Homemade Apple Cider

I love the fall. It's my favorite season by far. It's the time of boyfriend (or I guess husband) hoodies, college football, and cider mills. In Texas, the changing of the season means almost nothing. The temperatures dipped into a 60s last, which was a huge respite from the heat, but the extended forecast shows highs in the upper 80s to 90s, meaning that the only place to wear a hoodie is in my over-air conditioned office. The excessive heat means that apples are ill-suited to grow and the closest cider mill is in Lubbock, TX, a mere seven hours by car. Considering what it would cost in gas, I decided that it would be a lot cheaper to just make my own cider.

The term "cider" isn't strictly regulated by the USDA, but generally apple cider is the raw, unfiltered juice from apples, whereas apple juice is the cooked, strained juice. It turns out that cider tastes like apples and apple juice tastes like an apple-y byproduct. Since it's not actually regulated, some unscrupulous companies change the name of their product to "apple cider" when the fall season hits, but that doesn't even come close to the greatness that a fresh apple cider can bring.

The only ingredient you need for cider is apples. I used a random mix, based on the cheapest ones I could find at Whole Foods, but in general, the idea is to balance tart and sweet to get a pan-apple flavor that has a wonderful tangy finish.

homemade apple cider
software:
apples

hardware:
apple corer
food processor
fine mesh strainer

wash all the apples and pat dry. remove the core with the corer, but be sure to leave the skins on.

place apples in the food processor and turn it on until it looks like apple sauce. call this a "mash"

Now is the point where most recipes will tell you to put the mash through a cider press. That would be super awesome to have if they weren't 250 bucks for the basic model. I experimented with a few ways of doing it and the best solution I had was to run it through a fine mesh strainer. I used my chinois and pestle to force the juices out, but it really doesn't get *all* the juice out. For the 11ish lbs of apples that I used I probably could have gotten ~3/4 of a gallon or so of cider, but I only ended up with 2 quarts.

There are other options besides the strainer and they have their pros and cons. I've never used one, but I'm guessing that a food mill lined with cheesecloth would work okay. I also experimented with lining a potato ricer with cheesecloth, which works really well, but you can only do small batches. It gets the juice out better than the strainer+pestle, but it definitely will take a whole lot longer (and you'll spend a fortune on the cheesecloth!).

So now, what does one do with the juiced mash? Compost it!

chocolate+food coloring+... = cake?

I am the anti-Texan. This isn't really surprising to anyone. I find that 50 degrees is an optimal time to bring out the shorts, rather than the night time average temperature in the dead of winter. I enjoy baseball more than football and I voted unlike most of Texas (with the exception of Austin, of course). That being said, I have never tried red velvet cake. In fact, I had never really seen red velvet cake until I made it myself, and let me tell you, it was good... according to everyone else. I never tried it.

You see, I hate chocolate. Well, hate is a strong word. I dislike chocolate because it tastes bitter to me and why would anyone want to ruin a perfectly good cake with it? Furthermore, I hate food coloring. I hate food coloring so much that I can't eat sweet and sour chicken from Chinese places due to the bright red sauce. chocolate+food coloring = my nightmare cake. However, it was a friend's birthday and at her request I made red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting for her party.

Red Velvet Cake (adapted from Joy of Baking)

2.5 c cake flour, sifted*
4 T Dutch processed cocoa powder, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 stick butter, room temperature
1.5 c sugar
1 c buttermilk
1 T red food coloring (if you must)
2 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp white vinegar

Set oven to 350. In the bowl of your mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to evenly distribute the CP, BS, and NaCl. Whisk together the eggs, vanilla extract, and the vinegar. Add to the butter and mix to combine. Combine the buttermilk and food coloring and stir to evenly distribute the red dye. It's probably going to look crazy gross. Alternate adding in the flour mix and the buttermilk mix in 3 batches. Keep the mixer on stir and be sure to not overmix. Pour into parchment lined cake pans that have also been sprayed with cooking spray and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until you can cleanly remove a toothpick from the center.

