Homemade goat cheese, grass fed beef and lamb, and fresh seasonal vegetables and fruit, these are the ingredients that make for wholesome meals. I’ve been reading Homecooked, essential recipes for a new way to cook by Anya Fernald. It’s one of those cookbooks with personal stories sprinkled liberally between the recipes. The kind of cookbook I like best.
Fernald is the CEO of Belcampo, a meat company and restaurant business with locations in California and Belize. The book celebrates the slow food, full fat, meaty lifestyle, with French Fries cooked in tallow, ravioli fried in canola oil, and raw beef cruda that’s served cold with olive oil. (Yes, you read that right. I did say, “raw”.)
The recipes are homecooked (or not) with attitude. Not the usual slow cooker and instapot fare that busy homemakers lean toward, these recipes will have you wondering if a chef wrote the cookbook, rather than a real homecook Recipes like seared quail and herb salad, beer braised rabbit with shallots, olive oil poached salmon, and pound cake made with lard are just some of the unusual recipes, all made with whole food ingredients.
Fernald was influenced in her cooking by her time spent in Europe in jobs related to the slow food movement and small scale food producers. Her recipes are a little unusual for a home cooking cookbook. The illustrations show her in a meat cooler with dozens of beef carcasses, working with 5 gallon pails of sheep cheese, standing over a dessert spread for at least a dozen people. The recipes take a fair amount of time to prepare. Some of them begin with making cheese from milk and pasta from flour and eggs. But for weekend cooking or special events, these recipes are full of inspiration.
Fernald is a talented and innovative cook. The breadth of the recipes move from elaborate appetizers and predinner co*cktails through the main course to very simple desserts. However, it’s in the meat dishes and the vegetable sides that this cookbook really shines. If you bought that side of beef or full carcass of lamb from your local grass-fed farm, and you’re left with a lot of brown paper wrapped packages that you aren’t sure how to cook, this book will inspire you. If you are still buying your meat and vegetables at the grocery store, and found meat or frozen food in your freezer from the last lysteria scare, this isn’t your cookbook.
One recipe in Home Cooked, “Fromagetto” makes one pound of cream cheese. While Fernald’s recipe call’s for cow’s milk, it is very similiar to my personal fresh goat cheese recipe. So let me share my Chevre recipe here. If you prefer to make it with cow’s milk, you’ll be making Fernald’s Fromagetto cheese.
Chevre
(similiar to the Fromagetto recipe in Home Cooked, p. 56)
This is a soft goat cheese that is cubed in salads or spread on crackers. It’s served in fancy restaurants as an appetizer. But if you make your own it will taste a thousand times better than any that you find in restaurants or grocery stores.
1/4 tsp of rennet + 1/4 cup water (see instructions)
1 tsp. Celtic salt
Method:
In a stainless steel pail, with a lid, place milk and kefir. Stir together. In a separate cup mix the rennet with the water. Remove just 2 tablespoons of the diluted rennet and add to the milk-kefir mixture. Discard the remaining rennet. Stir the milk well to fully integrate the rennet into the milk. Cover and allow the pail of mik to sit for 12 hours, undisturbed, in a cool spot.
Break the curd and allow the curd to settle in the pan. Line a colander with a heavy cheese cloth or tightly woven diaper (reserved for cheese making) and set it over a bowl to catch the whey. Reserve the whey for making ricotta cheese. Spoon the curd into the lined colander or into prepared couer la creme cheese molds. Every third scoop of cheese, sprinkle the curds with a little salt. Once all the curds are in the colander or the molds, cover with the cheese cloth and allow this to drain for 4 hours, or until it stops dripping.
Unmold the Couer la Creme molds or remove the chevre from the cloth into a wide mouth 2 cup mason jar. Serve as you would cream cheese or other fresh cheese. It should be eaten within 7 days. If you want to preserve it longer, wrap it in plastic wrap and store it in the freezer. It will keep for 3 to 5 months in the freezer.
