Homemade Dairy Products - What Could Go Wrong?
So, right off of Good Eats on the Food Network, I tried to make my own yogurt and cheese. And you know what? It's really good. Basically, a fat free version of creme fraiche that is a clean board for you to flavor as you see fit. Basically, just work some warm milk into some yogurt, and let it ferment for a few hours. After it thickens up, let the curd and whey separate with a cheese cloth. This will take a few hours, but what you're left with is this nice, creamy, tangy soft cheese, which is excellent. If you use fat free yogurt and skim milk, you end up with fat free cheese. Very healthy.
The best part? Excessively versatile. You can adjust it to whatever you want. Some cucumber and spices make it go with gyros. You can add some dill and lemon zest and top it on salmon. Mix in garlic and herbs and spread it on bagel chips. Top it with honey to make a great strawberry dip. Just put it directly on tacos. Or flavor it however you like in place of flavored cream cheese or sour cream.
I don't know how useful this is for everyone else, but I like it
-foodgeek
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Kitchen Happenings: A Green Thumb?
Not a restaurant post, but just a general food posting by a college kid about having good food in a college environment on a college budget. Today's note? Fresh herbs.
One thing that I love is my little herb "garden." It's not so much a garden as it is a big, sturdy 15" plastic bowl with topsoil that sits on the railing of my apartment balcony. It's nice. Right now, I've got some basil, oregano, sage, thyme, chives, green onion, parsley, dill, and rosemary going strong. They each have their own little area in the bowl, which is just enough for what I need for my everyday cooking. I even had little 2 basil plants sprout out so I took them up and re-planted in little pots and I'll give them to my friends when they grow a little more.
So what am I doing with all of this? Well the first thing that I did was make a compound butter spread with the sage. Decided to get more flavor out of the sage, so I actually cooked the sage (chopped) along with some chopped garlic in olive oil under low heat for a while, and then let it cool before I mixed it with a small tub of butter. It's really tasty and spreads easily. I can actually just brush it on with a silicon scraper. Tonight's late dinner? Roasted vidalia onions (brushed a roasting pan with the sage butter, then salt and pepper) and cod fillets (salt and pepper on one side, then brushed with just a little bit of butter on both sides). Simple, tasty, and pretty healthy.
While the fresh herbs (particularly the basil) are great for the obvious, up-front uses (like with simple pizzas with fresh tomatoes or just finishing off dishes). They also add a great underlying taste. I had some extra mushrooms laying around, so I wanted to take a shot at some sort of mushroom pate or similar sort of thing. I decided on using softened cream cheese with some seasoning, but it wasn't quite right. So, a little trip out to the balcony gave me some chives, green onion, and parsley to chop up and work into my spread. Just a nice fresh, bright taste that balanced the earthy flavors from the mushrooms. A great topping for bruschetta.
Speaking of which, another great use for fresh herbs is in vinagrettes. Last week, I found half a jar of olives and some canned tomatoes that needed to be used up. So, into the blender they went. Fresh basil and green onion followed along with some red wine vinegar and olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Halfway through making the vinagrette, I had this thick puree. I made a thinner version for my salad that night, but I wanted to hang on to the thick sauce. It had a lot of potential for grilling as a marinade, so I tried it with chicken. And it worked. But where it was so much nicer was as a topping. I had left it in the fridge overnight, which let it get thicker (the olive oil sort of solidified, I think). I grilled up some bread, and put on a little bit of the mix (once it hit the bread, you could see the oil just melt and spread out a little), and then topping it all with some slices of grilled chicken breast and more of the topping. Excellent grilled chicken bruschetta. Nice bright flavor from the tomatoes, a good herb flavor with some richness from the olives and tang from the vinegar. Good stuff.
Anyway, I think that I'll be reporting a little more out of my kitchen and less from the restaurants (I need to shed about 20 pounds in the near future and about 40 pounds down the road). We'll see. I've got at least 2 writeups that need to get done for restaurants from a while ago. And there are a couple of places that deserve visits and writeups. We'll see how much I can stay away from the eateries
-foodgeek
One thing that I love is my little herb "garden." It's not so much a garden as it is a big, sturdy 15" plastic bowl with topsoil that sits on the railing of my apartment balcony. It's nice. Right now, I've got some basil, oregano, sage, thyme, chives, green onion, parsley, dill, and rosemary going strong. They each have their own little area in the bowl, which is just enough for what I need for my everyday cooking. I even had little 2 basil plants sprout out so I took them up and re-planted in little pots and I'll give them to my friends when they grow a little more.
