I didn’t even remember I had this website… clearly I was experimenting of where to host my posts. Well, for a while I was using typepad, but now I have my own domain (and am using wordpress). So to see what I’ve been eating and what I’ve been doing, please visit
Thanks!
Too tired to write much… this whole month of October has been very draining, even though I had just come back from a weeklong trip to Chicago for a wedding followed by laid-back vacationing in Florida and the Bahamas. At the workplace, I've had to work with people in four different time zones, and balance multiple streams of tactical work along with defining two strategic directions. That means early morning and late night calls with multiple projects, so I haven't been going out much. Being tired also means I haven't been keeping up with exercising, so I also need to cut back how much I eat.
It looks like I'll be staying here at TypePad: I was trying really hard to get the hang of WordPress because it seemed to have so many possibilities. But, the import from vox didn't go as smoothly as TypePad's, and I couldn't fix the errors in pictures and layouts and just decided to give up as my patience just ran out.
Thankfully, last weekend I was able to getaway with friends to visit Sauvie Island to wander a corn maize and do some pumpkin inspections, and eat some corn brushed from a huge group butter container, yay! It was so nice to be able to just turn the thinking off and be chaufeurred off to silliness where others planned the fun and I was along for the ride, thanks!
The vox blog has been closed as vox is no longer offering blog support. I am currently trying to find a permanent home for my blog which can be the final place for all my previous blog entries and provide the functionality I am looking for to continue with posts in the future.I do plan to continue to write updates that describe my adventures in the future. I will update when I have made the move. Until then, love and peace!
An all veggie restaurant! Portobello is a vegan trattoria that offers food from the regions of Italy, Spain, and France. I had seen great reviews on Yelp, but going to a vegan restaurant also made me temper my expectations. Was it only so raved about because of the vegan adjective in front of it?
We had a great time though, and would visit again. The atmosphere was lovely, a combination of laid back and homey with the friendly openness of the servers in their casual dress and wildflowers in vases, yet a bit of fancy to feel like you are indeed dining out and it is going to be a nicer than an everyday meal, thanks to chandeliers and an interesting wall of wood with little artsy details scattered. I found a little owl in a corner particularly endearing.
Drink selection was full of creativity that perked a lot of interest for us. He settled for a mocktail called the "Ginger Rawgers" which was a mix of housemade kambucha called "herbucha" mixed with blueberry, ginger, and lime. We were also tempted by another mocktail called the "Red Scare" of beet, ginger, lemon, apple, and strawberry shrub. In terms of actual cocktails, the same dilemna. I ended up with "Lila's Limeade" with cherry-vanilla bean vodka, lime, and soda. Though I was tempted by the "Harper" with black pepper ginger vodka, strawberry puree, ginger, and prosecco. It was fun to see such a flirty and fun drink menu, they obviously put it together thoughtfully.
We started off with white truffle mushroom pate with accoutrements. This first appetizer didn't impress me- the pate just didn't have the soft almost buttery texture that spread and rich flavor that balanced the perfectly fine other accompaniments of fresh crusty bread and tarty cornichons. Using white truffle and mushroom I really expected more as mushrooms really can be rich. Next time I'll try the beet tartare.
For the first course, a half order of pan crisped polenta topped with a sweet and sour eggplant tomato ragout had a perfectly executed polenta that balanced the crisp exterior and creamy grit interior, and the ragout was very flavorful, a chunky sauce that gave you both the sweet and tart of tomato.
For the mains, the red wine braised seitan short rib with olive oil mashed potatoes, amaranth, lemon and fried garlic (we ordered a half portion) was more of a typical vegan dish (albeit excellent for being vegan) where it was clear that the seitan couldn't compare with real meat. But, the dish itself, if judged on its own and not as a short rib, was flavorful although texturewise all soft. It would have been a nice touch if the fried garlic has been more fried, adding some crispness. Look how meaty the seitan looks appearance wise though I missed the richness and tiny bit of gristle that real short rib would have had. As a vegan dish it was good- but the short rib adjective set the dish up to where it couldn't reach.