Serve on bagels, toast, crackers, or cube it and toss with a salad
And while you are waiting for your cheese to drain, grab a cup of herbal tea, and the cookbook, Home Cooked, essential recipes for a new way to cook, and enjoy the slower pace of a slow food lunch, while you peruse the stories and the recipes in Fernald’s debut book.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. I received a review copy of Home Cooked from Blogging for Books. As always, this review represents my honest opinion of the book.
At 6 hours you will have a creamy, easily spreadable chèvre that you can enjoy immediately or refrigerate for up to a week. Draining for longer will give you a drier, denser cheese that can be formed into a chèvre log and will keep refrigerated for up to a week.
It sure is! “Chevre” means both “goat” and “goat cheese” in French and is frequently used to refer to fresh goat cheeses in particular. Fresh goat cheese, or chevre, is bright, tart, tangy, and delicious, but goat cheese comes in all shapes, sizes, and ages.
Feta, a crumbly but creamy Greek sheep's milk cheese, makes a good substitute for chèvre. Instead of fresh chèvre, try ricotta, cream cheese, or mascarpone. Replace aged chèvre with similarly aged sheep's or cow's milk cheese for a compatible texture.
Chevre is an easy cheese to make at home, simply bring fresh goats milk to room temperature, add culture and a few drops of rennet, give it a quick stir, cover the pot and set aside for 18-24 hours.
Not to worry! It will change texture slightly but it will still be great in recipes like the ones below. When you freeze your cheese, wrap it carefully in waxed paper or plastic wrap and put it in a freezer bag. Plan to use it within a few months.
Goat cheese is a source of protein, calcium, and healthy fats. And it may be easier to digest than cow's milk cheese. Some of the fat in goat cheese comes from capric acid, a beneficial medium-chain fatty acid with anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
As is often the case with cheese making, there are a number of things that can contribute to an (unwanted) crumbly cheese, from using the wrong amounts of ingredients, to how you treat the curds. One of the most common reasons for a dry, crumbly texture in cheese though is over acidification.
The cheese has a tangy, earthy flavor and can be enjoyed in various ways. It pairs well with fruits and nuts, salads, and light, fruity wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. Chabichou is another popular type of chevre cheese. It is characterized by its soft, crumbly texture and mild, slightly tangy flavor.
Everyone knows about "goat cheese," a.k.a. "chèvre." It's white, it's crumbly, and it's always showing up on beet salad thanks to northern California cooks in the '80s. Good fresh goat cheese is a special and important thing. It should be moist and creamy, without a hint of graininess.
Often called by its French name, Chèvre, meaning goat, this cheese type comes in many different flavors and textures - from crumbly to creamy, young to mature, mild to tangy. A versatile cheese, it can be white, coated with ash or herbs, or wrapped in grape leaves.
Chevre is a soft French Goat milk cheese that is an acid-set curd rather than a rennet set curd. What this means is that we want our mesophilic culture to do most of the heavy lifting. We will be adding a few drops of rennet but that's only to assist the culture along the way.
Goat Milk – Using it fresh from the goat is easiest because you'll be heating it up for this recipe. No need to chill it first! Store-bought goat's milk will also work.
Store homemade goat cheese in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks. Press a sheet of plastic wrap against the surface of the cheese inside the container to prevent air from drying it out.
How long will the cheese last? For some cheese, especially hard cheeses, they can last more than a year, if you can keep from eating them. Fresh cheeses like Ricotta and Mozzarella can last a week or two in your refrigerator.
Roasts, steaks, and chops can be kept refrigerated three to five days before cooking.After cooking, keep refrigerated three to four days. For best quality, cooked meat and raw ground meat can be frozen and used within three to four months. Raw steaks, roasts, and chops can be kept frozen six to nine months.
As the USDA explains, this isn't an "expiration date": your cheese will still be food safe after that date, but it's up to you to decide when you've hit the use-it-or-lose-it stage. Fresh, soft goat cheese is usually good for up to a week in your refrigerator, and some sources say it may last up to 2 weeks.
Introduction: My name is Greg Kuvalis, I am a witty, spotless, beautiful, charming, delightful, thankful, beautiful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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