not stoned

One of the nice things about the internet is that in a matter of seconds, you can determine that you have never had an original idea in your life. This is a process that used to take months, if not years. It doesn't matter if you think you have some wildly original idea. Even if you thought it up alone, on a mountaintop, in a lead-lined underground cave, with earmuffs on, using an abacus, one minute’s tarantella on google once you come back down will establish that a minimum of 49 other people have posted step-by-step instructions, a short YouTube video and a host of tweets regarding this item in the time it took you to take off your backpack.

This is all going to work out to your advantage, dear reader.

I used some of my milk glut from our party last weekend to make a batch of ricotta, and I had these artichoke and olive calzones to tell you about today, wherein I used the ricotta. But I kind of wasn’t going to emphasize that I made the ricotta. It still feels a little like the actions of a fringe-dweller, like the mention of it might cause some eye-rolling. Even though I made a really tasty soup with the leftover whey, and I wanted you to try that, too. Still, I was going to give it a low profile, this wacky, out-there making of cheese.

Then I saw Food52’s feature on What To Do With Your Leftover Whey.

Then I saw the New York Times Dining section was featuring Melissa Clark’s easy-peasy-this-is-so-mainstream-how-have-you-not-done-it-yet?-recipe for home-made ricotta.

Then, for poops and giggles, I did a search on the interwebs for “make ricotta.” There may still be a few fringe-dwelling activities that I engage in, but cheese-making is no longer one of them.

So I am just going to wait here a moment while you get psyched up to make a batch of ricotta. A HUGE undertaking (it will take you 30 minutes)! You need lots of exotic ingredients (milk and lemon)! Fancy equipment (pot, spoon, strainer)! Rest up, carbo-load, push fluids, off you go. Use this excellent recipe, or check out the buttermilk vs. lemon juice debate here (with links to more recipes) or try this one—zounds!—that uses the microwave and makes the process even faster.

Was that not so much fun? Snip, snap—you made cheese! You’re a cheese-maker.

Now, about that pizza dough….well, there is a world of opinion out there beyond my own slightly suspect and subjective one that making your own is not a deviant or time-consuming activity. And we all know it is sold by the knob at every grocery store, too.It's entirely up to you, of course. But if you are thinking of making your own, now that you have that golden carafe of whey to play with the time is truly ripe. Just substitute it for the water, and remember that you are best off starting it the night before you want it. Then, all the next day, no matter what you are doing, you can be thinking "I am making pizza right now. Here I sit in this meeting, and yet, I am working on dinner at the same time."

As for the calzone, the ones I produced were a homely bunch, and they detonated when I baked them. Producing them ate up most of the time I had set aside, and I had some serious doubts about posting this at all. But I bailed by using the remaining filling and remaining dough to make a white pizza, which was a snap to throw together. Your call. I know which exercise I will repeat next time....

artichoke & green olive & ricotta pizza/calzone

2# of pizza dough, home-made or store-bought

1 # fresh ricotta (about 2 cups)

6 ozs fresh mozzarella, cubed (about a cup and a half)

1/2 to 2/3 cup finely grated parmesan cheese

2 T chopped fresh basil

2 T olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

a generous handful of pitted green olives, coarsely chopped

about 8 water-packed or thawed frozen artichoke hearts, drained and coarsely chopped

2-3 tsp finely chopped preserved lemon, or a pinch of fresh lemon zest, finely grated

fresh black pepper and sea salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees to bake the pizzas. I bake mine on a baking sheet, not a pizza stone, and the results are fine, so don't sweat the lack of a stone. I have no stone, I have no peel, and yet I produce a pizza.

Combine the cheeses and the basil in a medium bowl. (Start with the lesser amount of parmesan, and reserve the remainder).

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat, and toss in the minced garlic. Stir once or twice, then dump in the preserved lemon, stir, then the artichokes and olives. Sauté until nicely fragrant, about two minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Mix into the cheese. Taste the mixture and adjust the flavor to your liking with more parmesan, a twist of pepper, and possibly some salt if your olives are not terribly salty. I used a mondo, slightly oily and extremely salty olive from the antipasto bar at the grocery store, and between those and the remaining salty items in the mix, needed no more salt.

