Friday, March 9, 2012

Coconut gouda


Okay, okay, I'm not dead either. Just swamped with school. And unlike T, I haven't been cooking much lately. We've gotten to know our local takeout/delivery places even better in the last month or so than we did before - which is saying something.

But one good cheese recommendation deserves another. Especially since it doesn't look like we'll be able to get a hold of that Monocacy delicacy without heading East. But this one is widely distributed, it looks like: Kokos Coconut Cheese. It's actually a gouda, if you can wrap your head around that. Made in Holland and everything. If you're like me, you read that and went, huh?, but then immediately went, hmm...

It's awesome stuff. Has the heaviness, the thickness, the chewiness of a gouda, but instead of the creaminess coming from butter it comes from coconut. It's not an overpowering coconut taste, but it's unmistakeable, and it's perfectly balanced with the gouda-ness. Just a wonderfully weird but tasty cheese.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Dilled Veal Stew

Yeah, it's veal stew, but veal is expensive and mean so I used stewing pork instead. But either way it was really creamy and good and totally worth the effort.

First You Need:
2 Tbs all-purpose flour
1 Tbs paprika
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

mix all these together in a little bowl and set them aside.

Then You Need:
3 Tbs butter, divided
2 lbs stewing veal (by which I mean pork), cut into 1-inch cubes and patted dry
2 onions, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine (or more chicken broth)

Heat a big pan on medium and melt 2 Tbs butter. Cook the meat 3 or 4 minutes, then sprinkle your flour mixture over it. Stir it up and add to crockpot. Then use the pan to soften up the veggies for 5 to 7 minutes. Add the chicken stock and wine and bring it to a boil, then add to crockpot.
Cook on high 4 or 5 hours or low for 8 to 10, until the meat is nice and tender.

Last You Need:
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill (or a generous sprinkling of dried)

Stir these in and serve. We ate it plain but I think it would be good with some rice or orzo to add some texture and starchy goodness. You could probably skip softening the veggies and just add them straight to the crockpot but I don't really know if you could do that with the meat-and-flour mixture. If anyone tries that let me know how it works.

Monday, March 5, 2012

After a long, long hiatus!


Hello! I am alive and still cooking :) Joanna knows this but my gmail stuff got all screwy and I lost access to the blog for a little while there. In addition to that I am crazy busy with school and tickling Veda as often as possible! This evening's discovery was too fantastic to procrastinate though so I am posting within 15 minutes of eating
all of it....NEW CHEESE:

Cherry Glen Monocacy Chipotle Soft-Ripened Goat Milk Cheese
It's a local MD cheese made with "100% American Ingredients"
(Please see cheese above)

I love cheese. Cheese is a food group to me. It is a purpose for living. That being said, I have had a lot of cheese and really will eat almost any kind. I am pretty much an equal-opportunity cheese eater. This cheese however, is pretty darn remarkable for a few reasons. It's goat cheese and therefore has that familiar smokiness to it but in addition to that it has a nice chipotle heat that translates into a deeper smokiness. BUT there is a really surprising bleu quality to this cheese. Yes, it is stinky :) If you look at the picture you can see that there are two really distinct textures here: the familiar crumbliness of a goat cheese and the silky cream-texture of a brie. How awesome! The brie-like section has most of the stinkiness and has a nice oily-spreadable quality to it that yields to the creamy crumbly texture. Anyway, I am clearly waxing poetic on this cheese but it really is fan-freaking-tastic. Fellow Marylanders: go forth and eat. Westerners: find an analogue? Sigh... I don't know if you can.