Making Fresh Ricotta

I love cheese, and it all starts there. Ricotta is one of my favorites, it's so versatile and when you make it at home it is absolutely divine. I particularly like serving it with with peaches, berries or tomatoes.  I made grilled peaches with a honey glaze and lemon-thyme for the food truck and they flew out the window.  The food truck has been such a great adventure, I am having so much fun creating menus with what is in season and fresh every day.  I don't think I've repeated myself yet, there's just so much I want to make and this is giving me the opportunity to do so.  It is certainly a lot more work than setting a menu and repeating it, and I'm sure more cost effective too.  But that's not what this is about for me right now.  I am reveling in having to be creative enough to come up with three inventive quality menus every week.  I guess at some point I'll have to pick my favorites and go with those, but it seems that by the time that happens, it will be a whole new season with a whole different crop of fruits and veggies to work with.  Lets just say I am not likely to become bored with it, boredom is my greatest enemy.  I hate to admit it, but I'd rather do things the hard way in order to produce something I am excited about.  

You won't need any fancy cheese making ingredients to make this, but you will need a good candy making thermometer and some cheesecloth.  I used whole milk and buttermilk for this recipe, next time I will experiment by adding cream for a silkier and richer consistency.  With what I had leftover, I made roast tomato and ricotta tartines- pretty scrumptious!  The cheese will keep for about a week in the refrigerator, obviously mine didn't make it that long. 

Home-Made Ricotta

Cheesecloth

Deep-Fry or Candy thermometer

Stainless steel pot

8 cups whole milk

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1. Stack several squares of cheesecloth in a colander and set the colander over a large bowl.

2. Combine the milk and buttermilk in a large pot and attach the thermometer to the side.

Place the pot over high heat .  Stir constantly as curds form and when thermometer reaches 175-180 degrees, curds will separate and float.  Turn off the heat.

3.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer curds to prepared colander and sprinkle with salt.  Gather the cheesecloth around the ricotta pressing gently to release some of the liquid.  Let the ricotta rest about 20 minutes.  Transfer to a bowl, cover and chill. 

Fresh Fig Galette with Mascarpone

It's fig season in Louisiana, they start coming in around the beginning of July.  I usually have enough to harvest for about a month and it never seems quite long enough. I took advantage of the bounty and made these little fig happies for the food truck last week.   Oh yes, new project...In a collaboration with another restaurant owner, we opened a food truck called PRONTO.  The truck is parked in front of my shop, I open it as often as I can and let people know by posting the menu on Instagram and Facebook, (@gourmetgirls).  I'm doing most of the cooking so things have been have been extra hectic, but have gone remarkably well.  It's amazing how many familiar faces I've seen from my days at The Silver Spoon.  People have come out of the woodwork, it's been so nice to see so many loyal customers,  I feel really blessed.  The truck has proven to be a lot of fun, I've sold out every day so far which is extremely rewarding since I feel like I'm filling a need for fresh healthy food.  The best part is I get to make the food I love to eat and prepare.  With the truck it's basically whatever is in season, fresh, mostly local and organic if possible. I'm officially in foodie heaven! 

I made the galettes for PRONTO on it's opening day and they've been a hit since, selling out pretty early the days I've had them.  I guess I'm not the only one who likes dessert first! The dough is from my mincemeat pie recipe, it uses whole wheat pastry flour which holds up really well while still being super flaky. I used the food processor since I was (am always) short on time. If the food processor is your method of choice, just be sure to pulse in short bursts and only until the shortening is incorporated.  I added the liquid mixture to the dough in a large bowl and only enough liquid to pull the dough together.  I rolled the dough into a 3" diameter roll, wrapped it and then sliced it into 12 disks to make the galettes.  

Fig Galettes

1 recipe pie dough

2 pints figs, stemmed and sliced in half

1/2 cup fig jam

1- 8oz. container marscapone

1 egg, lightly beaten

granulated sugar for sprinkling tops

Preheat Oven to 375

1. Make pie dough according to direction in link, refrigerate an hour or overnight.  Once the dough is chilled, slice into 3" wide and 1/4" tall disks, (see note above).  

2. On a lightly floured surface roll out disks to about 5" in diameter.  Place about a tablespoon of mascarpone in center and gently spread just in the center of disk an inch from the edges with an off-set spatula.

3. Place a small amount of fig preserves on top of cheese and top with about 6 fig halves.  Gently fold the edges of the tarts toward the center- some will overlap.  Brush some of the beaten egg over dough and sprinkle the whole galette generously with sugar.

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

Dark Chocolate and Strawberry Scones

Strawberries and chocolate, I cannot think of a better combination for a scone. Add chocolate to anything and you have my full attention, they're almost like dessert.   These scones come together quickly and easily.  They keep best frozen and then just popped in the toaster or microwave for a bit if you're not planning on eating all of them within a day.  

