The mozzarella potluck party - or why I will stick with buying mozzarella

At last, the day of my Mozzarella potluck party came and went. Fun was had, mozzarella - or a cheese slightly resembling mozzarella - was made and eaten, new friends were made and good food was eaten. But it didn't all go as smoothly as I make it sound.

I have mentioned before that at times I am a real witch: I feel when a certain thing is about to happen. Alas, I never guessed the lottery numbers, so my divination powers are pretty pointless. They proved valuable though in organizing the mozzarella potluck party. We were supposed to be 11 until the day before the party, but - SURPRISE!!! - a bunch of people cancelled at the last minute, some on the day before and some on the same day. Luckily, because I knew this would happen, we had already gone into plan-B mode: I felt the lady who said she'd bring the chocolate cake would bail on us (as she did a couple of hours before the lunch), so my wife had prepared small chocolate lava cakes in advance, for instance. I felt good about the lady who had said she'd bring the wine, and in fact not only did she materialize and brought a lot of good wine, but she proved to be the only one who had some successful experience at making mozzarella (thank you Bobbi!). Incidentally, none of the Italian guests cancelled at the very last minute, which I guess proves the point that not all Italians are unreliable.

My wonderful mozzarella. Doesn't it look tasty?

Anyway, I just wish my ESP powers were more useful, but I am digressing. Let's go back to the mozzarella making thing. I already talked about my lackluster results with my first attempt at mozzarella making. The second attempt was even worse. I bought whole milk that I thought would be perfect, because it did NOT say that it was pasteurized. The results were even worse than the first: the mozzarella didn't even coagulate and remained in liquid form (see photo on the right: that is the final product. Looks good, doesn't it?)

So I had low expectations for the actual mozzarella making session with the other potluck party guests. I had bought a new type of milk that I had never used (at Costco), and had studied the whole thing online. I shouldn't have worried. Bobbi, one of our guests, was a real cheese making queen. She brought books, cheese making gloves, and a good understanding of the whole thing.

We ended up with something that did resemble mozzarella (see left and photos below) and that was better than my first attempt. But it still wasn't as good as the real mozzarella you can find in some shops. We all blamed it on the milk. Or maybe it is my microwave, who knows (we went with the microwave method). It just wasn't as smooth as the real mozzarella should be. It was edible, let's just say that, but it had a granular feeling and a toughness that mozzarella shouldn't have.

Once again, though, the ricotta cheese that we had as a byproduct of the remaining wheat was OUTSTANDING. Creamy, delicious. Far superior than anything we can buy in stores here. At least that.

The ricotta is out of this world. 

Together with the food that other guests had brought (an amazing parmigiana, and a crescia, a flatbread typical from Marches region that brought back so many childhood memories, since my mother is from Marches), we also had two different types of olive oils to sample. These were courtesy of California Olive Ranch, sponsor of this mozzarella potluck party with Food52. We all liked the Miller Blend better than the Arbequina variety, which was too fruity. But both are very good olive oils, so if you find them in stores, give them a try.

To sum it all up: as much as I enjoyed throwing the mozzarella potluck party, I don't think I am going to continue making mozzarella: in order for you to come up with one subpar mozzarella and two cups of outstanding ricotta you need to use 1 1/2 gallon of whole milk, you need to set up your kitchen as if you were the crazy little chemist, and you need to waste a lot of time.  So my final observations on all this is that I will stick to buying mozzarella in the future, no question about that, since the product I can obtain at home is inferior to the one I can buy. Unless I am in the mood for exceptional ricotta, in which case I will make the mozzarella first and use it on a pizza or as fertilizer.

Mozzarella making 1 - of visions, idiots and partial successes

Tuscan Foodie's mozzarellas

In view of the Mozzarella potluck party on April 29 (sorry folks, all seats are taken), I thought it would be wise to make mozzarella a couple of times in advance, so as to be able to at least pretend to know what I am doing with my guests.

I bought the rennet (tablets of enzymes that create the curds and develop flavors), the citric acid (a food additive used to preserve canned goods and to add sourness to sour things), and a gallon of whole milk.  I also bought a book called "the complete idiot's guide to cheese making". Although I do not necessarily consider myself an idiot, I know my limits: I may be a good cook, but I am definitely no cheese mongrel. Making cheese and cooking are definitely not the same game. So I figured I could use all the help I could get.

It is true that Food52 had a tutorial on how to make mozzarella, but I had a feeling about the process illustrated there: I knew it wouldn't work for me. Don't ask me why I knew it: I sometimes am a real witch with visions and all, so I just knew that it wouldn't work, and that it would be good to have a back-up plan. That's where the idiot's guide came in. And good thing that it did come in, because it rescued the day.

