Vanilla Icing

Sandwiches

                           Some days I make a lot of sandwiches.

Kous Kous Cafe

I never liked lamb or its scary parents—mutton.

I always associated the latter with Irish pubs that would do better to stick to quenching the thirst of its patrons and less with filling their bellies with overcooked, mostly bland food.  And the former?  Well, my mother used to make Leg of Lamb and as a child the title of that meal disgusted me almost as much as the greasy mouth feel as I swallowed the tiniest morsels that passed as a serving.  I don’t blame my mother; she’s quite adept at cooking the things she knows best and cooking them well.   Growing up in the suburbs often limits a person’s access to another butcher if the one at the local grocer’s doesn’t suffice.  Even more often is lack of desire to drive to a still farther away strip mall in search of a superior cut of meat than one already does when living in a suburb.    I blame lack of easy access for the poor cut of lamb that scared me away for so many years.

Over the last few years, I’ve become quite obsessed with baking (obviously!) and cooking.  I prefer to cook Italian style (not Italian-American) at home but when I am out I enjoy trying new restaurants and new cuisines.  After years of being a picky eater I’ve still got a great deal of catching up in the foreign foods department.   I know I’m doing a good job shedding that image because I’ve got Rick raising his eyebrows now and again. 

He raised them when I mentioned Kous Kous Café, a Moroccan restaurant located in Mount Lebanon just several miles outside of downtown Pittsburgh.   A few reviews on the internet complained that the restaurant was very small and it was hard to get a table.  Rick and I weren’t bothered by this; we’ve eaten in some of the most delightful-but tiny!-restaurants in Boston’s North End.  I’ll even venture to say that I prefer the intimate feeling of a small restaurant to a gigantic sprawling box of a restaurant feels as though you are dining in a warehouse with its too-high ceilings and echoing walls.  Rick called Kous Kous Cafe that afternoon for a seven o’clock reservation without any problems at all.

Kous Kous Café is tiny; think of the front part of the first floor of a row house and you’ll have the size of this restaurant.  There were 6-7 tables for two and 3-4 tables for four.  Please forgive my lack of exact count; all of the tables were meant for two and they were shifted around and pushed together to meet the needs of those coming in to dine.   The walls were painted a warm golden yellow with that slightly dusty red that is so common to Mediterranean design as accents.   At the back of the room there was an elevated workspace for the chef but once seated it was impossible to see him at work.

The tables were set with chunky plates and mismatched worn (but clean) napkins.   A small blue and white porcelain set of two tiny pots with lids and handles of tiny spoons sticking out them was on one side of the table.  I lifted a lid to peek inside and saw that they contained salt and pepper.   The diners on either side of me were close enough that we could have knocked elbows but after a few moments it was easy to ignore them.  No one paid any attention to anyone else and just talked quietly with those at their table.  It’s a much easier trick to learn than you might think.  Don’t let yourself be put off by close quarters.

Four Strand Bread Braid

                            Four strand braided Sourdough

Making Mozzarella

Do you know what takes about 30 minutes to make from start to finish?  Fresh Mozzarella.  Not counting the time to hunt down some not-so-everyday ingredients because I'm realize I'm the only one who didn't have the sense to order rennet and citric acid online or the patience to wait the few days for it to arrive.  Nope, when I decided it was time to try it was time to try.....that day.   

I found the rennet relatively easy enough but there was some person just ahead of me looking for the citric acid.  Every place I called I was told that somebody had just called about that the other day and how odd that was to have two people wanting the same strange item.   When I finally found a place that carried it I found that my fellow impatient cheese maker beat me to it and bought the last two containers of citric acid.   How rude!  I'm quite positive one would have done it for him and he could have left the other for me.

By employing google skills that only seem to surface in times of great frustration, I soon found out citric acid is used in a lot of East European and Jewish foods but they call it sour salt.  Aha!  Lucky for me, the next town over (less than 2 miles away) is a predominantly Jewish town.  Hurrah!  I looked up the number for the kosher grocer and sure enough they had some.  I had some in my hands within ten minutes.  For the record--that kosher grocer had dozens of containers of sour salt (citric acid). Dozens.

I simultaneously wanted to call all the places I had called earlier and tell them where to find citric acid for future answers to future calls from aspiring cheese makers AND keep the knowledge of this hidden cache of citric acid to myself.

