 5 minutes, stir in minced garlic (as much as you like). As soon as the garlic smells wonderful, a minute or two, pour in 1/4 cup of white wine. Cook until the wine is almost reduced, and then add a can of diced tomatoes with the juice (I like Muir Glen organic tomatoes, and if fire-roasted, all the better). Stir in a generous teaspoon of dried Italian herbs and then simmer until thickened, about 20 minutes.
While the sauce bubbles, have some wine and toast some pine nuts. I like an Oregon or Californian Pinot Gris with this dish. Or, on second thought, toast the nuts first, and then have wine. You have to watch them or they'll burn. Throw a handful of nuts in a dry skillet and toast over medium heat until browned, tossing frequently. It'll take about 5 minutes. Once the nuts are done, saute up some Swiss chard.
I cut chard from the stems and then roughly chop the leaves before soaking them in a salad spinner to remove any dirt. Spin them dry and saute with a generous splash of olive oil in a skillet, maybe add a little garlic, salt and pepper. After the leaves are wilted, cover the skillet and turn the heat to low. It should take about 10 minutes to turn them into soft, tender greens. While the greens are steaming to tenderness, you can scrape the spaghetti squash into lovely yellow strands with a fork, and season with salt and pepper. Place a mound of squash in a pasta bowl and top with the marinara sauce, pine nuts and a sprinkling of Parmesan. Scatter the greens around the squash and now, in less than 45 minutes, you have a healthy, delicious, vegetarian spaghetti dish.
It started with a simple tweet request from the Smittenkitchen, (one of my favorite food blogs because Deb's voice is snappy, her pictures are outrageously gorgeous and she's one of a handful of very, very successful food bloggers - which is why she's listed over there on the right under Best Food Blogs).
She asked "Grammar nuts, I need your help: Corn bread is one word or two? I see it both ways but I'm not sure which is right.Thanks!"
I took the challenge and did a little research from my fairly extensive resource library (over my shoulder in my home office). I first consulted my go-to guide, Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts (full disclosure: I'm very good friends with one of the co-authors.) Corn bread is two words, according to this resource guide.
Next, I looked at the Recipe Writer's Handbook (Revised and Expanded) by Ostmann and Baker. There, on page 169, in the chapter of preferred spellings of commonly used food words, is corn bread. Two words. The introduction to the chapter does say that many of these words have more than one spelling and once you decide on the spelling you want to use, stick with it. Consistency trumps absolutes.
Then I checked the Association of Food Journalists Foodspell: A Guide to Style & Spelling for Food Terms, Both Common & Exotic. It, too, listed corn bread as two words. I was beginning to feel pretty confident that corn bread is two words, not one.
That same afternoon, my newest food reference book arrived (I collect them like some people collect ceramic frogs). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, edited by Andy Smith, weighs in at nearly five pounds, so it's sort of a combination reference book/barbell. Lo and behold, I encounter my first cornbread reference. Huh.
And then I searched my own blog, and found that I've mentioned cornbread -- twice. One word, yet here I was making a case for corn bread. Go figure.
In the meantime, I see that SmittenKitchen has posted about cornbread -- one word. Deb's reference source was the late, great, Sharon Tyler Herbst's Food Lover's Companion. And even my standard desk top dictionary, the New College Edition The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, on page 297, says "corn bread" followed by "Also cornbread."
So there you have it. Corn bread is definitively spelled corn bread. Or, cornbread.
A couple of years ago, I worked on a food trend analysis for a client, and one of the trends I noticed was flavored chocolate bars. Not just any old flavor, though. No, definitely some "out there" flavorings were popping up in the gourmet marketplace.
The first brand I noticed was Vosges, and what was so unusual, besides the shockingly high price tag (I think the first bar I bought was $6, and some are selling for close to $8 today...for 3 ounces) was that they were pushing the envelope beyond normal flavorings for chocolate.