The two processes detailed in the idiot's guide and on Food52 are very similar up to the point in which you need to start kneading the mozzarellas. But the idiot's guide calls for two things that Food52 doesn't call for: distilled water and a calcium chloride solution. I had distilled water but I didn't have the calcium chloride solution, and I didn't feel like trying to trace it down (or even to start understanding what it was). The idiot's guide was also adamant that I used flaked salt, and that I do not use other types of salt. Food52 wasn't so picky about the salt (it doesn't even specify salt's quantity), and although my brain told me that salt must be important because the same volume of table salt and kosher salt (for instance) weigh very much differently, I went with the salt I had (kosher).

At this point you may start to wonder why I bought the book if I wasn't following it, and I think this would be an excellent question. Alas, it is one I don't feel like answering at the moment, because it would imply that I really am an idiot. So let's move on.

My ingredients were:

• 1 gallon of whole milk, pasteurized but NOT ultrapasteurized. It turns out that organic milk is not good for making mozzarella because it is often ultrapasteurized. So I had a regular milk. 
• 1/2 tab of rennet  (not the 1/4 indicated by food52 because the rennet I bought specifically called for 1/2 tablet for a gallon of milk)
• citric acid
• distilled water 

The temperatures given in the Food52 tutorial were also different from the temperatures given by the idiot's guide, and I figured I should just stick with Food52.

The mozzarella making process

It all went well up to a point: the curds did form, the whey did separate, and I did end up with curds ready to be shaped in mozzarella. By that point I decided that I would separate my curds in two batches: I would make one mozzarella using the hot water soaking method explained by Food52 and I would make the other using the microwave method identified by the idiot's guide.

The microwave method worked (kinda): I ended up with a mozzarella which is basically very similar in terms of texture and flavor to the one you buy in the supermarket to be put on your pizza. It did not resemble fresh mozzarella, at all. Was it edible? Yes. Was it on par with the Galbani or Belgioso things you can buy at a supermarket? Yes, it was perhaps on par, but definitely not superior.

The final product

Then there was the other mozzarella. Food 52 says that once you have drained all the curds off the excess of whey, you should then re-soak them in warm water so that they get warm enough to knead. I did soak them in hot water, but the curds completely melt away, basically getting to the same stage of curds in whey. Impossible to work with. So to rescue things I just drained the curds again, and made another mozzarella in the microwave using the idiot's guide's method. I ended up with another mozzarella which was slightly different than the first: sourer, but slightly juicer (it is the one on the left in the photo below). I guess the soaking method did help getting some juices in.

The difference in juiciness is clear.

In terms of flavor and texture, again the second mozzarella was similar to the pizza mozzarella that you can buy at the supermarket, but neither one came anywhere near the real fresh mozzarella you can buy in Italy.

Since I had guests over for a pizza dinner, I put the mozzarella to work, using them in a filled focaccia. It worked, the flavor was there, but the mozzarella didn't melt as store-bought mozzarellas do. The idiot's guide's says it's not my fault: it is the milk's fault. "The reason has to do with the amount of bound calcium in the milk". Basically I need to find a milk with less calcium (and good thing I didn't use the calcium chloride solution either: on this Food52 was right).

Since I had all that fresh whey available after making mozzarella, I also decided to make fresh ricotta. I added half a gallon of whole milk and lemon juice, and I ended up with a very tasty and very good fresh ricotta cheese.

So, to cut a long story short:

• I did not manage to obtain a mozzarella using the Food52 method.
• I did manage to get edible and supermarket quality mozzarella with a microwave method.
• I did not manage to get a product superior to the ones you can buy in stores.
• I did get an excellent byproduct (fresh ricotta) that I wasn't going for, but that actually is better than the one you can buy in store.

Do I consider myself defeated? Absolutely not: I will try again soon and report back.

Fresh ricotta - an excellent byproduct of mozzarella making

Mozzarella party with the Tuscan Foodie on April 29

Photo from Food52.

 
Come join me for lunch on Sunday, April 29, for a mozzarella potluck party. We will make mozzarella together from scratch, we will eat dishes that each of us will bring to share (that's what a potluck party is) and hopefully have a good time.

This is one of the 35 mozzarella potluck parties that food blog Food52 is organizing in the States (more info here). Food52 will also send some California Olive Ranch's olive oil to go with the mozzarella.

The concept is very simple: you come and bring a dish, we make mozzarella from scratch (it takes 1 hour or so), we eat.

Since my house isn't a palace, I have a limited number of spots. Leave a comment here, on Facebook or send me a tweet if you are interested. Details will follow for the participants.
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A rosemary Easter

Rosemary is one of the most used herbs in Tuscan cooking, perhaps THE most used herb. Whenever I need to cook something without thinking, rosemary always shows up, even in places where it is not supposed to. Yesterday's Easter lunch featured rosemary pretty much everywhere:

• in the honey reduction that I applied onto the US Southern fried chicken (yes, it is sex in your mouth, to quote a famous US Chef);
• in the bacon fat and rosemary roasted potatoes that I cooked as a side; and 
• in the rosemary bread (pan di ramerino)(*) I baked to accompany the fried chicken, as a Tuscan replacement to the US biscuits normally eaten with fried chicken. 