So what am I doing with all of this? Well the first thing that I did was make a compound butter spread with the sage. Decided to get more flavor out of the sage, so I actually cooked the sage (chopped) along with some chopped garlic in olive oil under low heat for a while, and then let it cool before I mixed it with a small tub of butter. It's really tasty and spreads easily. I can actually just brush it on with a silicon scraper. Tonight's late dinner? Roasted vidalia onions (brushed a roasting pan with the sage butter, then salt and pepper) and cod fillets (salt and pepper on one side, then brushed with just a little bit of butter on both sides). Simple, tasty, and pretty healthy.
While the fresh herbs (particularly the basil) are great for the obvious, up-front uses (like with simple pizzas with fresh tomatoes or just finishing off dishes). They also add a great underlying taste. I had some extra mushrooms laying around, so I wanted to take a shot at some sort of mushroom pate or similar sort of thing. I decided on using softened cream cheese with some seasoning, but it wasn't quite right. So, a little trip out to the balcony gave me some chives, green onion, and parsley to chop up and work into my spread. Just a nice fresh, bright taste that balanced the earthy flavors from the mushrooms. A great topping for bruschetta.
Speaking of which, another great use for fresh herbs is in vinagrettes. Last week, I found half a jar of olives and some canned tomatoes that needed to be used up. So, into the blender they went. Fresh basil and green onion followed along with some red wine vinegar and olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Halfway through making the vinagrette, I had this thick puree. I made a thinner version for my salad that night, but I wanted to hang on to the thick sauce. It had a lot of potential for grilling as a marinade, so I tried it with chicken. And it worked. But where it was so much nicer was as a topping. I had left it in the fridge overnight, which let it get thicker (the olive oil sort of solidified, I think). I grilled up some bread, and put on a little bit of the mix (once it hit the bread, you could see the oil just melt and spread out a little), and then topping it all with some slices of grilled chicken breast and more of the topping. Excellent grilled chicken bruschetta. Nice bright flavor from the tomatoes, a good herb flavor with some richness from the olives and tang from the vinegar. Good stuff.
Anyway, I think that I'll be reporting a little more out of my kitchen and less from the restaurants (I need to shed about 20 pounds in the near future and about 40 pounds down the road). We'll see. I've got at least 2 writeups that need to get done for restaurants from a while ago. And there are a couple of places that deserve visits and writeups. We'll see how much I can stay away from the eateries
-foodgeek
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Restaurant Review: KO Fusion - Faulty Science?
Back in 1989 a couple of scientists named Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann out in Utah issued a huge press release. They had discovered cold fusion, or the ability to generate almost limitless energy at room temperatures. Of course, there was a huge backlash against cold fusion after attempts to replicate their discovery failed. Flash forward to spring 2005. The "science" of cold fusion was thrust back in the headlines after some scientists at UCLA were able to perform a very small scale experiment that supposedly suggests nuclear fusion is possible at ambient temperature. Is cold fusion "back"? Or had it never left? Or is this just a passing trend?
Who knows? But here in Champaign, the revitalization of the downtown area continued with the opening of
***insert drum roll here***
KO Fusion.
This is not to be confused with Konfusion. Or even Confucious. (Warning, politically incorrect comment coming up) Think of it as someone with an Chinese, Korean, or Japanese accent trying to say, "cold fusion."
The restaurant looked pretty cool, chic, and trendy. Think dark lighting, stainless steel environment, and splashes of color here and there coming from alternative light sources. It looks a little cliche, but in Champaign, that's still about 10 years ahead of the game.
So, a couple of weeks ago Darren and I ventured out for a taste of the new, trendy spot. We got outside seating, and the server was pleasant. Overall, the server did a great job. She got us drinks very promptly, checked on us at the right intervals. There was a minor mix-up when the kitchen forgot one of our appetizers, but she corrected that very quickly. So, a thumbs up for the server. Now the manager doesn't get quite as high marks, and we'll talk about that later.