Vosges was incorporating ginger, chiles, wasabi, sesame seeds, and bacon into their haute bars of chocolate. It was mind-blowing. Some even sparked delight. The red fire exotic bar is exciting: delicate Ceylon cinnamon, spicy ancho and chipotle chiles swirled in deep, dark chocolate.
The Mo's Bacon Bar...eh, not so much. It wasn't that I didn't love the dark milk chocolate (41% cacao). The smoky bacon just completely overwhelmed the chocolate taste. These days, every pastry chef worth his or her salt is putting bacon on the menu, so combining bacon and sweets isn't unusual. And in many cases it works.
I just didn't think the Mo's Bacon Bar worked. Still don't. And they've recently introduced an organic enchanted mushroom bar (dark chocolate and mushrooms). Could their chocolate designers be tripping?
Not to be outdone, Theo Chocolates has introduced a line of flavored bars called Theo 3400 Phinney (the address of the Seattle based factory). I've been hearing lots of chatter from the foodie world that these Theo bars are "to live for." They're organic and labeled fair trade certified. So I decided to check them out, you know, for you.
I bought three flavors: coconut curry (40% cacao milk chocolate); bread & chocolate (70% cacao dark chocolate); and fig, fennel & almond (70% cacao dark chocolate). All are 2 ounces and retail about $3.75.
Overall, the chocolate tastes superior to the Vosges bars. Perhaps because they're thicker, or Theo takes a lighter hand with the flavorings or perhaps the chocolate really is better.
B+ : If you're not a fan of yellow curry powder, better skip the coconut curry milk chocolate bar, as it's the predominate flavor. Love the texture of the minced coconut.
A- : Not sure I get the flavor of the toasted bread crumbs that are listed in the ingredient list on the bread and chocolate bar, but it is a little crunchy and the chocolate is dark and rich.
C : I personally love licorice, just not sure it's working in this fig, fennel and almond dark chocolate bar. I hardly taste the almonds and the fig is understated, too, except for the tiny crunch of fig seeds.
If I had known just how easy corned beef and cabbage was to make all along, I would have made it every St. Patrick's Day, and probably a few more times throughout year.
I never connected that this Irish dish was nothing more than a simple pot roast, only made with a brisket injected with a spiced salt brine.
Originally, I had planned to put the pot in the oven, but then my oven died, or so I thought. (As an aside,the oven miraculously resurrected herself and the service man I called out thinks I'm nuts.)
So I finished it on top of the stove, which is a bit more traditional. I also threw everything into the pot at once, but after the three hours it took to cook the beef to tender, the vegetables cooked to mush, so next time, I'll cook the beef for about an hour and a half, and then put the vegetables in.
The other "revelation" is that leftover corned beef and cabbage turns into a lovely soup. I knew the leftover beef could be used for Ruben sandwiches and corned beef hash, but I wasn't sure what to do with a mountain of leftover mushy vegetables. They tasted wonderful from cooking with the spiced corned beef, but the texture was too akin to baby food.
So I put the vegetables in a pot, covered them with low sodium chicken stock and eventually pureed the whole thing with some canned chick peas for thickness. I chopped some of the beef to add as a garnish, and voila! Corned beef and cabbage soup.
Seriously, how many kinds of pepper does one cook need?
Black, sure. White? OK.
But when you start veering off into what kind of black pepper (Malabar, Lampong, Tellicherry, etc.) it gets kind of nuts.
But that's not all I have in my pantry.
There's Szechuan (from China), Aleppo (from Turkey), and pink peppercorns (which aren't peppercorns at all, but have a peppery flavor and look like peppercorns, only shockingly pink). I have two kinds of white pepper, the darker Muntok and the whiter (more expensive) Sarawak.
Green peppercorns live in two places in my household: swimming in brine (in the fridge) and dehydrated, snuggled up next to my black, white and pink peppercorns. If nothing else, I run an equal opportunity pantry. No discrimination here.
