Home-made Ricotta cheese marinated in scallion Jalapeño sauce

When my wife made Ricotta cheese, she served it with the scallion jalapeño sauce I made for the potato and squid dish.  Then she suggested marinating the cheese in the sauce. So I made a larger amount and my wife cut the cheese into small blocks and marinated it (see the last picture).  Comapred to just topping the cheese with the sauce, this was much more flavorful. The oil penetrated the cheese and tasted better and over time, the flavor became richer.  Excess sauce/oil, however, puddled on the bottom of the plate (as shown in the following picture).

So my wife immediately came up with the idea of serving the marinated cheese on squares of toasted bread to soak up the flavored oil (shown in the next picture). This was great. (She cut the ears off the bread when making the bread sqaures. She even soaked these pieces in the flavored oil). The combination of the crunch of the bread, the softness and slight saltiness of the cheese all permeated with the flavor of good olive oil, scallion and jalapeño worked out well. 

This is how these marinading cheese blocks looked.

For scallion jalapeño oil/sauce.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Extra virgin olive oil
3 scallions finely chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and deveined, finely chopped (leave veins if you like hot).
salt to taste

We kept this in the refrigerator. After a days, the flavor got better. This goes well with red wine.

Home-made cheese 自家製リコッタチーズ

My wife has been making yogurt and buttermilk ever since we couldn’t get them for a while during covid. Recently after making the supply of yogurt and buttermilk she found she had over estimated how much milk she needed and had about a half gallon left over. Since it was getting close to it’s expiration date she decided to use it to make ricotta cheese. She made the cheese then pressed it to make a more firm block. We served it with a jalapeño scallion sauce I made recently. Later we cut the block into squares and marinated the cheese in the sauce. Yum!

Ingredients:
1/2 gallon of whole milk
1/3 cup vinegar (she used sushi vinegar)
(The recipe also suggests the juice from one or two lemons, or 1/2 tsp citric acid)
1 tsp salt (or more to taste)

Suggested additions:

Add 1 1/2 tsp salt to curd after whey has been drained away

Add chopped jalapeño to curd before pressing

Add 2 Tbs. Olive oil to curd before pressing.  

Directions:
Slowly heat the milk to 200 degrees F stirring constantly. After it reaches temperature remove from the heat pour in the vinegar and salt and stir gently to combine. Leave the pot undisturbed for 10 minutes. It should be separated into clumps of milky white curds and watery yellow colored whey. Using a spoon gently stir the mixture. If there is still a lot of unseparated milk add another tablespoon of the vinegar. Line a strainer with cheese cloth and set it over a bowl. Using a large spoon transfer the curds to the strainer. Let the curds drain for 10 to 60 minutes depending on how dry you would like the ricotta to be. (If it is too dry add some of whey reserved in the draining bowl).

My wife then pressed the curds to form a block of cheese. (Since we didn’t have a cheese press she used the tofu press and it worked just fine.) The final block is shown below after we sliced off a piece to see how it tasted.

By-the-way, the whey drained from the cheese is very good. It has a slightly milky, slightly tart, slightly salty taste. It would be good to add to soups or use in breads.

The cheese was very nice. It had a slight tartness from the sushi vinegar which was a nice addition. The overall taste was accentuated by the salt that was added. Since the cheese was fairly mild we served it with the jalapeno sauce I had made recently and the combination was so good we decided the marinate pieces of the cheese in the sauce. We then served it with the marinade on small squares of toated bread. It was excellent.

Potato salad with tuna and pesto ペストとツナのポテトサラダ

We made pesto and froze it when we had a bumper crop of basil sometime ago. My wife found two small plastic containers in the freezer recently and tasked me to use it. I made two kinds of garlic mozzarella bread, one with original garlic scallion butter and another with the pesto. The one with pesto was quite good. That left me with the 2-3 tbs of pesto. From the depth of my memory I remembered a recipe for potato salad with tuna and pesto from the “Frugal Gourmet*" cookbook. I sort of remembered how this was made but I decided I needed to find the recipe. After going through a number of his cookbooks which we have in our collection, I found the recipe in "Frugal Gourmet cooks with wine". It was called "tuna and potato salad" which was introduced as an "American Italian" dish. In any case, I made this salad and finished up the pesto. It was definitely very distinctive and very good; quite different from my usual potato salad.

*When his show was popular on PBS in1980s, it was our routine to watch it on the weekend and we bought most of his cookbooks. Looking back, however, we think our cooking has advanced since then but at the time his recipes were quite inspirational. 

I made a few modifications as usual.  

Ingredients:

2 medium russet potatoes, boiled with skin on and then skin removed, cut (crumbed) into bite size chunks (original recipe calls for 6 small red potatoes).

One can of tuna in water, drained.

Blanched green beans, arbitrary amount (I prepared from fresh green beans, the original recipe calls for a 10 oz. package of frozen green beans, thawed, cooked and drained).

2 tbs pesto

3 tbs mayonnaise and 3 tbs Greek (strained) yogurt* (The original recipe calls for 1 cup mayo)

3 flat anchovies mashed (optional). I did not used them.