*I measured the flour first, then sifted. According to the website, you're supposed to sift then measure. Oops. The cake turned out fine. Do as you please.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
8 oz mascarpone cheese, room temperature
1 c powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 c heavy cream

cream together the cream cheese, mascarpone cheese. Add in the vanilla extract and powdered sugar and beat together until combined. Whip the heavy cream until just past stiff peaks. Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mix until combined. Try to not eat this all with a spoon right away.

Since I'm not crazy rich, I only have one stand mixer and so I beat the cream cheese with the stand mixer and used my immersion blender for the heavy cream. It worked surprisingly well. If you don't have an immerison blender, then you can use hand beaters, which would also work well.

My problems with ∫Fdt control*

When I want something, I want it badly and I want it now. This is how Colby and I found ourselves engaged after three official (plus three unofficial) months together and then married less than a year after that. This is also how we ended up with a brand new car and a monthly car payment that makes my head spin. These gotta have it NOW urges aren't usually a bad thing, though. Being married (aka playing house) has been wonderful and my new car isn't plotting to kill me, but occasionally it backfires. For instance, right now I'm eating a pomegranate that I *had* to have from Central Market and I can tell you that it is definitely not pomegranate season.

For the most part, my urges are reasonable and are things that I was planning on doing/saying/getting at some point anyway. This latest impulse buy, however, is a big one and is forcing me to rename my blog. For the past two years Destroying my Apartment One Recipe At a Time was my place to chronicle my kitchen adventures in the first apartment I ever lived in and in the apartment that I now share with my husband. The title will be inaccurate within a month, so I'm changing the name of my blog to Kitschn Calamities because we bought a house.

After months of watching House Hunters and Property Virgins on HGTV, Colby developed a crush on Sandra Rinomato and I decided that I wanted my own place to decorate. Colby had wanted a house from the get-go, but we decided to save up some for a down payment and take advantage of the $8000 tax credit. So stay tuned for house updates, as our role as homeowners will take us interestingly close to the world of adulthood.


*I made a physics joke. ∫Fdt is impulse.

Chai I Scream (in pain from the lactose)

I think that my moderate lactose intolerance has helped me over the years. For instance, I would never know the wonders of pizza without cheese if it weren't for the subsequent pain hours later; however, that is not to say that I avoid all dairy products. I am in love with cheese even though it isn't very nice to me. That being said, without the fetal-position-inducing cramps, I'm pretty sure that I would weigh 300000 pounds because I just can't help myself, especially not when it comes to homemade ice cream. I've been meaning to try to come up with a good chai ice cream and I was happy to find this recipe from Oregon Chai.

Vanilla Chai Ice Cream (adapted from Oregon Chai)

2 c heavy cream
2/3 c vanilla sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
6 egg yolks
3/4 c whole milk
1 1/2 c Oregon Chai concentrate (I used the decaffeinated because that's all I could find)

heat heavy cream, vanilla sugar, and vanilla beans+seeds over medium heat until just simmering and then remove from heat. While the cream is heating, whisk the eggs until they lighten a bit in color. Temper in the simmering liquid a whiskful at a time until about 1/3 of the cream is incorporated to the eggs. Whisk the eggs back to the cream and place over low heat, whisking continually. Heat until the mixture thickens. (The recipe says recommends that you bring it up to 160 deg.) Strain and then mix in the whole milk and tea. Cover and refrigerate for 4ish hours (or until the mix is cold). Make in your ice cream making according to manufacturer's instructions.

By the way, don't throw away that vanilla bean! Rinse off the milky bits and then plunge it into a container of sugar. In a couple days, you'll have vanilla sugar which is good on just about anything sweet!

Recipe for Disaster

Take 1 part sleep deprivation and 2 parts clumsy and shake over concrete. Pour all over the sidewalk, rip a pair of leggings at the knee and call it Disaster on Cement or What Happens to Julie When She Should Be Sleeping Instead of Running. It should look something like this: Warning, not for the squeamish.