In all, I have ten different peppercorns (counting the pink ones, even though we've already established that they aren't true peppercorns.) I don't think we should go into how many pepper grinders I have.
Is there really a taste difference between the Indonesian Lampong and the Indian Tellicherry peppercorns? Yes, but it's not earth-shatteringly-dramatic. The only way to discern the difference is to taste them, and that gets kind of hot after a while, but you can pick up different flavor notes. The Lampong is earthy. The Tellicherry has fruity notes. Both leave a nice after burn.
Pepper, right after salt, of course, is the most important seasoning ingredient in a cook's arsenal. I'm not saying you need to have ten different peppercorns, but you should have peppercorns as opposed to pre-ground pepper, and grind them fresh every time to get the real power of this heady spice.
My go-to source for peppercorns is Penzeys Spice Company. Another great source is Flavorbank, based out of Tucson, Arizona. It's where I picked up the earthy Lampong pepper.
Everyone needs a little spice in their life. I, apparently, need lots.
Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook by Jim Denevan with Marah Stets
Facts: Published 2008 by Clarkson Potter, hardcover, 256 pages, $32.50
Photos: almost every page, food and farm dinner scenes
Recipes: 110
Give to: Your farmer and/or foodie groupie friends and wealthy friends you want to convert from chain steakhouses to the joys of eating locally.
Review: If you haven’t hear about the near cult-like farm dinners popping up all over the country called Outstanding in the Field, don’t feel left out. It’s tough to score a ticket to one of the farm dinners unless you’re on their email list or otherwise connected – deeply – in the local food world where the tour happens to stop.
Thirty-seven farm dinners were held in 2008, under the Outstanding in the Field banner, including one on October 12 at Crooked Sky Farm in Glendale, AZ. (Sadly, there is no AZ stop on the 2009 schedule.)
But you can buy their new cookbook that chronicles some of the adventures of founder Chef Jim Denevan and his merry band of cooks and event planners. At $32.50 (even less on Amazon.com), the cookbook is cheaper than a ticket to a farm dinner anyway, which ranges from $180 to $220 per person (for four to six courses, all paired with wine.)
Outstanding in the Field started as one dinner at a farm in Corallitos, California in 1999 and today hosts dinners at farms from coast to coast. We give high marks to the cookbook for the simplicity of the recipes, and the occasional “if you can’t find “x” ingredient, substitute “y” and the sheer number of mouthwatering photographs.
We almost feel like guests from the pictures of the farms where the dinners took place and the warm, conversational tone the authors use to introduce the recipes and in the essays sprinkled throughout the book, like the one on the virtues of fresh, unfiltered olive oil.
As one would expect with a farm themed cookbook, the bulk of the recipes feature garden-fresh produce for salads, soups, pasta, grains and vegetable dishes. Deep-fried okra with a buttermilk-semolina crust, rainbow chard tart and baby turnip soup are just a few of the tempting sounding ones.Fish, poultry and meat get their due as well: black cod wrapped in fig leaves, grass-fed beef skirt steak, and pan seared duck breast with pomegranate sauce.
The back of the book is stuffed with all kinds of goodies: suggested menus, ingredient sources and charitable organizations that all support the “eat local” mantra. We whipped up a batch of delicious savory pecan, Parmesan and thyme shortbread cookies (page 25) with no trouble thanks to very detailed directions, although ours didn’t turn out as “photogenic” and they crumbled like sand when we tried to bag them up to give as gifts. They also melted in our mouth…yum.
More info: outstandinginthefield.com is the official website, and their blog chronicles the tour – outstandingontour.blogspot.com.
Thirty restaurants, more than 100 wines, two sun-soaked afternoons and I'm toast.
I'm talking about the West of Western Culinary Festival that took place this past weekend at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Other food writers are going to give you more details about the specifics -- which chef did what dish -- in greater detail than I will. (Coming soon, entertaining wrap-ups from Howard Seftel from The Arizona Republic, Carey Sweet in the Scottsdale Republic, and Jess Harter's already posted his East Valley Tribune summary).
