In Which We Milk a Goat and Make Dessert...

Well, I've managed to drag the goat posts out for another week...  They came back last Friday for a final (for now) visit and left Sunday morning.  While they were here, Mr. Farmer taught my eldest how to milk a goat.  He was so excited.  And I was too excited to run back into the house for the camera, so no pictures.  But I do have some lovely pictures of what I did with the milk!

 But first, a few more before and afters...

The black thing there is my compost bin.  Behind it is a pile of flower pots the previous owners of our house left us.  I knew they were there, but had no idea how many there were!

 We let the goats graze our property line this time.  This is my neighbor's house.  You can see what a good job they did mowing the grass!  (And even though it looks like it in this picture, they did not eat all the branches out of that tree in front of the house.  It's just a different perspective! lol!)

A tunnel of clean.

I didn't have a "before" of this area, but I think it shows a good portion of what they did.  I'm not afraid to go back there anymore!  Well, except now I'm afraid of stepping in the yellow jacket nest we found.  Nature has sharp pointy bits.

I'm amazed by the amount of garbage we found back here.  All kinds of soda and energy drink cans, a rubbermaid container full of what I can only guess is something from the dark and smelly pits of deepest Hell, cinder blocks, part of a car window, an old basketball, and an entire tree that had been sectioned up and left to degrade under the ivy that we had no idea was even there!  We have a lot of clean-up ahead of us now.  Besides all the garbage, it will be up to us to pull the old ivy roots out and keep an eye on any returning stragglers.  I'm going to replant as much of it as I can with native plants that will serve to hold the bank in place better than the ivy did.  Hopefully some that grow food!

 And speaking of food...  One of my favorite plants this time of year is rhubarb.  I have tried repeatedly to grow it with no success, but nevertheless I make my yearly valiant effort. And when it fails, I go to the grocery and buy it.

Kumquats are in season this time of year, too and I've never really had much inclination to buy them before.  But I hit upon the idea of adding them to a dessert with rhubarb and I bought a few to give it a try.

I should have sliced them a little thinner than this.

Having fallen in love with herbs in savory applications, adding them to desserts always seems like a cheeky little twist. I'm sure I'm not nearly as clever as I imagine myself, but adding herbs to unexpected dishes makes me feel like the sharpest knife in the drawer.

And finally to that wonderful goat milk the sweet little doe gave us...  We tried to drink it.  I must say, it's wasn't nearly as "goaty" as other goat milk I've had but my son wouldn't have it and my husband wouldn't even try it, which is pretty rare for him.  I was struck by how salty it was so I decided to make a simple ricotta/farmer's type cheese.

Fresh Goat Cheese
2 C goat milk
3 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice

Non-reactive pot (stainless steel)
Cheesecloth
Wooden Spoon
Colander
Bowl

Heat the milk on the stove in a non-reactive pot for a few minutes until it reaches 180-185°.  Remove from heat, add the lemon juice and let sit for 10 minutes to let the curds form.  Line colander with cheese cloth and place over bowl.  Pour milk curds through the cheesecloth, catching all the milk in the bowl.  Tie opposite corners together, then use a wooden spoon to suspend the cheese over the bowl to catch the rest of the draining whey.  Let sit overnight to drain.  In the morning, open it up and sample your delicious, creamy cheese!  You can keep the whey for use in baking.

***

So then I had sliced rhubarb and sliced kumquat and creamy cheese and what did I do with all these delicious ingredients?  I made Herbed Rhubarb Kumquat Crisp, of course!

Herbed Rhubarb Kumquat Crisp
Filling:
2 lbs rhubarb, sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
1/2 C thinly sliced kumquats
1 C Sucanat
1 tsp finely chopped rosemary
1 tsp finely chopped sage
2 tsp finely chopped thyme, flowers included 

Topping:
1 C oatmeal
1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C Sucanat
1/2 tsp cinnamon
7 tsp softened, salted butter
1/4 C chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350°.  In a large bowl, combine rhubarb, kumquats, Sucanat, and herbs.  Let sit while you assemble the topping ingredients.  In a medium bowl, combine oatmeal, flour, Sucanat, and cinnamon.  With your fingers, massage in the butter until well incorporated and clumps form.  Stir in the pecans.  Place filling in a casserole dish or deep dish pie pan and top with oatmeal mixture.  Bake for 30-45 minutes until the rhubarb is soft when pierced with a knife.  Serve warm or chilled with a dollop of goat cheese.

Notes:
If this is a little too sour for your taste, sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream will do the trick.

Review:
This is a nice little dessert, even if the boys weren't convinced, my husband and I loved it!

Continuation on a Theme...