Dark Chocolate and Strawberry Scones

Yield - 12-16 large scones

3/4 cup sliced fresh strawberries

1/2 cup dark chocolate, chopped

4 3/4 cups flour

1 T baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t salt

1/2 cup sugar

9 oz. cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

topping: additional cream and sugar

1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Add the butter and cut in with a pastry blender.  You are finished when the butter is evenly distributed in pea sized lumps.

3. Add the strawberries and chocolate to flour mixture.  Then make a well in the center and add the cream all at once.  Mix with your hands until incorporated.  Depending on the juiciness of your strawberries, the dough might be a little wet and sticky- it's okay.  

                          

4. On a lightly floured surface turn dough out and pat into an evenly distributed square or rectangle.

If the dough is still a little sticky, you can dust both sides with a little additional flour.

cut the rectangle into desired shapes and place on cookie sheet.  Brush scones with a little whipping cream and sprinkle liberally with sugar.  Bake until tops are lightly browned, 25-30 minutes.

Gourmet Girls King Cake Cupcakes

I have a new invention.... and we are very excited!  When I was making king cakes on Monday I had some extra dough, and never for a second did I think what has happened over the course of the last 4 days would.  Instead of throwing out the extra dough, as I typically would, I placed it in a jumbo muffin pan, baked and iced it like a king cake and soon had our king cake cupcake.  I posted it on the Gourmet Girls facebook page and voila, our King Cake cupcakes went viral.  I have to say I post a lot of food on facebook, and seldom does something get this much attention.  Since Tuesday we have had to shift our baking from traditional king cakes to king cake cupcakes.  We are having so much fun making them and can barely keep up. They are the perfect solution for those of us who will eat a whole king cake just because it's there, and it looks good and it tastes divine.... now you can have your own individual little portion! :)

We start shipping early next week, email us for more information at gourmetgirlsbr@yahoo.com.

This is our blackboard, when it's out we have king cakes and cupcakes ready for pick up. Stop by!

Gourmet Girls King Cake

It's king cake time! We started making king cakes at the shop Saturday, it's the beginning of a very long Mardi Gras season.  Last year we made and shipped over 500, and for an operation the size of mine- that's a lot of king cakes made from scratch in a two week period.  Every day was ground hog day... Go into work,  start a batch of dough, wait 30 minutes, start another one and on and on and on. Every year I swear I don't really want to do it ever again once it's over.  Every year, I forget and start it all over again. 

In order to get ahead, we started a large batch of Brioche Friday afternoon so I could walk in Saturday morning and not have to wait on the first rise.  We put it to bed in the refrigerator in a gigantic bowl, and left for the day in hopes of having dough ready to go in the morning.  Saturday morning I returned to find the very large bowl of dough upright on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and the refrigerator door ajar.  I was the last one to leave and the first to arrive, no one touched the dough.  Clearly it didn't jump out of the refrigerator by itself, right? Well actually, it did.  Unfortunately it took me an entire day  to figure this out.  To J's amazement as I told him about this over dinner, I was more concerned with the fact that the dough looked about the same size as the previous day thinking the yeast was dead, than with how exactly the dough got itself out of the refrigerator and onto the floor.  I was going on and on about how I thought it was the yeast was not active and so on and he kept going back to the bowl on the floor.  Men! (I loathe it when he's right). Had I told him in the morning, I'm sure I would have figured it out then because he would have started with the whole your kitchen is haunted thing and I would have had to prove him wrong.  Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of yeast and flour only to figure out my little mystery at the end of the day.  Suddenly it came to me... the dough rose so much in the refrigerator overnight, the bowl shifted, pressed open the door, and fell on the ground.  When it fell on the ground, from about 4 feet up, it punched itself down and deflated. So in fact, the dough was just fine, it was still cold so it must have occurred shortly before I arrived.  Lesson learned- yeast is a powerful thing!  Hopefully this means I have worked out all the kinks and this will be a trouble free king cake season.  May the king cake gods be with us!

Goat Cheese with Edible Flowers

You may have noticed it's been a little quiet around here.  Well, I've been a a bit busy with work to say the least.  Posting in an of itself would not be the issue, it's really more about documenting everything I do with (beautiful and perfect) photographs that becomes troublesome. I am happy to announce though,  I have resolved to stop being such a freak and just post something I've made at least a few times a week.  I'll try to put recipes up when time allows, at very least I hope to provide some inspiration with the photographs. I made these little goat cheese balls and garnished them with edible flowers for a cocktail party a while back.  They're perfect to serve with crackers or crostini... I hope you like them!