Salt and pepper to taste

3 tbs chopped parsley (I skipped this since I did not have fresh parsley)

* My wife prepared this from Dannon yogurt.

Directions:

I seasoned the potatoes with salt, pepper and sushi vinegar while they were hot and I them cool in a bowl (my addition)

Cut the green beans in half inch length and add to the potato.

Add the pesto and tuna.

Add the mayo and Greek yogurt and mix.

Taste and season it with salt and pepper if needed.

This is a good salad to have. We really liked it.

Renkon "hasami-age" with avocado and cod roe アボカドとたらこのレンコンはさみ揚げ

My wife found an interesting YouTube series called "Kimono Mom".  A former geisha retired early got married, had a daughter, and now became a YouTuber showing Japanese cooking. She has many followers. In any case, we watched some of her episodes. One of the dishes she showed was "Hasami-age" はさみ揚げ meaning stuffing sandwiched between two slices of renkon 蓮根 (lotus root). The “sandwich” is then battered and deep fried. This is a common way of using renkon and I have previously posted such a dish.  The stuffing is usually meat especially chicken. Kimono Mom used a mixture of avocado and spicy cod roe called "mentaiko" 明太子. I happened to have a fresh renkon which I got from Tako Grill (besides packaed and frozen Japanese grocery items, Tako Grill grocery section now has some fresh Japanese vegetables and even sashimi blocks). I did not have "spicy" tarako but I did have frozen tarako. I could make tarako spicy by adding Sriracha. So I have everything to make this dish.

I also had fresh Japanese "shishi togarashi" 獅子唐辛子 pepper. So I just fried it as a side. I served the renkon dish with a wedge of lemon and green tea salt.

This is a rather unique and good dish. The renkon remains crispy and the avocado creamy with salty and lightly spicy (I did not add too much Sriracha) tarako flavors come through.

Ingredients: making 6.
One segment of fresh renkon, peeled and sliced (about 1/2 to 2/3 inch thick, I got a total of 12 slices).
6 perilla leaves
One sac of tarako, roe scraped out from the sac (#1)
One ripe avocado, stone and skin removed (#2)
Sriracha or other hot sauce to taste

For tempura batter
1/4 cup cake flour plus a bit more for dredging the renkon slices
1/4 cup carbonated water

Oil for deep frying

Directions:
Mash and mix the avocado, tarako with the sriracha hot sauce to taste (#3 and #4).
Lightly dredge the renkon slices. Put on a perilla leaf and then 1/6 (2-3 tsp) of the stuffing (#5).
Top the stack with another slice of renkon. Press lightly to secure (#6).

Heat the oil to 320F.

Mix the cake flour and cold carbonated water to make a relatively thin (like crepe batter) tempura batter.

Dip and coat the renkon “sandwich” and deep fry (#7) for fa ew minutes on one side. Turn it over and cook another few minutes then drain (#8) and serve.

I served this cut in half with a wedge of lemon and the green tea salt. We really like this dish. This could be good with beer but since we do not drink beer, we had it with cold sake.

Squid and daikon, simmered イカ大根

This is a sort of standard dish using squid. I made this dish using the half of the squid package from Vital Choice. I posted a similar dish before. In that post, I mentioned that to make squid tender, you have to cook it either very briefly or a very long time. This time I cooked the squid briefly. I made a slight modification and included a grilled fish cake tube or "Yaki chikuwa" 焼きちくわ. The daikon and even the fish cake absorbed flavor from the squid and this is great "teiban" 定番料理 for the squid. The below is a picture of the serving immediately after I made this dish. 

The daikon was hiding in the bottom.

Ingredients:
170 gram (6oz) frozen squid, thawed, washed, body cut into 1/2 inch thick rings, tentacles separated
3 inch long daikon, peeled, sliced in 1 inch thick pieces
4 thin slices of ginger, cut into small match sticks
1 frozen fish cake tube or "yaki-chikuwa" 焼きちくわ, thawed and cut into bite size
Green beans, cooked, cut in bias, arbitrary amount

For simmering liquid
1 cup (240-50ml) Japanese broth (I used a bonito and kelp dashi pack)
50-60ml "x4 concentrated" noodle sauce (from the bottle) or half and half soy sauce and mirin

For pre-cooking the daikon
Water enough to cover the daikon
One pinch of uncooked rice (or water in which uncooked rice was rinsed "kome-no togijiru" 米のとぎ汁).

Directions:
Simmer the daikon for 30 minutes or longer until cooked though and soft, rinse off the rice grain if needed (you could prepare the daikon ahead and keep this for a few days in the refrigerator before using).

Add the simmering liquid and the ginger in a pan on medium high flame and let it come to the boil, add the squid and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute or until the squid just becomes homogeneously white/opaque. Take out the squid and set aside.
Add the daikon and the fish cake and turn down the flame and simmer for 15 minutes.
Taste the simmering liquid and if needed add more noodle sauce (or soy sauce/mirin).
Add back the squid and simmer to warm up (30 seconds to one minute).
Garnish with the green beans and serve warm (or cold).

