Herbed Goat Cheese Straws

October is my favorite month, it’s the beginning of the holiday season, the threshold to gathering, laughing, worrying less about your diet. It’s the start of colder nights, warmer beds that beg you to hit the snooze button a few more times. My breath fogs my glasses when I got o check the mail. Milo wears sweaters now, he sleeps motionlessly on my pillow next to me. We daydream of farming, fireplaces, and flea markets. This is my first year home to see the leaves turn, to greet her like an old friend.   I’m keeping recipes like the one below in my back pocket to have ready when family visits. We won’t have much time to prep a big meal; my sister gives birth to her first child on Monday and I know all of my time will be spent with her these next few weeks.

Herbed Goat Cheese Straws

Ingredient:

• ½ cup unsalted butter, cold
• 1 ½ cup goat cheese (I used a delicious herbed apricot blend from Vermont Creamery)
• 1 ½ cup AP flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 TB rosemary
• ½ TB thyme

Direction:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a half sheet pan with a parchment paper
2. In a bowl, use a wooden spoon to cream butter and goat cheese together
3. While still stirring, add flour, salt, and herbs gradually
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a rectangle
5. Use a rolling pin to roll out to about a foot long and a ½ inch thick
6. Cut into a dozen strips
7. Pick up one strip, an end in each hand. Turn each end alternately to twist
8. Lay onto your baking sheet
9. Repeat with remaining strips
10. Bake for 10 minutes, turn and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until golden brown

Goat Cheese Platter with Homemade Flatbread Crackers: In Partnership with Vermont Creamery

I used to think ordering wine at a restaurant could define me, until I was caught underage drinking at 19. I ate cornichons at the Chateau Marmont one summer and wondered if this was a beginning or an erasure of my upbringing. Who was I to be anyone but myself—how dare I? Go to law school, drive a Nissan, knock down a spider’s web that covered the porch of our rental. I wanted so badly to be someone else; I thought I was for three long years in California.

And now I am back home and the memory of who I was remains foggy in memory. But that’s what happens when you live in fiction. I hardly eat out anymore; instead, I make small snacks and graze throughout the day. My mother likes to make casseroles. I ate three nectarines because I was lazy one morning. I wasn’t myself then and now I’m too much of myself now, I get exhausted. So I don’t bake, try to keep the oven off. I make small meals and take nothing for granted.

I made one such meal this week—local pickles, local olives, homemade crackers, and fresh and delicate goat cheese. A meal I would have spent $30 on when I was trying to create memories in California and a meal I will gladly allow to reify my Appalachian existence today. 

Goat Cheese Platter with Homemade Flatbread Crackers

Makes four large flatbread crackers that can be broken up into portions. Adapted from here.

Ingredients for crackers:

• 2 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon rosemary or thyme, or a mixture of both (fresh and diced)
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• 1 ½ TB honey
• 3 TB flavorless oil
• ½-3/4 cup ice wate

Directions:

1. In a food processor, pulse together flour, herbs, salt, pepper, honey and oil until well combined
2. With the motor running, add your water slowly until a ball begins to form
3. Dump dough out onto a floured work surface and knead a few times with floured hands to shape into a disc
4. Quarter the disc with a sharp knife and shape these quarters into discs
5. Wrap each in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the fridge for an hour
6. While dough is resting, preheat oven to 450*F and prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper
7. When dough is done resting, remove one disc and, with a floured rolling pin and a marble board (if you have it), roll disc as thinly as you can get it. We’re talking millimeters here
8. Gently transfer dough to your parchment paper and sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper
9. Repeat with a second disc
10. Bake these two first. You will most likely have to use two racks.
11. Bake on one side for 4 minutes then remove from oven. Flip crackers so the uncooked side is exposed and replace in oven on opposite racks for an even cooking. Bake for 3-5 minutes on this side (these are so thin and with the shifting oven temperatures one disc may bake faster than the other—check on them at the 3 minute mark, as they will burn quickly)
12. Remove from oven, allow to cool on your work surface
13. Repeat with remaining two discs
14. When all are cooled, break up to whatever size you’d like to enjoy with your platte

Assembling your platter: This is the fun part. Grab your most favorite goat cheese (mine is, of course Vermont Creamery’s) and top with a generous helping of honey or comb honey—the more flavor the better. Sprinkle a little fresh black pepper over this. Next, enjoy your cheese and crackers with various small bites. I did spicy habanero pickles, an assortment of kalamata and green garlic olives, and fresh red grapes. I would also recommend a robust or smoky cheddar, an apple butter or jam, or make it interesting with cubed watermelon and a drizzle of balsamic and blackberry juice reduction.

Blue Cornmeal and Smoked Cheddar Popovers: In Partnership with Bob's Red Mill

It’s now been sixty-eight days sine I last heard a coyote in the backyard. Three years since they were so close you could hear their breath on the windowpane. The coyote tricked me once, hunched and hungry, but I won’t be in California again for a long, long time.

My people aren’t like those on the West Coast; or, at the very least, those I met. There are burn marks on my mother’s arm, cat scratches on the edges of her knuckles. She makes a dollar stretch and my dad drinks his Diet Pepsi on the couch for hours at night. Nursing it, letting the ice melt to a more toothsome bite. The dogs play in the backyard and bark at nothing but the dried grapevines that appear to have died from a disease and not the harsh Northeastern winter that we’re still shaking off. I keep my window open some nights, and the frogs act like a Greek chorus, explaining things in a language I do not know yet, a dialect so deep-rooted in creekbeds and unemployment checks, I’m still getting an ear for it.