Roll out the dough for two pizzas. Divide the filling between the two crusts and, if you like, sprinkle any remaining parmesan on top. Bake 15 minutes or so, until the crust is nicely golden and the topping is dotted with golden spots as well. If you bake on a sheet, you can slip the baked pizza onto the oven rack directly for a minute, to completely crisp the bottom crust--but don't tell anyone that I do it, OK? It's one of those wacky workarounds that we all use privately but wouldn't want to get out.

egging you on

Back when he was president, and corpulent, and somewhat indecisive, Bill Clinton was represented in the Doonesbury comic strip by a little hovering waffle.

C’est moi. I am the waffle.

I told you on Tuesday that you didn’t have to look up what goes on at a conventional egg farm, and that you could go ahead and buy eggs marked “free range,” even though the standard is largely meaningless. The chickens outside my door are taking me to task on this, quite rightly, and I am changing my stated position.

All of us, collectively, walking around with our fingers in our ears saying “LA LA LA,” and buying food without thinking about it very much or questioning it at all, have driven the bus to this place. We gotta get out of this place. Forget the nice picture on the egg carton label in the store. An egg factory can say its hens are “free range” if, at one end of the cavernous warehouse that houses tens of thousands of birds, there is a cat-door that leads outside. It doesn’t matter where it leads, and it doesn’t matter if none of the very miserable birds ever use it. Hey, man--they have the option. To make it possible for miserable birds, denied most of the happy jobs that occupy a hen’s day (picking through the grass, rolling in the dust, finding some privacy to lay an egg) to live in close quarters without pecking each other to bits from boredom and hysteria, the birds are de-beaked. “De-beaked” is an awful word, but let me assure you it is a euphemism even so.

Are your fingers creeping up towards your ears? It isn’t pretty information, I know. But this is all done for us, the consumer. In our names, and then we support it with our dollars. We do have to start somewhere if we are going to fix this mess. Why not with eggs?

I stand by a couple of things I said: one, buy eggs from people, not corporations. I gave you some links to find some of those near you, if you don’t have a ready source, and here they are again: one, two and three places to look for good eggs. Two, pastured hens lay tastier eggs, so you will be well-rewarded for the little bit of expense and trouble.

In compensation for harshing your mellow, here is a recipe for muffins that taste like cheesecake, and yet are good for you. They are even better for you if you add a quarter cup of oat bran to them, but that’s all up to you. Happy eggs make them a vivid yellow that will give you pleasure in the morning light.

ricotta muffins

adapted from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café

makes 12 muffins

2 c flour

½ t salt

1 ½ t baking powder

1/8 t baking soda

finely grated zest of a lemon or orange

½ to 2/3 c sugar

the optional 1/4 cup of oatbran

1 c ricotta cheese

1 c buttermilk

2 eggs

1 T fresh lemon juice

2t vanilla extract

4T ( ½ a stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 ½ c frozen strawberries

Lay the strawberries on a cutting board to thaw slightly while you get everything else in order, otherwise the berries will fly around the kitchen like asteroids when you try to chop them.

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly grease your muffin pans, or line them with papers.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

In another medium bowl, beat the buttermilk into the ricotta, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in the vanilla and lemon juice.

Coarsely chop the now-slightly-relaxed strawberries.

Add the ricotta mixture and the strawberries to the dry ingredients, stir once, then dump in the melted butter (you just don’t want the melted butter to hit the cold stuff first, or it globs), and combine the mixtures quickly and lightly. Don’t over-beat; just make sure all the dry stuff is wet, and accept a few lumps.

Portion out among the cups, filling them to the top.

Bake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until lightly browned and the top springs back when you poke it gently. Let cool in the pan for ten minutes if you can stand it, as these are soft and will benefit from the chance to firm up a bit, then remove to a rack.

The original recipe called for cherries, which has merit as an idea, and I think peaches or raspberries (no chopping!) would be delicious, too.