But I do have a couple of observations that I'd like to add.
First, if you are a restaurant junkie, this festival needs to be on your schedule for next year. West of Western attracts some (I'm wondering why not all) of the top tables in town.
It also showcases the talent behind some of the top hotel and resort restaurants: the Four Seasons, the Phoenician, Wild Horse Pass (restaurant Kai, the only Mobil 5-star restaurant in Arizona), The Wyndham (we have a Wyndham?) and the Sheraton downtown, the Fairmont Scottsdale, two Marriotts (Camelback Inn and JW Marriott at Desert Ridge, the new Montelucia Resort, the Pointe Hilton at Tapatio Cliffs, and even La Posada in Winslow.
Noticeably missing were Binkley's (and Cafe Bink), Los Sombreros, Barrio Cafe, Tonto Bar & Grill and Cartwright's, Lon's at the Hermosa Inn, the new Mission, Christopher's, Vincent's, Sea Saw, Cowboy Ciao, Digestif (although Chef Curry did a demo), and many more.
Some chefs put more into this festival than others. And the festival goers noticed. (A blob of burrata from Prado? Bland garlic panna cotta that blended into the white plate from the new, hip Posh?)
Some chefs went for shock and awe: Kai handed out four samples, including my favorite, pulled lamb on fry bread with fig and curry "mud", Quiessence dazzled with at least 10 (I lost count). Roka Akor grilled Moroccan spiced lamb chops that perfumed all of central Phoenix and presented elegant butterfish tataki.
Tapino did a different kind of shock: foie gras ice cream float with local Sonora Brewing Co. root beer. There wasn't much of a foie gras taste, but he did get a lot of attention, at least until he ran out before 2 p.m., with still 2 more hours of the festival to go.
But here's the thing, most of the restaurants missed the opportunity to connect with their target market. Sure, they handed out generous samples, but very few took advantage of their captive audience by marketing their restaurants. They could have been handing out critical information.
If I were a restaurant giving away that much free food, I'd also create a small flyer with what the dish was (so the customer could remember it later, because frankly, after eating thirty samples, who can remember what? Who did that delicious seared scallop atop mushroom cream, or the cocoa nib dusted scallop, or the scallop on top of the farro salad and wasn't there one more scallop dish --all on Saturday?)
The flyer needs a few other things, too, perhaps a few key menu items on it, maybe tout a fabulous happy hour or at the very least, promote the restaurant's website. SOMETHING.
Huge kudos to the organizers and volunteers are in order as the festival ran as smooth as the Ecuadorian chocolate pudding from Kai. The boy scout volunteers kept the trash empty and the festival staff kept the water tubs full. Cooking demonstrations, culinary lectures and short food-focused films gave eaters a chance to take a break, clear out some tummy room before heading back through the gastro gaunlet.
All in all, the festival was fabulous -- again. I know that as I took each sample, I made sure I asked what it was, and then I thanked the chef for being there, making the festival worth the ticket price. Even though I'm pointing out some shortcomings of some chefs, I so appreciate them coming and feeding us, giving us a glimpse into their fascinating world of creativity.
Because, at the end of the day, I am a restaurant junkie, just like all the other festival goers.
When I read on Chow Bella this week that the adorable, quirky Palatte restaurant was closing, my heart sank a bit -- I loved that restaurant.
Chow Bella reports that the 4th Avenue and Filmore Street breakfast/lunch spot "got an offer they couldn't refuse." That's the good news. The bad news is we lost gem.
I penned a review for AZ Central.com a few months after they opened in 2007, in which I opened with:
"I'm quite certain that no matter what I write in this review, the newly opened Palatte in the historic Cavness house...will be crazy busy for a long time to come."