The food looked like it had potential. There was a sushi bar, as well as a kitchen, so that was promising. I figured that I could try to introduce Darren into sushi a little at a time. We opened up with a sushi platter and a couple pieces of toro (fatty tuna) and uni (sea urchin). We started with the more luxurious items first. I still haven't been able to really appreciate toro as much as I should. It just doesn't really carry any more flavor for me than regular tuna. Now uni is a different story. I describe it as the fois gras of the ocean. You get this addictingly rich, creamy texture that tastes like a visit to the beach, without the Coppertone. The rest of the sushi platter was solid, though nothing spectacular. Everything tasted fresh and of a good quality, but there wasn't anything different than going to any of the other older, more traditional places here in town.
Now, I know that sushi isn't supposed to be a huge rice ball, but the amount of rice here was just a little bit too small. I've been to some places that just overwhelm you with the amount of rice they put into their sushi, which isn't good. But there's something in between which is hard to find, apparently.
So, we took a little break after the sushi and just hung out, enjoying the night breeze and the pretty girls at the next table (okay, okay... I enjoyed the pretty girls at the next table; Darren has a girlfriend and isn't allowed to look at other girls). This was when the night took a turn for the... well, different.
Champaign-Urbana is still a pretty rural town, once you take away the university and the tech industry that has been brought in by the university. You still have more trailer parks than condos. And of course, some of the locals want to wander and check out that new place. Which generally is fine. But when your outside, people don't think that they don't have to use their "inside voices." And when a restaurant is trying to sell a 30% premium based on ambiance, it makes for a pretty annoying situation. We had a table that looked that they had just gotten done at the bowling alley and needed some more Coors before they headed home. We had another guy get into an argument with some stranger off of the street that almost evolved into a fistfight. And during all of this, no one from the restaurant came out to apologize, though our server did come out with a smile and a little joke for us.
But, we survived and continued with our tasting menu. Next up was an order of the baby octopus salad and an order of the pan fried shrimp cakes. The octopus salad was tasty (a little sweet, a little sour, a little spice, a little crunch, a little chew - just nice), though the octopus was shredded, rather than left whole, which would've been awesome. The shrimp cakes were also solid. Served over some greens, topped with a sweet chili sauce.
The entrees that we went with were the sweetcorn and duck confit risotto and the the stir fried veggies and soba noodles with scallops and shrimp. Again, both were solid dishes. The seafood stir fry had good crisp veggies, really solid seafood, soba noodles that were cooked well. The sauce was a little bland (tasted like standard Oyster Sauce like you would get in beef and broccoli at the local takeout joint). But overall solid. The risotto was creamy and rich, with little sweet bits of corn, though the duck was a little bland. This dish needed some more salt (or better yet, some grated parmaseano reggiano on there).
Of course, this sort of begs the question, "Where's the fusion?" I didn't see any dishes that took Western techniques into Asian foods, or vice versa. There's a lot of potential in this area for food that's genuinely different, but still of high quality. How cool would beef bulgogi/Wellington have been? Or how about sun-dried tomato and Sichuan peppercorn cream sauce over soba noodles? Or Coq au Sake? How about teppanyaki steak over daikon frites? I think that my little brainstorm has potential.
KO Fusion's desserts sounded rather plain - different ice creams (green tea, red bean, mango, etc.) for the most part. We drew a pass on that. Again, there was a lack of fusion (or at least to the depths that I was hoping for). A green tea creme brulee would have been interesting. Red bean and white chocolate moon cakes could be a real winner. Frozen lychees stuffed with marzipan cream have me just wondering why desserts need to be so boring.
At KO Fusion, there was a good looking menu that had dishes from different parts of the world. Of course, so do TGI Friday's and Applebee's. The place has only been running for about a month or so. We'll give it some more time before we try it again. But for now, there's an incomplete. I think that there's potentially 1 or 1.5 stars to be given out here down the road, if they clean some things up, remove the confusion, and find the fusion in KO Fusion.
-foodgeek
Who knows? But here in Champaign, the revitalization of the downtown area continued with the opening of
***insert drum roll here***
KO Fusion.
This is not to be confused with Konfusion. Or even Confucious. (Warning, politically incorrect comment coming up) Think of it as someone with an Chinese, Korean, or Japanese accent trying to say, "cold fusion."
The restaurant looked pretty cool, chic, and trendy. Think dark lighting, stainless steel environment, and splashes of color here and there coming from alternative light sources. It looks a little cliche, but in Champaign, that's still about 10 years ahead of the game.