I come from families sustained on peasant food. Meat, potatoes, fats when we could get them. I am the apex of generations of farmers and truck drivers, stay-at-home moms and divorcees who never quite got their bearings. My dad said he’s never tried cauliflower, my mother bought produce at the dollar store when we lived in Kentucky. My sister slept in the laundry room then. I shared a room with my brother.

These popovers are a product of my heritage. Where the leavening is from the earth and a little elbow grease to boot. Where the grit of the cornmeal, unbleached and rugged, grinds on the tooth while you daydream of a beach in your land-locked state. Where the fat is light and the oven is hot and the days are shorter than when you were a child. It’s everything and nothing, an illusion of a simple life because I never realized how tough it must have been to feed a family of five while working night shifts at the Walmart in town. I’ll never hear a coyote again out here in Pennsylvania, but I surround myself with like me now. Family, in every sense of the word.

Blue Cornmeal and Smoked Cheddar Popovers

Yields six popovers using proper pan, or roughly 10-14 popovers made with a muffin tin

Ingredients:

• ½ cup Bob's Red Mill blue cornmeal (or yellow, if not available)
• 1 cup AP flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 1 ½ cup whole milk, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• ½ cup grated smoked chedda

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450*F and prepare your pan by spraying with oil (I used a traditional non-stick popover pan, but a muffin pan will work, but will not yield the same height)
2. Sift together cornmeal, flour, and salt
3. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and milk together vigorously until yolks are broken up and mixture is foaming
4. Continue whisking slowly, adding your cornmeal mixture slowly into the milk mixture
5. When mixture has the consistency of a thick (albeit lumpy) cream, stir in the butter
6. Allow to rest for 30 minutes
7. When resting is complete, spoon batter into prepared tins, about three-quarters full
8. Top with cheese
9. Bake for 20 minutes on 450*F, then reduce oven to 350*F and bake for an additional 17-20 minutes. During this time do not open the oven door until you have hit the 17-minute mark
10. When popovers have a solid center and the edges are crisp, remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from pan
11. Immediately pierce sides with a knife to allow for steam to escape (this will prevent popovers from deflating)
12. Serve immediately for best tast

Note: I am fortunate enough to be a Bob's Red Mill brand ambassador this year and will be partnering with them more and more throughout the year. While Bob's Red Mill supplied the ingredient, coconut flour, for this post, all opinions are my own. Check out their website for more information on all the amazing products they have to offer!

A recipe, as promised: Fromage Frais

I recently fell in love with Rachel Khoo's The Little Paris Kitchen.  I found it hidden inconspicuously at the library, on a nondescript nonfiction shelf near the check-out counter.  It was nearly serendipitous, how magnetic I found the cover, how I wanted to envision myself thumbing through this same cookbook at a cafe, in a striped sweater, a cigarette dangling between my teeth as I take notes.  I read the whole cookbook in two days, dog-earing the pages during my lunch break that I'd take in Balboa Park.  Starting slow, I began with the simplest recipe I could find (they're all simple, really, which is the true beauty of this book!):  fromage frais. Fresh cheese. I paired this easy, crumbly, soft cheese with clover honey and a fresh boule and snacked on anytime I felt a little peckish.  A perfectly sweet treat (with a little bite, if you add some salt).

Enjoy!

Fromage frais (recipe taken directly from The Little Paris Kitchen)

Makes about 14 oz

Fromage frais has a smooth, creamy taste and a subtle acidic note, making it less smelly socks and more freshly washed white linen. Of course, an additional plus is that it’s low in fat and cholesterol, but that doesn’t mean it’s low in taste.

• 2 qt 2 percent or skimmed milk, preferably organic but not UHT or homogenized • 1/2 cup plain live or probiotic yogurt, preferably organic • juice of 1 lemon (6 tbsp) • a pinch of salt or sugar • 2 tbsp heavy cream (optional)

Pour the milk into a large pot. Heat very slowly, stirring gently, until it starts to steam and little bubbles form around the edge (it should not boil at any point). This should take about 20 minutes.

Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before stirring in the yogurt and lemon juice. Leave to sit undisturbed for a further 10 minutes. Return the pot to the heat and bring the milk to a boil. Once it separates into curds (the solids) and whey (the liquid), remove from the heat.

Line a fine-meshed sieve with cheesecloth or a clean tea towel. Place the sieve over a bowl and pour in the separated milk. Scrunch the cloth tightly immediately above the cheese, like making a money bag, and twist to squeeze out any excess liquid. Now tie the corners of the cloth together to form a hanging pouch and thread a wooden spoon through the loop. Hang the cheese over a large bowl or jug (don’t let it sit on the bottom), and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight. The longer the cheese hangs, the more the liquid will drip away and the drier the cheese will become.

To serve, twist the cloth as before to squeeze out any excess liquid, then remove the cheese from the cloth and season with salt or sugar. Serve as it comes for a firm version, or beat in a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream for a smoother, creamier cheese.