Chocolate and Goat Cheese Truffles

Posted on September 26, 2012 | 2 comments

I love chocolate. And these chocolate and goat cheese truffles are one of my favorites.

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Goat cheese sounds like an odd ingredient to have in truffles. But having made these at a time when traditional truffles, made with cream and butter, were in my home, I can honestly say that these are a billion times better. The cheese balances the sweetness of the sugar and compliments the richness of the chocolate with a subtle tang. If using a mild cheese, it almost disappears into a “secret ingredient.”

Since I have been making homemade chèvre, I measure and reserve 6 oz before rolling logs, however, “store bought is fine.”

I usually cut a little extra chocolate to allow for “shrinkage” from nibbling.

I do recommend paying a little extra for quality chocolate. When making a recipe, such as this, where chocolate is such a high percentage of the finished product, you will really be able to taste the quality. How can you tell if your chocolate is good enough? If you enjoy eating it straight, then it will work.

Chocolate and goat cheese truffles

Tip: If you don’t have a double broiler to melt the chocolate, use a stainless steel bowl that fits well over a pot.

Chocolate and goat cheese truffles

Whip the cheese with a little powdered sugar.

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Add in the melted and cooled chocolate.

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Mix until well combined.

Chocolate and Goat Cheese Truffles

Let the mixture chill in the fridge for an hour.

Chocolate and Goat Cheese Truffles

 Form walnut-sized balls with a spoon and then roll in shifted cocoa powder.

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Here’s my idea of a perfect dessert:

Goat cheese and chocolate truffles

Check out Parsonage Village Vineyard for more of my favorite wines.

Chocolate and Goat Cheese Truffles Recipe

Recipe from foodnetwork.com

  • 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
  • 6 ounces fresh (mild) goat cheese, at room temperature
  • 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup sweetened cocoa powder, sifted

In the top of a double boiler, or in a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water (make sure the water does not touch the bowl), melt the chocolate, stirring until it is smooth. Set the melted chocolate aside to cool for a few minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

In a bowl whisk together the goat cheese, sugar, and vanilla until it is light and fluffy. Whisk in the melted chocolate until it is well combined. Chill, covered, until it is firm, at least 1 hour.

To form the truffles, take a heaping teaspoon of the chocolate/cheese mixture and lightly roll it into a ball with your hands. Roll the finished truffles in the sifted cocoa powder, set them onto a baking sheet lined with waxed paper, and chill until they are firm, about 30 minutes. The truffles can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

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Posted in Dessert, Food, Home Dairy, Step by Step with Pictures

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A Quick Update and an Even Quicker Dinner

Posted on September 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

We have been busy the last few weeks with our Baby Bird‘s first birthday and party. So I apologize for a lack of new posts. I have pictures to share on making chocolate and goat cheese truffles and cajeta. Subscribe (with the box on the right) to find out as soon as they are posted.

Here is a quick follow up to my pesto post. I had promised to let you all know how well freezing the leftover pesto in baby food trays worked.

Well, with planning baby’s party, cooking dinner took a back seat. Papa Bird volunteered to throw something together. We had pizza crust dough, one measly garden tomato and chicken sausage. He asked “don’t we have anything else we can put on?” I remembered the frozen pesto…

… defrosted it in the microwave (shhh, don’t tell anyone we used a microwave)…

… and voila! I love it when he cooks!

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Posted in Recipes from the Garden

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Happy Birthday Baby Bird

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 8 comments

Our little Baby Bird is 1 today. I can’t quite believe it.

Papa Bird brought her in to cuddle this morning and I told her the story of her birth… how she was in mommy’s tummy and wanted to come out and see us, so she kicky-kicked a hole in her bath in my tummy and then came out.

It made me realize that I never got around to writing up her birth story. I thought about it, but I guess having a newborn got in the way. If you are only reading this blog for seasonal recipes, feel free to skip ahead.