It was all very good, and we finished it with gusto.

Rosemary honey reduction

Rosemary bacon fat roasted potatoes

Rosemary bread (pan di ramerino)

(*)Pan di ramerino (rosemary bread) is a classic Tuscan bread, traditionally eaten for Easter: rosemary, flour, olive oil, raisins, the ingredients reflect its medieval origins. It is a sort of focaccia lightly sweetened, especially if you go with the option of applying a subtle coating of sugar syrup on top once you baked them (which I did). 

Roasted sweet peppers

I have found that the flavors of what they market here as "Mexican sweet peppers" are very similar, when roasted, to the flavors of the classic Italian roasted peppers. This is something that is often served in restaurants as a topping for crostini. They charge good money for it, but it is SUPER EASY.
 
This is what you do:

• You wash the peppers, you put them on a tray with some aluminum foil and in the oven to roast at 375F (180C) for 40'-60'. Pay attention because you do not want them to burn. 
• When they are done - charred, but not burnt - you take them out, you close the aluminum foil and you let them steam and cool down. This is key: if they don't steam right, it will be much more difficult to peel them. use whatever steaming technique you are more familiar with. 
• When they are cool enough to touch, you remove the skin, you cut them in finger-size pieces, you put them in a deep plate. Depending on how many you roasted, you will need to put them in layers. 
• Put olive oil and slices of garlic on each layer (you won't need to eat the garlic).
• Put everything in the fridge for at least 1 hour, for the flavors to mingle. 
• Cut some bread, if you want to eat them on a crostino, or else eat them like that. 
• Buon appetito.

My recipe on Viva la focaccia

My recipe for the no-knead schiacciata (focaccia) with potato in the dough is featured on the Italian language baking site "Viva la Focaccia". If you speak Italian, there is a also a video recipe that the owner of the blog made.

Eat it, don't tweet it

This made me laugh. A lot.

Lasagna. Lasagna. Lasagna. And lasagna.

Last Saturday, to celebrate my wife's birthday we had a few friends over dinner. We decided it would be the perfect occasion to taste a few lasagne recipes and ask guests to tell us which one they preferred. You know, for science.

Three of the four versions were devoured in a matter of minutes. One - the only one I didn't come up with myself, and that I had copied from a TV chef star - was defined as "passable", "disgusting", "very good" depending on who you talked to...Anyway, let's go in order.

Growing up, my mother made (and still makes) lasagne for lunch on Sunday. She would often make an extra batch that would be put in the freezer, in case we needed a quick meal and didn't have time to cook. I learnt them that I preferred the "frozen" lasagna. I don't know what is happening with the freezing/thawing process, but lasagna is one of those dishes that taste better if you make it, freeze it, and then you finish cooking it another day.

Anyway. Lasagna at my house has always been with Italian ragu, bechamel sauce and parmesan cheese. I didn't even hear of the existence of other versions until I was in my 20s. But when I thought about it, lasagne are just noddles: so I saw no reason why you shouldn't treat them like any other pasta, and dress them up with different sauces. Hence the idea of having different versions of them for my wife's birthday.

I made lasagne four ways. Each lasagna had only three layers: I find that more than three layers really make for a heavy bite, but that's just a matter of personal preferences. Anyway, this is how it went down.

• Mushroom and smoked provolone lasagne: I prepared a mushroom sauce with dried porcini and morels, and fresh white and baby bella mushrooms. I let it cook for quite some time with white wine, thyme and some other stuff. I then mixed the sauce with a very small quantity of my bechamel sauce (I didn't want the bechamel to overpower the delicate mushroom sauce). I thought the sauce would pair perfectly with a smoked provolone cheese, rather than with parmesan or mozzarella. So I put a generous quantity of finely chopped smoked provolone on top of each layer of the noodles and sauce. I was right: the smokiness of the cheese, the creaminess of the sauce, the flavors of the slowcooked mushrooms made this the guests' favorite. Alas, I only had a bite of it. 
• The classic, with Italian ragu and bechamel sauce. I tried a different recipe for the ragu this time, that made it taste a lot more like braised meat. The ragu had a lot of wine in it, a lot of tomatoes and spices that I wouldn't normally put in it (thyme, for instance). I liked the ragu, but I still prefer my original version, but perhaps I am being difficult. I also used a lot less of bechamel than I would have normally used. This version was No. 2 favorite, if I made my calculations right (if not: who cares, really?) 
• Kale and bacon lasagne: I had played with this sauce for this pasta dish, and I really liked it. I wanted to see how it worked in a lasagna. It turns out it works very well. I put a lot more bacon in it, used mascarpone and some bechamel as a creamy agent, and added quite a lot of parmesan. I think this sauce is one of the most versatile "invention" I came up with. I now want to try it in a baked pasta dish (like ziti), as I am sure it would work very well.  
• The clear loser: butternut squash and basil lasagne, by Giada de Laurentiis. I had stumbled upon this recipe by Giada de Laurentiis a few months ago, and I wanted to try it, in spite of some comments saying that the ratios of the ingredients were wrong. Boy, is this thing messed up. Even with less noodles than she called for, there is not enough sauce. But even if there had been enough sauce,  I probably wouldn't have liked it anyhow. A friend told me that De Laurentiis is so thin because she doesn't even try to eat a bite of her own recipe. I think that's the only reason why she would publish something like this. But then again: this recipe has positive reviews, so perhaps I did something wrong. This was the only version of the lasagna that wasn't devoured. By the end of the party, there was still half a tray of it. Oh well. I know what I will NOT be making next time. 

