Monday, August 29, 2011

Some more flowers





They are just too pretty.

Flowers

Some beautiful flowers around the neighborhood.




Friday, August 26, 2011

Artichoke dip and Crackers


So my next attempt in the kitchen went I think well, but Seth thinks I went lemon crazy. The artichoke dip I made consisted of 1 can of artichoke hearts, the juice and zest of half a lemon, one packet of Neufchâtel cheese (cream cheese) and half a chili pepper. The "crakers" or flat bread was almost 2 cups flour, about a third of a cup of olive oil and a half a cup of water. I tried making crackers with cream and butter the other day, and they were nice, but a bit thick and flakey. The oil seems to have made it much easier to roll out into a thin square and was much easier to work with. They also came out much more cracker like. I did however forget to score the dough so instead of breaking into nice little squares, you get the odd shapes.

Who knows what I'll try next.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Homemade Ricotta Cheese



So I found this amazing recipe at Smitten Kitchen for their Rich Homemade Ricotta. It was amazingly simple and soooo good! I used the 3.5 cups of milk and half cup of heavy cream. I let it sit in the cheese cloth for about two hours, and noticed that it seemed that there were a lot of curds left in the whey so I'm currently running the left overs through the cheese cloth for a second time. I'll let you know how that batch comes out. The original batch came out so smooth. I was worried about using the lemon, but there is only a small hint of lemon flavor, and it's amazing.

Anyway, here is the finish result. Back in Oz a favorite breakfast of mine was banana bread with ricotta and honey. When I first saw it on a menu I thought it would be horrible, but I was so very wrong. Just try it for yourself some day and you'll see.