Well, there is a little bit of tomato preserving in the story…

One day and one year ago… I was settling into maternity leave. All the babies in my family were late (or induced) so I was getting mentally prepared to bide my time. I had stopped officially working a week before, but was still going in to work meetings. I filled up my social calendar with lunch dates and figured I would rather cancel a lunch date than sit around the house waiting. I went shopping for the first time and bought her a little outfit.

I wasn’t interested in having the doctor induce me early, but once I was full term and everything looked healthy, I was all for natural remedies for inducing labor. Walking, spicy food, eggplant, basil, evening primrose oil… basically everything but castor oil (which I don’t recommend.) I had been drinking Red Raspberry Tea (Iced) for most of the third trimester. I went to regular Acupuncture throughout the pregnancy. He was treating my common pregnancy symptoms and using Chinese “Pretty Baby” points. With my OB’s okay, he had started doing points to help induce labor and sent me home with a stick of moxa. If you are looking for a natural remedy to induce labor, my husband and I are convinced it was moxabustion that did it!

The night before Baby was born, my husband held a lit stick of moxa up to certain points on my lower back, lower stomach and feet. Little baby was a kicker, but right after the moxa, she started kicking like never before. It didn’t feel like anything was wrong, just like she was especially active and happy and excited.

Pregnancy insomnia and I were old friends, so around 3 am on the 17th I went into the nursery to read. I went back to bed at 5 am and before I fell asleep, I felt my water break! I knew that “was it.” Still, I decided to let my husband sleep a little longer and started packing last-minute items for our bags. There was some laundry to put away (the new “coming home” outfit I had bought–that didn’t fit her until she was 4 months old) and several pounds of heirloom tomatoes from the garden to process and freeze. Around 6 am I woke up my husband, and calmly told him not to worry but it was time to go to the hospital. “No rush, but let’s get ready.” I washed my hair (which if you know me is actually an event) and he watered the garden and told our neighbors to look after the chickens. Then I started feeling nauseous and told him to rush.

Around 8 am we checked in to Sharp Mary Birch Hospital. We were so lucky to have a hospital devoted entirely to women and newborns. I was also a Sharp employee at the time and somehow got flagged as a VIP. (We ended up getting a great private recovery room in a quiet corner.) Since the 18th was my father’s birthday, my husband was hoping the labor and delivery would take all night so baby would have his birthday. (I was NOT wishing it would take all night.) I was only half an inch dilated, so they started me on Pitocin. My little sister came by around lunch time to bring my husband food and visit. She ended up staying through the delivery.

Many of my friends have tried for natural child births. My mother delivered all three of us medication free. While I admire that, I was a realist that I don’t have great pain tolerance. I also have known a lot of people who had a lot of expectations in their birth plan, and nearly all were disappointed. I know that many do have completely natural child births, but lately, it seemed that all of my friends who tried for it ended up with C-Sections! So my philosophy was to go with the flow, request the least amount of intervention necessary, and trust in the medical team I selected. I think our birth “wish list” had only 4 items on it… including to have the least amount of interventions and that one of us was always with baby. I was, however, rigid on breastfeeding. I didn’t want any formula or pacifiers introduced and I wanted to be able to breastfeed her right away. The hospital, fortunately, was already on board with that, and did all of that anyway.

In any case, I hadn’t ruled out getting an epidural. After the contractions started getting quite intense, I asked them to check my dilation. I figured that if I was close, like a 7 or 8, I would skip the epidural. Turns out I was only at 3 cm, so I opted for it. Getting the epidural was actually the worst part of the whole experience. It made me feel shaky and throw up. But then I felt relaxed and took a little nap. Thankfully it was not so strong that I was numb, but it lessened the severity of the contractions so that they felt more like the Braxton-Hicks “false” contractions I was used to. I was also able to feel when to push.

Around 6 pm they told me to start pushing. It took about 2 hours. It was definitely work. Good thing I stayed active with exercise during the pregnancy. My husband was great throughout the whole experience but I did snap at him once when I thought he was playing Words with Friends between pushes. Halfway through it the doctor and nurse assigned to me switched, but it really didn’t matter. The new OB was female. She thought it was great that Baby had so much hair and gave her a mohawk as she was crowning.