Making mozzarella is very easy.  If you can heat milk slowly to a certain degree, stir, make use of a colander and employ old skills learned during the Play doh years to shape a ball then you can make mozzarella.  I used a recipe from the New England Cheese Making Supply Company.  

Jiggling the pot of fresh cut curds is great fun.  A little trippy, I'd say.   I couldn't stop and kept on until one cube sunk alarmingly out of sight.  I got back to business.

I wasn't so sure how appealing lots of pictures of blobby white things would be appealing to look at here at Vanilla Icing so I just sort of skipped ahead to the part where I grated up my cheese.

And here it is on fresh made pizza!  I'm proud to say that this pizza has dough, sauce AND now cheese made by me.  With luck, sometime in the summer that sauce will be made from tomatoes, oregano and basil I grew.   Now only to grow the wheat for the dough...and install a cow in my back yard for the milk.  =)   No one will notice a cow in my tiny, city back yard....right?  Right???

Pretty Terrible Cake

I'm always searching for that perfect cake recipe it seems.  By which I mean a chocolate, a yellow and a white birthday style cake.  Most of the other types of cake I have pretty stellar recipes to use or tinker with.  But in an effort not to become complacent (same brownie recipe all the time IS starting to get old!) I'm trying other recipes even if I have a perfectly good one already.

Take this Marbled Ring Cake.

This cake is meant to be like a Marbled Pound Cake but baked in a ring or bundt pan.  My family responds better to this shape in the cake dome than they do a suspiciously-shaped-like-bread cake.  I think they don't believe me that it's cake.

The scent of chocolate wafted furiously, yes that's right, furiously from my kitchen and scented the entire first floor.  Upon opening the front door to come inside after a quick check on my garden, I was nearly knocked over by the aroma.  This is promising, I thought.

I drizzled ganache over the top of the still warm cake and snapped a few pictures while the ganache was still trailing down the cake's sides to keep me from cutting a chunk of it.  I didn't want to cut into the cake before the ganache firmed up and I managed to wait until after dinner.  I cut a tiny sliver (okay, not so tiny) and took a bite.  With the exception of the barest hint of chocolate (did it all bake out and vanish???) the cake was flavorless and disappointing.

It was a Pretty....but...Terrible Cake.

Art Exhibit

The school district we live in has an annual art exhibit where several children from each grade has their artwork selected to be displayed.  For some students, it's a big deal and brings a lot of excitement when their work is chosen.  The artwork is displayed for two weeks at one of our local libraries.

Believe it or not...Maia IS excited.  She's just trying to play it cool and be mysterious like other artists.

Fabric and colored pencils were her medium of choice.

Our family.

I find it so sweet that Maia chose to draw our family in front of our house on our block all wrapped up in a snug 'quilt.'  We are all so proud of our little artist.  =)

Unknown Bread

Is it bad when you don't remember making the bread or eating the bread but yet you did...and took a picture of it? 

Vegas Baby!

Talk about contrast....We came home from camping in West Virginia and Rick & I took a plane to Las Vegas.  

I had a good time and I'm glad to say I can put a check mark on my list of 'Places to See' but do you know how if you don't have anything nice to say.....?   I'm just going to say that Vegas is not my type of place.  

Even if it was the brightest, tackiest place I have ever viewed with my own two eyes...

...And I can't get Con Te Partiro out of my head....(It's been stuck in there for a week)...it was a lot of fun to see and I was with company.

Cheat River

A bit of a drive-by post....Last weekend we were in Albright, West Virginia for the Cheat River Race & the Cheat Festival both of which raise money for Friends of the Cheat.  Years ago, there was acid mine drainage that pushed bright orange waters into the creeks and the river killing much and staining the creek and river beds the same color that still has not completely faded from the rocks.   You'll notice the unnatural bright color of the rocks in some of the pictures and you can read more about the destruction the mine blowouts caused here.  The Friends of the Cheat has done so much good work restoring the river and it is my hope that it continues to do.  I am proud that every year I get to be part of this when helping Rick with the Cheat River Race.

 

Despite the funny colored rocks, the water is running clear again and wildlife is thriving.

After our weekend in Albright, West Virginia, Rick & I boarded a plane for Las Vegas and stayed there for a few days. (Quite the contrast!)  Today, once some errands are run and the house sitter arrives we are off for Philadelphia to spend time with family.  It should be backed to baked goodness next week--I've been working on a little something called Strawberry Creams.