The Tuscan Foodie himself, with his lasagne. 

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My week in the kitchen/3

As usual, for those who don't follow me on my Facebook page or on twitter, these are a few of the things I cooked this week.

Beef wellington (beef tenderloin with foie gras and mushroom duxelle in puff pastry crust), bacon fat fried red potatoes, bearnaise sauce. One of the best things I have ever cooked.

Paccheri with a sauce made with kale, roasted pine nuts, bacon, mascarpone, olive oil, parmesan.

"Smoky Sicilian": my take on pasta alla norma. Traditionally made with ricotta salata cheese, I made this with smoked scamorza and the classic tomato sauce and deep fried eggplants.

Everything you thought you knew about cooking is wrong

I am not one of those that embraces every new technique, in any field, just for the sake of it. The fact that something is new doesn't necessarily make it better in my eyes. But I like to think that I am a pretty open-minded guy, open to new ideas. It sounds like a cliche', but the "you need to do this like this because this is how it was always done" is the type of reasoning that will push me to try something new just to piss you off.

As it pertains to the kitchen, as much as I think that a lot of the new modernist cuisine is BS (I don't need edible menus, I'd rather have food, thank you very much), I am often intrigued when I hear that everything you knew about cooking is wrong. Some of these revelations actually do change the way you cook: they either make it easier, or less cumbersome, or they simply generate better final results.

I don't think it is by coincidence that these revelations happen in America, of all places. Being less restrained by century-old culinary traditions, American chefs (professional or home chefs) try things that sound absolutely bat-shit crazy to the ears of a French or an Italian. In 90% of the cases they go wrong, perhaps (the statistics are entirely made up): but in some cases they actually invent combinations or techniques that, although wrong on paper, are actually terrific. Here are a few examples of the revelations I have learnt over the past few years that did change a lot my way of cooking.

Bread
We were all taught that you need to knead the hell out of that dough in order to develop a decent crust and a good crumb. Well, Jim Lahey changed everything: he actually taught me that if you work the dough as little as possible, and just let it be, you will make the best bread ever. Even better than most breads you can find in bakeries (look at my focaccia, which is based on his method). You don't believe me? Your problem. But if you do believe me, buy a cast iron Dutch Oven for 30$ on Amazon, and get going.

Pasta

• Revelation No. 1: you don't need a lot of water to cook pasta.
• Revelation No. 2: the water doesn't even be to be boiling. 

How many times have I heard "you need at least 3 liters of boiling water for 200 gr (4oz) of pasta. Friends: this is BS. And I knew it all along, because I had been often making pasta with very little water, barely covering the pasta, and it always came out perfectly. Actually, I had noticed that the sauces made using the cooking water came out better if the pasta was cooking in little water. But now there is scientific evidence behind these two revelations:

(And after this, I am sure I have lost probably 50% of my Italian readership, because this goes against everything that we Italians have always known to be true...)y

Beans

I can't remember the times that I reached for a can of precooked beans, because I didn't have the time to prepare dry beans from scratch. After all, hadn't we all been taught that dry beans need to soak overnight, and then cooked forever on the stove? 

Well, it turns out you can actually cook dry beans in 90 minutes. One hour and a half. I haven't tried this yet, but a few guys (one and two) did and they are raving about it. I am going to try this soon.

Polenta

Polenta - the real thing, not the precooked one - requires you constantly stirring that pot of love for at least 45 minutes, or else the polenta will create lumps and will taste bad. 

Or so we were told. Enter, the slowcooker. It turned out that you can actually get the creamiest of polentas while doing absolutely nothing and letting the slowcooker do all the work for a few hours. 

Don't tell that to your Italian grandmother. Or maybe she knows already.