weekday dinner using the homemade ricotta

I put the homemade ricotta, parmesan, cherry tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, toasted pine nuts and chiffonaded basil into a bowl. Then I boiled the fusilli and in the last 30 seconds, added frozen peas. I then took the hot mixture and mixed it into the cheesy mixture with some salt and pepper.

One mistake, I usually boil pasta and leave the last one minute to combine in a fry pan to fry with the ingredients. In this case, I did not add heat, but just mixed the pasta with the cool ingredients - hence the last minute of cooking did not take place. So the pasta was undercooked. mw suggested a save, which involved steaming the pasta - it worked. Next time, cook pasta till package instructions for this style.

Taste was good but needs adjustment : use a bit less cheese (too cheesy for our taste though it tastes similar to the amount of cheese we've had in Italy before), more pine nuts and more cherry tomatoes.

homemade ricotta cheese

Seems like I tackled the harder one first.

Ricotta cheese is almost ridiculously easy to make.

1. 1 litre of milk from fridge (pasteurization seems to not matter here). I'm this specific coz of the microwave timing.
2. 3/8 teaspoon citric acid (seems that 2 tablespoons distilled vinegar or lemon juice will do as well) dissolved in about 100ml of water.
3. Salt (say 1/2 teaspoon).
4. Mix all ingredients in microwave safe bowl.
5. Heat on high in microwave until you see the milk foam (about 180F) but not boil over. In my microwave (fairly powerful), it took about 8 min 20 secs.
6. Stir the mixture gently and leave it for about 5-10 mins.
7. drain in sieve or colander with paper filters or food safe paper towels. Time to drain depends on texture wanted. With about slightly >1hr, I got the result below - still a bit wet but relatively firm.

Yield is slightly under a cup from 4 cups milk.

Ladle the curds onto a sieve and let it drip - say 1+ hr (or more to get firmer cheese). I put mine in the fridge while waiting.

Immediately after heating to 185F

Eggplant Parmesan

Did a eggplant parmesan today. I think I got the ratio of eggplant to cheese fairly correct - it was still quite "eggplanty". The eggplants were breaded and baked in the oven instead of fried for slightly more healthy result. I used my batch of failed mozarella. This dish can be improved (esp the cheese!) - i'll do it again.

The pasta was surprisingly tasty - it was simply tossed in extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Failed attempt at making Mozarella

Just got my shipment of citric acid and rennet from Amazon. So keen to try making mozarella.

Result : failed.

My milk has probably been too pasteurized. It did not form much curd and it stayed liquefied. Following internet advice, I heated it up to 110F, let it rest, and managed to salvage some curd. I then compressed it and hung it, to try to extract some shape. Then I was supposed to heat it to 135F in the microwave and then stretch/knead it into a ball. Unfortunately, my microwave is too powerful and I heated it way past 135F into 200+F. My cheese just crumbled.

However, I still got some use out of it. I used in making Eggplant Parmesan, where the texture did not matter.

I will retry. Some possibilities.

1. source better milk (not sure where I can find it though). It should preferably be raw milk or just lightly pasteurized. Not likely I think.
2. Try an alternative method that uses milk powder and heavy cream.
3. Use slightly more citric acid to get the curd going sooner.
4. Use a water bath instead of a microwave to control the final temp.

An eggy dinner

Did a frittata in my dutch oven. This is accompanied by a quickie salad (knife shredded cabbage, spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes. And rosemary roast potatoes.

Meatless Weekday dinner

45 mins end to end (not including pesto, which was made previous day).

The croutons in the salad were very nice (roasted in oven with extra virgin olive oil, pepper, fresh rosemary, and using mw's bread from the bread maker). The vinegrette was a simple olive oil, vinegar combo with sugar and salt.

The pesto mushroom pasta not bad (though slightly oily). I fried the mushrooms in a bit of butter and garlic before adding the pesto (which may have contributed to the extra oil). Goes well with the grenache shiraz wine.

Beef pot roast

I saw a 1.9kg slab of Australian Ribeye for $57 at Giant Suntec and I had to buy it. Seems really cheap (almost made me wonder if the price tagger thought this was chuck or something).

Anyway I used about 1.2 kg of it to make a pot roast, sous vide style. I cooked the meat at 63C (didn't want to scare the family with a "bloody" piece of meat) for 10 hours in beef stock, orange juice, pepper, salt and rosemary twigs. Then I coated with pepper and seared it in my cast iron dutch oven.

Sauce is mushroom sauce : sliced mushrooms and onions with some of the braising fluid and creme fraiche.

Result. Texture is good but could be better (possibly a few more hours of cook time). Meat is strangely not as tasty as I would like, rather blander than I expected for some reason. Maybe the price was low for a reason 8-).