At 7:56 pm on September 17, 2011 our Baby Bird was born. 18 inches long and 6 pounds 14 onces.

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It hardly seems possible but we love her more and more each day.

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Posted in Family Adventures, Our Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Cheese Making: Chèvre Recipe Step by Step with Pictures

Posted on September 14, 2012 | 3 comments

Making cheese is both simple and tricky. Let me show you this easy chèvre recipe, step by step.

Chèvre Recipe Step by Step

A hand formed log of chèvre rolled in fresh herbs from the garden.

And chèvre, the cheese we think of simply as “goat cheese”, is delicious, with a taste that is both true and complex, sweet yet tangy. If you haven’t yet tried it freshly made, you are in for a treat!

homemade chèvre goat cheese

I love cheese, and ever since we have been receiving more goat’s milk than we can drink, I have been experimenting with making fresh cheese at home. I have had some high points, some disappointments, an extremely low point, and have finally managed to get some consistency. I’m excited to finally share what I’ve learned here!

homemade chèvre goat cheese

This recipe is extremely simple. Just a few ingredients. Follow the technique carefully and you will get excellent results. Although I love to improvise in the kitchen, a word of caution: Even if you drink your milk raw, please consider pasteurizing for the purpose of makingcheese. If you think about it, growing cheese is growing bacteria and you want to make sure that you are only growing the bacterium that you want. It is also VITAL in cheesemaking to sterilize EVERYTHING that touches the cheese. By sterilize I mean using bleach, not just soap and hot water. Spoons, pots, colander, jars, dishes, etc… My husband and I learned the hard way. Please check out my first home dairy post on How to Pasteurize Fresh Milk at Home for more of that story and to learn how to make raw milk safe for cheesemaking.

Special Equipment:

Ingredients:

  • 1 gallon of goat milk (raw or pasteurized, but not ultra-pasteurized)
  • 1 package of chèvre starter
  • cheese salt (or non-iodized salt)
  • (optional) fresh herbs, pepper, truffle salt, etc. for rolling around the outside of the finished logs

Shopping Notes:

Where? Click on any of the links to purchase these supplies through Amazon. Full Disclosure: I make a small commission on any completed purchase made from a link off this site or from our Store. If you are in San Diego, you can also buy all these and more at Curds and Wine. The owner is also very generous with her knowledge and has even helped me troubleshoot a ricotta a that wasn’t setting over the phone.

Why special ingredients? My first attempt at cheese was a chèvre recipe I googled that just used lemon juice. Let me tell you, it did NOT work. My second attempt was a ricotta using vinegar. It worked somewhat but it was rubbery and unpleasant to eat straight. Give the real stuff a shot!

 

(Goat Cheese) Chèvre Recipe Step by Step with Pictures

1. Sterilize all of your equipment with hot water and a little bleach.

2. Bring the milk up to 86° F into a large stainless steel (non-alluminum) pot. (If using raw milk: filter milk and bring it up to 145° F for 30 minutes in order to pasteurize it. Let the milk cool down to 86° F.)

3. Sprinkle a package of chèvre starter over the milk. Let it sit for 2 minutes to rehydrate and then stir it to mix it in. Then let the milk sit at room temperature, or 72° F, for 10-12 hours. (I prefer to do this overnight.) The cheese will be “ready” when a small amount (1/4 inch) of whey has pooled at the top and a knife or spoon inserted into it can make a “clean break” or crevice in the thickened cheese. It will look a little like greek yogurt.

homemade chèvre goat cheese

4. Gently ladle all of the curds (the thickened part) and whey (the liquid part) into a colander lined with a double layer of cheese cloth. Tie up the cheese cloth with twine and hang so that the whey drips into a large pot or bowl. Let hang for 6-8 hours.