That, of course, was well before the economic meltdown last fall. And truth be told, after I wrote the review, I probably only visited Palatte as a regular customer a handful of times, even though it was a favorite.
I'm going to cop out and blame proximity...the restaurant is more than 30 miles from my house. It's got me thinking, though, about some other favorite restaurants of mine, and perhaps I should be a little more diligent in returning to them.
As a foodie, it's easy to get caught up in chasing the next new restaurant. It's kind of like wanting a puppy because it's cute. But eventually the puppy grows up and isn't so cute anymore, but it's still a living, breathing creature and needs love and attention.
As a food writer, lots of things come across my desk -- new products, new books, new this, new that. Occasionally, I'm impressed enough to share with you. Like today, when I received some info about a new book by Irena Chalmers.
I thought I recognized her name, and a quick glance at my library revealed why...another book by Ms. Chalmers, The Great FOOD Almanac, which won an IACP/Julia Child award and was nominated for a James Beard award, is on my shelf.
Ms. Chalmers has come up with a new culinary job for herself -- a food job coach, so to speak. And, to launch her new career, she's written a book for anyone interested in landing a job in the culinary field.
Whether you're looking for a job in a restaurant, the media, culinary education or even farming, this book has details that you need to know about. Like how to go about landing that job, and what exactly that job is all about.
And if you don't know what you want, this book will help you think about the usual suspects -- chef, restaurant manager, food writer -- an some unusual ones: chewing gum taster or fortune cookie writer. My guess is the last two are, um, not as lucrative as the first three, but hey, somebody's gotta do it.
If I hadn't already blown my birthday money on the West of Western festival, I'd definitely blow it on this upcoming wine dinner at Binkley's Restaurant in Cave Creek, featuring Frank Family Vineyards from Napa, and sponsored by AZ Wines of Carefree (my favorite boutique wine shop.)
The six course dinner starts at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, March 23rd ($120++) begins with passed hors d'oeuvres and bubbles, followed by an asparagus course with baby beets, chevre mousse, and Meyer lemon zabaglione. Then there is vanilla gnocchi with snow peas, brown butter crusted grouper, 5-spice seared duck breast with a huckleberry pancake, root beer braised short ribs, and finally, a chocolate raisin parfait, served with a Frank Family port, of course.
Wow! I didn't list all the accouterments under each course, or mention the individual wines that will be paired with each course, but I can promise you that the dinner will be spectacular and worth every cent. So if you've not splurged on something in a while, you might want to consider this dinner.
And if you're feeling super generous, pick me up at 6:15.
Happy Birthday to me!
I just bought tickets to next weekend's West of Western culinary festival. Sort of my own birthday present to myself. I mean, what could be a better present for a foodie than a ticket to a food and wine festival?
We're really blessed with a variety of food festivals. There's the grand dame (Scottsdale Culinary Festival coming in April -- it's 31st year), the baby (Eats3, the second event is scheduled for October 22-24), and this 5th annual West of Western. All of them add up to a foodie fantasy bar none.
Next weekend, the West of Western returns to the Phoenix Art Museum for the second year, a much better venue than the grounds at the Arizona Center where the festival began.
In addition to top toque talent setting up booths and handing out generous samples of their fare, the festival has some chef demos and classes lined up that will give you a chance to digest your food a bit before tent hopping again.
I want to mention a handful of these demos and seminars -- all of them celebrate the diversity of our desert foods.
Pamela Hamilton, publisher of Edible Phoenix will dish on ancient chocolate elixirs, Andy Broder will make magic with mole, Candy Lesher will present packets of pleasure - green corn tamales, and Barbara Fenzl will handle hot and not, chiles. Click here to see more about these and other classes during the two day festival.
Last year, I attended both days, following Chef Jack Strong from Kai around on Sunday for an Edible Phoenix article. This year, I'm looking forward to just being a guest. Hope to see you there.
It's really quite simple, you know, making yogurt cheese. I don't know why I never attempted it before.