I've been running with a few people over the past couple of weeks. Two of them (Irina and Theresa) are training for the Ragnar Relay from San Antonio to Austin and I'd just like to be less fat. This morning I went to bed at 6 AM because I couldn't sleep and woke up at 10 to go running. This was a mistake. About 5 minutes into our run, I tripped over a raised piece of cement and ended up taking the skin off of a significant portion of my knee. Whoops. Fortunately I was in good hands and we went back to Theresa's house and cleaned and bandaged it. After I got back home, I was pretty convinced that I needed to go to the hospital to make sure that I got all the dirt out, but decided to call my Dad first. Colby sat there rolling his eyes at me as my Dad told me to just wash it out and put some Betadine on it and cover it with gauze and I began to miss my Mom more accutely than I have in quite some time.

You see, we used to have Betadine swabs all over the house along with gauze and alcohol swabs and so she could be at home and administer IV medication and injections. And it wasn't just the mention of betadine that reminded me of her, but immediately after I fell, I wracked my brain to see if I knew any people in the medical field to talk to about this and she was the first (and only) person I came up with which wouldn't quite do. It's funny how grief sneaks up on you like that, but it does and there isn't much to do about it.

So $31 worth of medical supplies later (hey, betadine is expensive and apparently so are gauze pads), my knee is bandaged up and I'm out a pair of leggings.

Julie and Julie & Julia. Oh, and mayo.

I went to the Alamo Drafthouse a couple weeks ago and saw Julie & Julia "with" other Austin area food bloggers. I say "with" because there wasn't much talking, mostly watching, which was sort of a relief. I had read all the reviews of the movie and was sort of apprehensive. They mostly all said the same thing: Meryl Streep is a vision as Julia Child and Amy Adams can't hold her own against the actress, though she is handicapped by her role because the story of Julie Powell isn't nearly as intriguing.

In a way, they're totally right. I first picked up the book in the fall of 2007 because I saw my name on the cover, which was impetus enough for me to flip it over and read the dust jacket. This was around the time that I first started cooking, so the theme of the book resonated with me. Not wanting to actually pay for it myself, it made its way onto my Christmas list and my little brother got it for me. I read it in the span of about three days when I went to D.C. for New Years and I was really glad that I didn't pay for it myself.

The book and movie are set up in a similar fashion. It weaves the stories of Julie and Julia's lives in a way similar to the way the Earth (Julia) and Moon (Julie) orbit the sun together. No, the Moon does not actually orbit the Earth, it orbits the Sun, but it sure does look like the Moon is orbiting the Earth. Astronomy references aside, they both tell their separates stories together, except that in the book, Julie Powell made up stories about what Julia's life was like and in the movie, Julia's story was adapted from her autobiography My Life In France. I highly recommend that book. The fictitious Julia scenes in Julie&Julia(thebook) were kind of stupid and MLiF is a really sweet story told by Julia about the great loves of her life: Paul, food, and France.

By the time I went to see the movie, it had been awhile since I had read J&JtB, but MLiF was fresh in my memory. On the Julie side of the movie, it softened her imaged and rounded the corners of her pricklyness. She was still portrayed as rather self-centered, but in a way that didn't necessarily make you hate her, unlike the book; meltdowns seemed the exception, not the rule. For this, I'm grateful to Amy Adams for making me feel less stupid for going to see the movie; however, the Julia side was rife with inaccuracies that bothered me. Now don't get me wrong, Meryl Streep plays an amazing, impressive Julia Child. She makes up for the height differential by the cadence of her voice and her movements as she really becomes Julia, but the story wasn't 100% true to MLiF.

