What happens in the kitchen during winter on a Homestead?

Living on a Homestead and having to cook for the hardworking people there seemed like a daunting task, because usually as a city dweller I am used to having everything on hand around the corner. Everything is pre-cut, ready-to-eat, or prepared using all sorts of baking mixes

Hence my cooking started with a slight anxious feeling trying to think of a suitable recipe for the available ingredients.

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How to cook with fresh farm ingredients ?

When you start really thinking about your meal, the farm suddenly becomes your playground, like a giant pantry full of surprises, new flavours, odd fruits and vegetables, and you discover you have everything on hand already. Or you could just go and search on the internet (or browse Monique’s cabinet full of cookbooks) for a recipe with some of the main ingredients found on the farm.

Beets, carrots, apple, potatoes and a freshly picked laurel leaf became beetroot soup. Potato, onion and picked leaf-cabbage became Korean pancakes accompanied by found-in-pantry soy-sauce with garlic from the land and homemade sambal. But the loveliest recipe of the first week was probably the goat cheese and spinach quiche.

There are chickens on the land so for this recipe we only had to use flour, butter and cream that weren’t from Terra do Milho.

Cheese and Spinach Quiche

For the crust:

– 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
– 2 tablespoons full grain flour added when the dough seems too wet (and to add a little fiber)
– 140 gr cold diced butter (10 tablespoons)
– one large egg  mixed with 2 tablespoons of icy cold water
– pinch of salt

Whisk the egg and water together in a separate cup or little bowl. Then in a larger mixing bowl mix the flour with the salt and mash in the butter with a fork, or use the blender until everything looks like crumbs. Add the whisked egg and water. If the dough is too sticky add the whole grain flour, if it’s too crumbly still, add some water. Butter the pie dish and sprinkle some flour on top, your quiche will come out easily! Spread  the dough over the pie dish with a spoon (or with cold hands) and make holes in the bottom with a fork (no soggy bottom!). Put it in the fridge (this will ensure good baking results).

For the filling:

– 4-5 eggs
– Whatever vegetables that go well with goat cheese (spinach)
– 1 onion and 2 cloves of garlic
– Half a homemade goat cheese
– 200 ml cream
– salt and pepper (and additional spices if you want to)
– Some fresh chopped parsley

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Chop your vegetables, the onion and the garlic in small pieces. Sautee the onions and garlic in some oil or butter and add the vegetables. Cook until done and drain the moisture out of the pan. Put all the vegetables in a strainer to drain. Whisk the cream and the eggs together very well. Season it and mix in the vegetables. Take the crust in the pie dish out of the fridge and fill it up with the filling. Set the oven timer to 30 minutes, or check until the quiche is a deep golden brown (see picture!). It may even take 40 minutes. Serve in the pie dish! For garnish just put some parsley on top, but it is also nice to eat fresh with the quiche.

Good luck in the kitchen at Terra do Milho. There is always something that you will discover you can eat.

The post Cooking Cheese and Spinach Quiche with Fresh Farm Ingredients. appeared first on Terra do Milho.

When we don’t like them any more I dry the rest for later in the year.

I like recipes that use what we have available. Here is one for fava beans.

Ingredients:

Action:

Put the brown rice in a pot with a finger pad of water on top. Ad a bit of Curcuma pepper and salt. Place  the pot on the stove and cook it until it’s done. Put it in your bed to keep it warm. A bed is a good place to keep rice warm. Make sure you wrap a towel around so your bed does not get sticky…

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I learned making mayonnaise from Claudia from Andalusia. She did a three month Erasmus exchange on our farm. She is a good cook.

What you need

Lets make mayonnaise

Take the large high cup. And put in a whole egg

Add a tea spoon of musterd or more if you like and add the sunflower oil. The amount of the sunflower oil is about 4 times the volume of the egg. Some people like to add more to make more mayonnaise from one egg. I like the eggy taste of mayonnaise so I stick to 4 times the volume of the egg.

Than put the blender right down to the bottom of the large cup so it covers the egg. This is very important!

Turn on the blender and keep it at the bottom of the cup. Wait until you see the mayonnaise coming up.

Then very, very slowly pull the blender up. Until you hear that the blender plops out of the thick mayonnaise. There might still be some liquid oil above the mayonnaise. Put the blender on again and push it back in the mayonnaise and move it up and down until all the oil is gone.

Add some lemon or vinegar. I add a tablespoon. It depends on how sharp you want the mayonnaise to be.