Every once in a while I need a cup of plain yogurt for a recipe, and I never can find a small container. It's always at least a pound or two. Why is that? Do yogurt manufacturers think that we can't possibly only need a cup?
Instead of throwing away the rest of my 2 pound container, I decided I would make yogurt cheese. I'd heard about it, but it seemed really too simple. I mean, I read Gourmet after all. Nothing in Gourmet is simple. I bet they've never printed a yogurt cheese recipe.
I lined a strainer with several layers of cheesecloth and spooned in about 2 cups of plain yogurt, and folded over the cheesecloth on top. I covered the strainer top with plastic wrap and set the strainer in a larger bowl, to catch the liquid (whey). I set the bowl in the refrigerator and waited 24 hours.
When I uncovered the cheese cloth, I had a nice little mound of yogurt cheese, and about a half a cup or maybe a little more of whey in the bottom of the bowl. I discarded the whey, although you could keep it and stir it into sauces or soups for some added flavor. Tasting the yogurt cheese reminded me of creme fraiche -- tangy, creamy and frankly delicious. Now I need to figure out what to do with it.
I think I'll spread it on some toast first. Perhaps Ooh La La, my favorite bread from Simply Bread. Yes, that's a great idea! Ooh La La is a dense, multi-grain bread studded with dried cranberries, raisins and walnuts. Mmmm. Perfect.
Downtown Phoenix was a happening place this past Saturday. I mentioned in a previous post that we were headed to the Downtown Phoenix Public Market for a big announcement. Pamela Hamilton, publisher of Edible Phoenix presented Cindy Gentry, dubbed "Market Mom" by supporters and fans, with the Local Hero non-profit award, saying that the market would be retired to the Local Hero Hall of Fame, after snagging the award for three years in a row. But that wasn't the BIG announcement.
The BIG announcement was a BIG fat check from the Phoenix Industrial Development Authority -- $250,000 to be exact. The money will be used to open the indoor market. The downtown market, celebrating it's fourth anniversary, has been raising money to convert the historic brick building next to the market's parking lot into a year round store, cafe and gathering spot that will operate five days a week, while still holding the outdoor market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings.
The farmers market wasn't the only place to be last Saturday. Just up the road, at the Margaret T. Hance Park behind the library, the fourth annual WorldFEST was happening, an outdoor festival celebrating Phoenix sister cities. Tents featuring the sister cities, including Ennis, Ireland, Taipei, Taiwan and Hermosillo, Mexico, among others, entertained spectators with educational activities for the children and literature about these cities.We scarfed on outrageously delicious barbecue from Big Belly's BBQ, a local caterer. Best dish? The BBQ sundae: a cup of shredded, smoked pork, spicy pinto beans and topped with creamy coleslaw and a drizzle of sweet, tangy BBQ.
Hopping on the light rail down to Washington Street, we found the Firefighter's Chili Cook-Off. How I managed to down a few chili cups after a bowl full of BBQ, I'll never know. As we exited the Chili Cook-Off, we came face to face with a protest march. The "March to Stop the Hate," rally, sponsored by the National Day Laborers was in progress, with thousands of marchers -- young, old, White, Hispanic, Black, and every color in between -- were Marching down Central with banners, mostly calling for the local Sheriff to go. A few Sheriff supporters -- all White from what we could see -- stood on the sidewalks holding we support Joe (the controversial sheriff).
At that moment, I felt really proud to be an American, where we are free to protest if we choose, free to mosey through street fairs and farmers markets. And then this morning, I read that downtown Phoenix is in the process of re-branding itself. The new brand is "Arizona's urban heart." You can feel the heartbeat, whether you're supporting the local firefighters or the downtown farmers market, connecting with sister cities across the globe to celebrate our diversity, or marching in a peaceful protest. Yes, indeed, downtown Phoenix is alive.
Warning! This is not a food post. Proceed with caution...
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