The "stravagante pollo falso", with gardein chick'n topped with thinly sliced daiya cheese and field roast mushroom loaf, herbs, and marsala wine jus (also a half portion pictured here!) was really outstanding. This was something that could definitely compete with a real chicken dish, and even trounce many normal implementations.
The "chicken" here, the gardein chick'n topped with the mushroom loaf, was the texture of if you had taken a chicken breast and pounded it to tenderness, and the mushroom loaf gave it a tinge of salty toughness on top almost like a skin. The cheese and the jus gave the whole dish a creamy richness almost like it had been cooked in chicken stock, and the entire dish was juicy. Throw in a starch and veggie onto the dish and you could believe it was up to par with any normal meat entree dish at any other restaurant… and the fact it beats the moistness level of most chicken dishes makes it even better. I wish it had come with olive oil mashed potatoes like the short rib dish or some sort of side to absorb those juices.
So my overall impression? Like any restaurant there are some hits and misses- but the misses aren't terrible, just didn't live up to full potential. Sometimes vegan food can be very dry or limited in taste because they dial back not only the meat but also unhealthy components like fats that make food taste good (heh my opinion anyway), but Portobello doesn't suffer from this at all. It draws from ingredients that already pack a lot of flavor, and they buy it fresh. If you have a veggie or vegan dining companion, they will definitely enjoy this, "a night dining out" with all food done vegan- and the whole menu to choose from instead of just one or two choices and sometimes after verbal negotiation with the waiter/chef.
If you are looking to replace a restaurant dining experience that offers meat on the menu with an evening at Portobello and do eat meat, go in looking for something that tastes good, but doesn't necessarily need to compare/replace meat. It would be like going to a French-Japanese restaurant and lamenting that the food isn't French enough even though the food is tasty. As a restaurant, Portobello gives you what it advertises- a trattoria experience, simple, casual, but good, but defined on its own terms. The flavors their dishes offers that seem simple are not simple at all because the flavors have been carefully constructed to parallell traditional dishes in a vegan way. Sometimes this makes it better then the traditional dish- and sometimes it just makes it a different kind of dish.
As for dessert? After being torn about the tiramisu, we passed (though we sorta wish we hadn't in retrospect). Beermongers is basically next door, so we stopped there for some interesting beer. Dogfish Head's Theobroma peaked our interest first since no Dogfish beer has been disliked. Theobroma ("food of the gods") is an ale brewed with honey, Aztec cocoa nibs, cocoa powder, ancho chilies and ground annato.
We also tried two Mikkeller barrel aged Black Hole bottles- both were stouts brewed with coffee, honey, and vanilla. However, one was aged in rum barrels (giving it a smoky flavor), and another bottle had that same beer aged in red wine barrels (giving it more acid background). There are two other versions of this- aged in scotch peat whiskey barrels and aged in bourbon barrels- which unfortunately Beermongers didn't have anymore. Wha
t an awesome series though, and it was very cool to be doing vertical tasting with that same stout backdrop.
All these beers gave us a little munchie craving, so we got a takeout Arrabiata pizza from Portobello. Beermongers doesn't serve any food, but they allow you to bring any food you want in. The Arrabiata had chile-fennel marinara, hot cherry peppers, "sausage" and daiya cheese. It's a thin crust, and we wish it just had a little more sauce. The sausage is cut into slices and spread, rather then crumbled I would have preferred to to spread that taste out all over and I could get that meaty burst in every bite.
This little corner at SE 12th and Division, with Portobello and Beermongers which both change their menu offerings per what is available and seasonally, certainly has some unusual tastebud offerings if you want to try exploring the definitions of traditional flavor profiles of food and going to whole new places in drink.
The only picture of me at the cheese party, sadly. In the mirror… as we were setting up with guests arriving.
Table filling up with cheese… the goat cheese we made is out in the front in this photo, and you can spread it on a baguette and top with basil/mint/sage and/or pinot noir jam and/or honey balsamic vinegar. Most of the wines for the evening were reds, though some beer also got thrown into the mix later.
Examples of the pao de queijo… I decided to try a new version of the recipe I found because it is less fat (uses olive oil, less cheese) then the version I usually make. It also uses a blender instead of hand-kneading, which resulted in much more fluffy version.