Now you can add some garlic for making aioli. Salt, pepper, or bell pepper powder, or curry powder. You can use your creativity now. Just add everything on top and mix it all in with the blender, pushing it up and down. Do not put these things in at the start, it will screw up the process, just put them in at the end.

And there you go:

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I do not have much official cheese making stuff. I use mainly normal pots and pans from the kitchen.

Here is my list with things you will need.

• 1l  jars or bottles to keep the milk in the fridge. I milk my own goats and use their milk to make my cheese. Fresh non-homogenised, pasteurised or raw milk is best to use. Sterilised milk does not work and when you use homogenised milk you have to add Calcium Chloride; 1ml per gallon ( 3.785 l), otherwise the curd will be too soft to make cheese. You can use goats, sheep or cows milk. If you get your milk fresh from a farm make sure you store it in a sterilized container.
• Cooking pot that can contain at least 3 liters of milk, best is stainless steel.
• Thermometer that reads up to 31C.
• Big knife.
• Stainless steel skimmer.
• A container with holes. I use an official cheese mold now. Before I used to have yogurt container in which I made holes with a hot iron nail. You will need 4 or 5.

  

• To let the cheese drain I use a big pot with one of those grids that you use to cool down a cake on, in it. On top of the grid I put a cheese net. Anything with a fine netted structure that is for preparing food will do.
• Ferment. You can buy this on the internet, I use cheese ferment that is used for Gouda cheese. You can also buy buttermilk and use that instead.
• Rennet. In Portugal you can buy it at the farmacy. It is an artificial one, I prefer the real, natural one. I buy it on line at a Dutch online store. If you just want to try the cheese making and do not know if it’s really your thing the stuff from the farmacy will do.

This is how I make the fresh cheese:

I sterilize all my tools first. It is very important to work clean. I use boiling hot water to sterilize. some people use a Chlorine solution, but I so not like it because I think you can taste the chlorine in the end product.

I use three liters of milk, which I poor in the stainless steel pot. If you use bottled milk from the supermarket you have to add the Calcium Chloride now.

Heat up the milk until 21C while stirring. Turn off the flame and add 1 tablespoons of ferment or 4 tablespoons of buttermilk. Leave it for 30 minutes.

After that I heat up the milk until 31C. I then take the pot from the fire and add the rennet. I use liquid rennet. So I stir the milk until it is spinning around in the pot, then I drip in 7 drops of rennet and spinn the milk abit more. Then I stop the movement of the milk by counter stirring it with some force. The liquid needs to be still after this exercise. Now I leave it for an hour.

Then I open the pot and with my knife check if the curd is hard enough. If not it needs to sit longer. I do this by pulling the curd of the side of the pot, when it comes lose I know it is ready. Now I can cut the curd in 2cm squares. And I leave it for half an hour.

Then I take the skimmer and scoop the cut curd in the cheese containers with the holes. Then the forms are placed in the big pot and let them sit there overnight. I put the lid on the pot and leave it slightly open so the cheese gets some air. I cover the opening with a cloth so flies can not spoil the cheese.

The next morning, after 12 hours. I turn the mold upside down. Do not take the molds of yet! The evening after that I take the molds of and turn the cheese once more and leave them another 12 hour. Them I roll them in salt and I am done.

In case there is a problem with the cheese making please leave a comment and notify me. I will help you until it works. I very much appreciate your feedback.

Pin it for later:

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The basic recipe.

This is a variation of my grandmothers sweet cake recipe, the sugar that is normally mixed with the butter is left out and salt and pepper are added:

150 gr butter
3 eggs
150 gr white flour
tsp baking soda
salt
pepper

As a choice:

4 full tbsp ricotta
1 big carrot
2 big leaves of Swiss chart
bit of ginger
1 glove of garlic
1 onion
1/2 tablespoon of sugar
1/2 tbsp curry powder
bit of oil

Here is how you make it:

The batter: Melt the butter a bit so it is very soft. Mix the eggs in one by one, mix it well. Add the ricotta. Mix the flour with the baking soda and mix this into the butter, eggs and ricotta.

Chop the onions and keep them separate. Cut vegetables, garlic and ginger. Fry the onions in a bit of oil when they start to be shiny pour the sugar on the onion and let them caramelize a bit. Then add the rest of the vegetables, curry powder and salt, very short, the vegetables will still go into the oven so thy should not be too soft. Add the fry to the dough and mix.

Carefully scoop the mix into the cupcakes with a tablespoon. Pre heat the oven for 10 minutes on 165°C. When the oven is preheated place the form on the oven and bake for 25 min. When the cupcakes are a bit big it might need 5 more minutes.

Enjoy your meal.

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