5. Cut down the twine and unwrap the fresh cheese. Transfer to a bowl. (Cheese can be covered and stored in the fridge at this point.)

homemade chèvre goat cheese

6. Hand form the cheese into logs. Roll each log in cheese salt (or salt that has not been iodized.) You may also put fresh herbs, coarsely ground pepper, truffle salt, dried berries, or another topping on the plate with the salt.

7. Wrap the finished logs in cheese cellophane and secure with scotch tape. (Regular cellophane is not breathable and will cause the cheese to get slimy.)

homemade chèvre goat cheese

Click on any of these images to see them bigger.

Notes:

Chèvre produces a relatively large yield of cheese, as opposed to some hard cheeses. You can easily halve this recipe (using 2 quarts of milk). I got 1.75 pounds of cheese from 1 gallon of milk this last time and have gotten about 1 pound of chèvre from 1/2 gallon of milk.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I promise to post the chocolate and goat cheese truffle recipe next!

Update! The chocolate and goat cheese post is now up. Click here for the chocolate…


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Posted in Backyard Goats, Home Dairy, How To, Step by Step with Pictures, Urban Homesteading

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Alice Water’s Simple Tomato Sauce with Meatballs

Posted on September 7, 2012 | 1 comment

Ever since a friend posted a picture of canning this tomato sauce recipe by Alice Waters, I’ve been wanting to try it. The owner of the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Waters is well known for pioneering California cuisine and championing organic and local food. I begged my friend to share the recipe and once she finally did I was shocked at how simple it was. (I also thought it kind of reminded me of this simple tomato sauce I threw together the other day.)

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My sister and her fiance were visiting from Portland. She teaches science and shared that she had recently been reading an article on why homegrown Heirloom tomatoes taste so much better than commercially produced, genetically modified and supermarket sold “tomatoes.” According to the article in Scientific American, “a tomato’s flavor depends not only on the balance of sugars and acids within the fruit, but also on subtle aromatic compounds.” These compounds are called “volatiles”, are largely lacking in supermarket tomatoes, and the rarest of which make for the tastiest of tomatoes.  –We always knew we were on to something, right?

In a sauce this simple, the freshness and quality of the ingredients really shine. We served it with our favorite meatball recipe, hearty penne pasta and freshly grated parmesan.

Step by Step Tomato Prep

Cut or obtain 2 pounds of tomatoes. I had been wanting to try out our new kitchen scale.

20120906-215109.jpgEscali Arti 15 Pound, 7 Kilogram Digital Scale

It’s cute, huh? It is the size of an iPad and also comes in fun colors, like purple. It has a hold function, but it was quick and easy to put another (identical) empty bowl on the scale and zero it out.

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Although the recipe calls for 2 pounds, I happened to have 2 pounds and 5 ounces and just rolled with it.

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I washed and scored the tomatoes. Please see this post for step by step directions on how to easily peel tomatoes.

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Simple Tomato Sauce Recipe by Alice Waters

Peel, seed and dice 2lbs of ripe tomatoes. Save the juice, strain out the seeds, and add the juice to the diced tomatoes.

Peel 5 large garlic cloves. Smash them and chop coarse. Put a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat and when hot, pour in 1/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil. Add the garlic and when it starts to sizzle, immediately add the tomatoes and their juice with a large pinch of salt.

Cook at a simmer for 15 minutes. For a smooth sauce, pass through a food mill.

Variations: Add a handful of chopped parsley, marjoram, or oregano or a chiffonade of basil leaves to the sauce a couple of minutes before it is done. Saute 1 small diced onion in the oil before adding garlic. Add a whole dried chile or a pinch of dried chile flakes for spice.

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I used just the tomatoes, garlic and basil. I was going to use the pepper from our garden but I really wanted to test out the basic sauce. It’s surprisingly flavorful! I did end up sautéing the pepper with zucchini and onions from the garden. We served the veggies, sauce and fresh parmesan over hearty penne with meatballs made by Papa Bird.

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Posted in Healthy Recipes, Preserving and Canning, Recipes for the Whole Family, Recipes from the Garden, Step by Step with Pictures, Urban Agriculture, Urban Homesteading

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