craft: hot process soap making

I signed up for a soap making class early spring, which I finally attended end of summer and am only now blogging in this late autumn. We watched the instructor demonstrate outside the most dangerous part of soap making: the handling and mixing of the lye (sodium hydroxide) with the water. Note to self: always add the lye slowly to the water, not vice versa. 

 

Soap making or saponification requires fat, and we sued a combination of shea butter (most expensive), palm oil, olive oil, coconut oil...

  

...and castor oil. I think having to obtain so many oils, I'm not likely to make soap at home any time soon.

We were divided into groups to measure fats into crockpots, but first we watched the instructor mix the alkali mixture with fats, using a stick blender.

After the initial blending, there was waiting...

...and more waiting and occasional more stick blending until we added the essential oil before the soap was ready to be decanted into the mold.

The instructor gave us silicon soap molds--he said they were expensive good ones, but I think I would have preferred another size in which I did not have to slice the bars.

The soap did smell divine because of the lavender oil distilled from the instructor's lavender fields. Am I likely to make soap again? I don't know, but maybe if I get into aromancy.

cook: escabeche

I’d been enjoying mezze spreads of hummus, bana ghanoush, pickled vegetables and homemade flat bread in the waning weeks of summer.

But summer’s bounty needed to be pickled.

Since tacos, enchiladas and nachos are in heavy rotation, I had to make escabeche.

And while at it, I also pickled carrots and daikon for do chua.

cook: girls gone mild junk journaling night + oktoberfest meal rehearsal

I was in the mood to host:

I thought I was going to make a sandwich board and decided instead to cook autumnal food. I thought, how hard can bratwurst, spaetzle and a bunch of pickles be to cook and make ahead? My friend, Nicole was game and bought this little kegger (so adorable!), which I opened in order to braise the bratwurst.

And the food was easy. I added beer, apple cider vinegar, grainy mustard, sliced onions, slices of Granny Smith apple, a few cloves of crushed garlic, dill, caraway seeds, mustard seeds, and peppercorns to the bottom of a crockpot.

And then browned the bratwurst in cast iron before laying them atop the onions, apple and aromatics in the crockpot.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was a flurry of making a cabbage salad with cream, quick pickling red cabbage and quick pickling zucchini. The next day I had grabbed egg noodles instead of the planned spaetzle, and so buttered noodles with bacon, onions, cream and Gruyere became the side dish. I also used up the rest of a vinaigrette in the fridge to dress arugula greens and on which to top with the pickled vegetables. Forgot about the beets. And oh yeah, I had baked frozen prepared pretzels and made beer cheese. A good appetizer that was pretty darn easy. Set out pickled onions and a jar of spicy cucumber pickles along with my other quick pickles as well as the honey mustard and spicy brown mustard condiments.

I think the lady guests enjoyed the hearty meal, which I will put on repeat perhaps for my birthday meal.

cook: habichuelas negras, arroz con guisantes y zanahorias, chuletas

I was in the mood for Puerto Rican cuisine, and so I started with black beans. Boiled and then fried with bacon fat, onions and garlic. My favorite Latin American starch. 

The garden was still producing summer squash, and so had to saute zucchini and yellow squash. In the meantime, I was frying pork chops I had marinated in Goya's sazon packets with oregano and olive oil.

Those sazon packets are also useful for sauteing and flavoring rice along with carrots, peas and jalapeno peppers.

This meal ...

was delicious and satisfying.

clay: altars and tarot/oracle card holders

I was on a roll last week to make pots other than test tiles for my community college ceramics glazing class and just because I've been enjoying hand building again. The high school ceramics classroom has silicon molds with celestial shapes of sun, moon, stars and clouds.

And then at the community studio, I made an altar that started with this quote from Karl Jung because I think of tarot cards as a tool for tapping into your intuition.

But working on the texture on the other side blotted out or compounded the clay into the text, and so I had to compress and re-do the text in the above photo.

And I didn't think I had it in me to stay another few hours in the studio and make another altar. But I did. And I'm rather pleased with the outcome, and so was someone else who wanted to take a pic.

David, then had me put them on the greenware shelf with the headstones down and bags of rice on top to keep them flat.

But aargh, the next day, there was a crack in the first one, and so I mixed vinegar with slip to fill in the hairline crack. Fingers crossed and in prayer to the kiln gods.

bake: almond lemon berry loaf

The New York Times  recently featured Yotam Ottolenghi's Blueberry Almond Lemon cake. I decided to bake and give the cake to a friend who just bought her first home. I've always got butter, flour, sugars, both white and brown, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla extract on hand because I've a husband who bakes. I also happened to have the berries (blueberries, raspberries, and  blackberries)because I'd been trying to eat more fruit with Greek yogurt. What I didn't have though for this recipe was almond flour.  

I was pleasantly surprised to discover almond flour at Trader Joe's while shopping for a bag of lemons. The recipe called for lemon zest in the batter, but not lemon juice.

 

Also not only do you reserve lemon juice for the icing but also some of the berries after baking the loaf for 15 minutes. I then scattered those reserved berries on top of the loaf and baked for another 15 minutes. The top of the loaf looked to me close to burning.

But thankfully, the recipe also calls for covering the cake with aluminum foil and then baking for another 25 to 30 minutes. The moment of truth...

Woo Mama! The loaf is not burned. 

Once the cake is cooled, mix that reserved lemon juice with confectioner's sugar and glaze the loaf. The final verdict? Meh. I've had better.

bake: orange chiffon cake

I am not a dessert person. But I do love, love, love the orange chiffon cake at Gayle's Bakery. However, I can't be trekking the hour plus drive to Capitola when I'm craving that fluffy citrusy slice. And so I took it upon myself to check out the bakery's cookbook from the public library and made a point of buying a couple oranges in order to bake that cake. 

The batter is fairly easy. I broke a lot of eggs...

 

...and of course, whipped the egg whites separately before folding it in with the beaten egg yolks and oil and zest and orange juice.

 

If I recall rightly, I mixed all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt (but the recipe didn't call for cream of tartar like other chiffon or angel food cake recipes I've seen), and the batter was voluminous. Too much for my bundt cake pan.

 

The glaze also called for butter. I think I would have preferred just confectioner's sugar and fresh orange juice.

Really it was frosting, not glaze. However, the cake was delish. And I ordered myself an angel food cake pan for the next orange chiffon cake and plan to use another recipe.