So, a couple of weeks ago Darren and I ventured out for a taste of the new, trendy spot. We got outside seating, and the server was pleasant. Overall, the server did a great job. She got us drinks very promptly, checked on us at the right intervals. There was a minor mix-up when the kitchen forgot one of our appetizers, but she corrected that very quickly. So, a thumbs up for the server. Now the manager doesn't get quite as high marks, and we'll talk about that later.
The food looked like it had potential. There was a sushi bar, as well as a kitchen, so that was promising. I figured that I could try to introduce Darren into sushi a little at a time. We opened up with a sushi platter and a couple pieces of toro (fatty tuna) and uni (sea urchin). We started with the more luxurious items first. I still haven't been able to really appreciate toro as much as I should. It just doesn't really carry any more flavor for me than regular tuna. Now uni is a different story. I describe it as the fois gras of the ocean. You get this addictingly rich, creamy texture that tastes like a visit to the beach, without the Coppertone. The rest of the sushi platter was solid, though nothing spectacular. Everything tasted fresh and of a good quality, but there wasn't anything different than going to any of the other older, more traditional places here in town.
Now, I know that sushi isn't supposed to be a huge rice ball, but the amount of rice here was just a little bit too small. I've been to some places that just overwhelm you with the amount of rice they put into their sushi, which isn't good. But there's something in between which is hard to find, apparently.
So, we took a little break after the sushi and just hung out, enjoying the night breeze and the pretty girls at the next table (okay, okay... I enjoyed the pretty girls at the next table; Darren has a girlfriend and isn't allowed to look at other girls). This was when the night took a turn for the... well, different.
Champaign-Urbana is still a pretty rural town, once you take away the university and the tech industry that has been brought in by the university. You still have more trailer parks than condos. And of course, some of the locals want to wander and check out that new place. Which generally is fine. But when your outside, people don't think that they don't have to use their "inside voices." And when a restaurant is trying to sell a 30% premium based on ambiance, it makes for a pretty annoying situation. We had a table that looked that they had just gotten done at the bowling alley and needed some more Coors before they headed home. We had another guy get into an argument with some stranger off of the street that almost evolved into a fistfight. And during all of this, no one from the restaurant came out to apologize, though our server did come out with a smile and a little joke for us.
But, we survived and continued with our tasting menu. Next up was an order of the baby octopus salad and an order of the pan fried shrimp cakes. The octopus salad was tasty (a little sweet, a little sour, a little spice, a little crunch, a little chew - just nice), though the octopus was shredded, rather than left whole, which would've been awesome. The shrimp cakes were also solid. Served over some greens, topped with a sweet chili sauce.
The entrees that we went with were the sweetcorn and duck confit risotto and the the stir fried veggies and soba noodles with scallops and shrimp. Again, both were solid dishes. The seafood stir fry had good crisp veggies, really solid seafood, soba noodles that were cooked well. The sauce was a little bland (tasted like standard Oyster Sauce like you would get in beef and broccoli at the local takeout joint). But overall solid. The risotto was creamy and rich, with little sweet bits of corn, though the duck was a little bland. This dish needed some more salt (or better yet, some grated parmaseano reggiano on there).
Of course, this sort of begs the question, "Where's the fusion?" I didn't see any dishes that took Western techniques into Asian foods, or vice versa. There's a lot of potential in this area for food that's genuinely different, but still of high quality. How cool would beef bulgogi/Wellington have been? Or how about sun-dried tomato and Sichuan peppercorn cream sauce over soba noodles? Or Coq au Sake? How about teppanyaki steak over daikon frites? I think that my little brainstorm has potential.
KO Fusion's desserts sounded rather plain - different ice creams (green tea, red bean, mango, etc.) for the most part. We drew a pass on that. Again, there was a lack of fusion (or at least to the depths that I was hoping for). A green tea creme brulee would have been interesting. Red bean and white chocolate moon cakes could be a real winner. Frozen lychees stuffed with marzipan cream have me just wondering why desserts need to be so boring.
At KO Fusion, there was a good looking menu that had dishes from different parts of the world. Of course, so do TGI Friday's and Applebee's. The place has only been running for about a month or so. We'll give it some more time before we try it again. But for now, there's an incomplete. I think that there's potentially 1 or 1.5 stars to be given out here down the road, if they clean some things up, remove the confusion, and find the fusion in KO Fusion.
-foodgeek
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