Continuing last week's theme of breakfast from a muffin tin that's not a muffin, I made these little baked eggs for the boys and myself yesterday:

These are so simple, it hardly counts as a recipe, which I guess makes up for that time hog last week...

Baked Eggs in Toast
4 Slices of bread
4 oz of cheddar cheese, shredded
4 eggs
onions, optional
salt and pepper
butter

Preheat oven to 350.  Put a small pat of butter in each muffin cup. Use a rolling pin to roll bread flat.  Cut a round shape out of each piece of bread using a cup or a cutter with a 3 1/2 inch diameter.  Place each circle in the muffin tin cups on top of the butter.  Add an ounce of cheese to each bread cup.  Crack an egg in each cup and season with salt and pepper.  Add onions on top if you want them.  In the remaining cups of the muffin tin, place the scraps of bread for dipping toasts.  Bake for 15-20 minutes until whites have turned white and are still a little jiggly.  If you don't like runny yolk, bake it to 30 minutes, the yolk will harden to a soft cooked state and will still be very yummy!

Tips:
If you've got a stronger tasting cheese, it would probably be great in this as the cheddar got a little lost.  I didn't happen to have anything on hand, but maybe goat cheese or swiss?

Review:
My boys were a little sketchy about this thing at first.  I had to encourage Mr. 4 that there was cheese underneath the egg before he would even put a fork in it.  They both went back and forth as to whether they liked it or not, but I think the daisy ended up coming out "He loves me."  For my part, I liked it!

CHEESE, Gromit!

     I distinctly remember the day in third grade when we were given a series of written directions.  Do this, then do this, then do this, then don't do the second thing.  It was to teach us to read all the directions before starting.  I remember this lesson every time I totally skim the directions and start building the stupid bookshelf or assembling the food processor or making the recipe.  Today all those years of ignoring that lesson bit me in the fanny.  The box says just buy milk and everything else you need is in the box.  The directions inside the box say, blah blah blah, mix your rennet tablet into spring or distilled water.  I have tap water.  I don't know if there's chlorine in it or not.  I assume so.  Frak.  So instead of starting at 9:30 like I wanted, I had to go to the grocery store.  One hour time frame shot before I even opened the rennet tablet. 

Since this is my very first time, I am hardly one to give tips or a recipe.  I can say that mozzarella is pretty easy to make, even if it takes longer than 1 hour to do it.  There are just a few steps and very few ingredients. Even if you screw it up like I did, you end up with something pretty darn yummy.  So here are some pictures of the process.  Once I've had a couple more tries, I'll try to post something slightly more informative...

Here are the assembled tools.  Note the Evian.  Nothing but the best for my first cheese.

Here are my assembled helpers.

Dissolving the rennet and citric acid in water.

 

Stirring it up.  This was pretty much all the boys were able to do, unfortunately.  The stretching is the most fun, but it's so darn hot and you have to work fast!

Pouring the milk from the bottle into the pot.

Realizing the first pot is too small...

Pouring the milk from the pot into a bigger pot...

Too hot before I even checked the first time.  I got tired of waiting for it to cool and just dumped the citric acid in. 

Then I dropped the thermometer into the pot.

You can see on my hand what the beginning curdling process looks like.  Just a few more degrees after this, it was time to add the rennet.

This is after the addition of the rennet and subsequent heating.

And this is what the curds look like just as you are about to let it rest.  I know.  Mouth watering.

Surveying the progress during the resting period...

It's not a pretty process... 

(Note the sexy lighting umbrella...  The joys of living in the pit of darkness that is the Pacific Northwest in the winter time...)

Draining the whey away.

First knead.

The point of all the kneading is to squeeze out all the whey.  I am familiar with this process from butter making, though with butter, you do it under water and it's called "washing."

You heat the cheese in the microwave for a minute and knead it again to get more whey out.  Then you heat it for 30 more seconds and do it again.  Gotta get that whey!

Then you add yer salt and commence ta stretchin'.   This is where I screwed up.  I should probably have stopped at this point in the stretching process, but not knowing any better, I did it a few times too many. 

Also, since I let my little one add (read "dump") the salt in, I was trying to knead it into the rest of the cheese.  I ended up with over kneaded bits mixed with under salted bits.  This is just my lack of experience, but I think will be easily remedied next time.

 

Because I didn't want to eat it hot, I gave it an ice bath per the directions.

And Huston, we have cheese!

Review:

If I had read the dang instructions better it would have been a better experience.  But even still, it was easy and fun and the cheese turned out extremely edible.  I actually have everything I need to make this except the rennet already in my cupboard.  Don't ask me why I bought the citric acid, I have no idea.  So once this kit runs out, I can foresee myself making this for years to come.