My Life In France is as much a love story between Julia and Paul Child as it is between Julia and French cuisine. The movie makes their (julia and paul) relationship much more lustful than loving... i.e. I could have done with way fewer Julia Child sex scenes. And I think the scene that bothered me the most was when they showed her famous mortar and pestle on her counter with a big red bow atop as a gift. In the book, she and Paul went around the markets and she found a giagantic mortar and pestle and Paul lovingly carried the large thing on his shoulders all the way back to their car. It's one of the most touching parts of her book and it's completely misrepresented in the movie. Her difficult relationship with Simca was also glossed over, as well as the timeline of her relationship with Avis de Soto, but most glaring of all Meryl Streep is WAY too old to play out most of the early scenes in the movie. She was in her mid thirties when she attended Le Cordon Bleu, and though Meryl Streep did a wonderful job, she definitely did not look anywhere near 30... or even 40.

In all, though, it was a wonderful movie and my complaints are nitpicking. I loved the movie and it inspired me to try to cook more often and with more creativity. In fact, shortly before the movie came out, I bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and until the movie came out, I hadn't really used the book. Shortly thereafter, I made her scrambled eggs (whoa em gee. so good!) and tonight I made mayonnaise... by hand. It turns out that she definitely knew what she was talking about.


3 egg yolks, room temperature
1/2+ tsp salt
1/4+ tsp mustard (I used dijon because I hate yellow)
1 T+ acid (I used white wine vinegar, but is interchangable with lemon juice)
1 2/3c olive oil
2 T crazy hot water

1)Take a metal mixing bowl and run under hot water to make warm. Wipe dry with a cloth.

2)Beat the 3 egg yolks with a wire whisk until they're "sticky" (Julia's word not mine). This should take 1-2 minutes.

3)Whisk in 1/2 t salt, 1/4 t mustard, and 1T acid until combined, about 30 seconds.

4)Begin whisking the mixture and add in the oil a few drops at a time. Julia suggests that you whisk at least 2 sweeps per second. Don't stop whisking. After about 1/3-1/2 c of oil is incorporated, it should be cream-like and sticky-ish again. At this point you can stop your continual whisking and add in the oil about 1-2 T at a time. If the mixture gets too thick, then add in more acid a couple drops at a time to thin it out. Also, hot water will be added at the end so don't get to carried away.

5) Once all the oil is incorporated, whisk in 2 T of hot water. Julia says that this is a safeguard against separation. After, season with the mustard, salt, acid, and pepper to taste. (I ended up adding more salt.)

I ended up with a little under 2 cups. It's different than Helmann's and I would argue to say much more flavorful and way less gross. ;) Be sure to refrigerate if you're not using it right away and put it in an airtight container. If you put plastic wrap down over the top, it won't develop that gross film on top that so defines mayo.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

It's that time of year again... classes start tomorrow and I'm not particularly excited about the prospect of grading, being graded, and being degraded. (Okay, maybe that last one is a bit dramatic, but I am *not* a drama queen. ::ahem::) Usually, the ill-effects of class going are mitigated, at least slightly, by going out to lunch. This has become a daily occurrence in the department, but it all seems a bit costly. My solution to this for this year (at least for the next week or so until I forget about it) is to make large batches of soup and take that to lunch.

The other day I tried making chicken tortellini soup with horrible tortellini. They were discarded before hitting the stock pot, but I was left with a lot of vegetables in broth. And then I discovered the jar of salsa in the fridge. Thus chicken fauxtilla soup was born.

3 chicken breasts baked and pulled
1 jar salsa (I used some smoked chipotle stuff. the kind in the small jar)
64ish oz chicken stock
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
3-4 celery stalks, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 ear's worth of corn kernels
1.5 c tortilla chips
1 Tbs olive oil
s+p

Saute onion, carrots, and celery and about a tsp of salt in olive oil until the veggies are softened. Add in corn and garlic and stir until fragrant (like 30 seconds). Add in chicken stock, salsa, chicken, and tortilla chips. Let simmer until the tortilla chips are "dissolved" and the soup gets a thicker consistency.

You can also add in herbs. I guess if I had been thinking ahead, I would have put in oregano. I also took the celery leaves from the heart and chopped them up and put them in the soup because it makes me feel thrifty.