The next day, I served this cold with the other squid dish I made. This dish is usually served warm but even cold, this was a great dish.

The below was two  (quite different) simmered squid dishes both served cold as a starter.

These were a good taste contrast; one is very fresh bright tasting and the other is a very traditional flavor In both dishes the squid was tender due to brief cooking. In the squid-daikon dish, both the daikon and fish cake absorbed the squid flavor. The addition the chikuwa made it taste like you were enjoying more squid than was actually in the dish. 

Squid and potato, lightly simmered イカとじゃがいもの軽い煮込み

I found two packages of frozen squid in our freezer.  I got them from “Vital Choice” when we got frozen Pacific oysters. I did not have a chance to use them until now. These were quite good, much better than previously-frozen-and-thawed cleaned squid we used to get from our regular grocery  store. After thawing, I washed them in cold running water. They were cleaned including bodies and tentacles. No fishy smell and the body tubes were nicely intact. I have made quite a few dishes using squid.  Since I am running out of new dishes, I have been on the look-out for any new recipes. I found this recipe in the digital edition of one of the Japanese newspaper sites. This was a bit unusual in that no traditional Japanese seasonings (soy sauce, ginger, etc) were used. The original recipe calls for “parsley” sauce (mixture of chopped parsley, olive oil and salt). Since I did not have fresh parsley, I had to improvise. Despite that, this dish was really good.  The evening I made this dish, we had it warm (picture below).

Next day, I served this cold. It tasted equally good cold. We may even prefer to serve this cold especially in summer.

Ingredients:
170g cleaned and frozen squid and tentacles, thawed* (I used half of a12oz package), washed and the body cut into tubes, and tentacles cut into bite sized pieces
2 small potatoes (I used red potato), skinned and cut into 1/4 slices
150 ml water
1 tbs olive oil
salt to taste
1 tb white wine
1/2 garlic clove

For parsley sauce
5 sprigs of fresh parsley finely chopped (Since I did not have fresh parsley, I used combination of finely chopped scallion and Jalapeno pepper)
2-3 tbs olive oil
1 pinch salt

*The original recipe calls for a one large squid.

Directions:
Sprinkle the white wine on the squid. 
Add the water, olive oil, the garlic and the potato in a pot. After it reaches boiling reduce the heat and cook 15-20 minutes with the lid askew. When the potato is cooked, season it with salt.
Add the squid and cook for 30 minutes stirring. Then cut off the heat and let it steep to finish cooking.
Serve with the potato on the bottom top with dollops of the sauce.

Although I could not make the parsley sauce, this was a very refreshing and nice dish. Actually the combination scallion and jalapeño may have been more flavorful than a parsley sauce. The squid was tender since it was cooked for a short time. It was sort of Western-style and perfect for hot summer when served cold.

Wacky waffle cake bowl with ricotta cheese topping

In trying to decide how to use the waffle bowls we made a few days ago, my wife was inspired by two items. The first was the realization that there are several Pennsylvania Dutch desserts such as funny cake or shoofly pie  that are essentially cakes in a pie shell. In addition she thought of Japanese melon pan which is essentially a cakey bread covered in a cookie (and wasn’t the waffle bowl a kind of cookie?) So based on these inspirations, she decided, as an experiment, to fill several of the waffle bowls with a PA Dutch cake called Wacky cake topped with ricotta filling. She chose wacky cake because it is so simple to make. If the experiment didn’t turn out, it wouldn’t be a great loss. In fact the “experiment” turned out quite nicely. The picture shows a whole wacky waffle cake plus one cut in half to show how the ricotta filling dips into the cake as it cooks.

The waffle bowls were cooked again and got really brown and crispy. Then after some time, stored in the refrigerator they became a bit soft again. My wife  heated them up in the toaster oven just before serving which made the bowls crispy. I turn the platform over to my wife to describe how she made them.

Ingredients:

For the cake 

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbs. vinegar
1/3 cup oil
1 cup water 

For the ricotta filling

1 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg 
1/8 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients for the ricotta filling until smooth and set aside. Mix the dry ingredients from the flour thru the cocoa powder in a bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients until smooth. I put the waffle bowls in a tin for large muffins to provide support as the cake cooked (and in case the waffle bowls fell apart during cooking the mess would be contained.) I then filled them with the cake mixture and topped them with a scoop of the ricotta filling. (These are shown in the bottom row of muffins in the next picture). I had some batter left over after filling the waffle bowls so I just made some large muffins by putting the batter directly into the muffin tin and topping them with the ricotta mixture. (These muffins are shown in the top row of muffins in the picture). I cooked them at 350 degree for about 30 to 35 minutes until the ricotta topping firmed up and a skewer came out clean. 

The wacky waffle cakes were surprisingly good. Even though the shell was double cooked and got a bit high done it was nice and crispy and tasted very good. The combination of cookie-like crispiness, soft sweet chocolate cake and smooth moist ricotta filling made each chew a nice complex texture experience. The three different flavors of each element also went very well together. I think I may be onto something here. Stand back!