However, I think I may still make the other version which is denser and chewier, and offers more savory cheesiness.
Current homemade chevre progress… just unmolded yesterday morning after 12 hours of curdling, 24 hours of draining in mold. Then it needs 24 more hours of draining through the bamboo. 12 hours to go, and we'll wrap it tonight! We haven't decided what we wanted to roll it in yet. We do have sweet basil, mint, and sage in our herb garden.
Inspired by Steve's Cheese and Ten01's Cheese Spectacular, I've decided to make my own cheese party version at my home this coming weekend. Mine will not have 100 cheeses. But, I still want that same casual atmosphere of going up to stations of cheese to try a taste and mingling cocktail style, but without the complication of fancy hors d'oeuvres or dinner or managing a bar. I asked everyone to bring a favorite cheese/beverage pairing, or a dish with a cheese ingredient. So for the most part I'm not sure what I'm going to get, though I am guessing most are going to lean towards the cheese and wine route.
I've been trying to brainstorm how to make sure everyone enjoys cheese as much as I do at this get-together, at least the part I can contribute/control. I think it's about both sharing with each other our favorite cheeses as well as throwing in something new to try, and balancing that with interesting assortments of beer and wine and other accompaniments. And, to me, a delicious time is to tickle all those tastebuds: sweet, savory, salty, spicy, sour and bitter.
Obviously the cheese is offering the savory. I have decided on three cheeses to offer.
JUST THE CHEESE
I am guessing that everyone will end up eating 4-6 oz overall of cheese, divided
among all the cheese options available.I think if I bring three cheeses, there's a likelihood that there will end up being eight cheeses at least, which is quite an assortment.
So, first the familiar. I have planned
So something new. We want to offer
DRINKS
We have other white and red wine, various beer, Coke and Sprite, lemonade,
pitcher of mixed juice beverage, and water. The lemonade is going to be made quite sour, while the fruity beverage will be sweet.
ACCOMPANIMENTS
We will provide
Salt-wise, there are
For sour, I am going with
Deschutes Street Fare was a street festival event that featured sampler size street fare from ten food carts, paired with Deschutes beer tasters, to benefit Morrison Child and Family Services. It's just getting summer-like hot in the past day or so, which meant that when the gates opened at 5pm there was full on sunshine and sweat as everyone seemed to come directly from work. Within a few hours, it started to calm down so everyone was no longer elbow to elbow, and half the street started to get some shade as the sun went on its way down.
Except for the crowd (which was a good thing for Morrison, but meant that when the space got full it was very uncomfortable and they even limited admission for a while because of reaching capacity… not sure how you calculate capacity on a street but I'm sure there must be an algorithm), I have no real complaints. Obviously, they were not sure what the turn-out was going to be, and since they had only set aside the outside block between Deschutes and Armory and no space inside Deschutes itself there wasn't a lot of space to go to. As comparison, the Beer n Burgers Event had also only been a block and that space had been fine (not even included the sidewalk), though they also only had 5 stands, not 10, and no musicians or stages.
I got a sampler pass, which got me in the door and also 7 tokens for $25, allowing me to sample 7 out of the 10 pairings. I carefully tried to plan my calories for the day based on this. When I arrived, the line for prepaid vs at the door was the same, so apparently the only advantage was that online you could pay with a credit card while at the door was cash only, and even those who had already decided what to buy got to enjoy everyone at the door reading through how many carts there were and trying to guesstimate how many tokens to get. I wish there were more reward for those who plan ahead and guarantee a paid sale before the event, but I also had the advantage of already knowing my cart visit order.
First was Slow & Low, for their cantonese pork belly Bahn Mi with housemade kimchi, kimchi mayo, cilantro, iceburg lettuce, and fennel pickle, paired with Cascade Ale. This was very satisfying, though there was a little too much bread competing with that tasty pork belly. Needed less doughy bread, or more belly (fat and all, as I would expect from a traditioanl bahn mi). Cascade went so naturally with this I didn't even think about it.
Next was a stop at Grilled Cheese Grill, which has been on my wishlist for a while, and still is after this tasty example of a jalapeno popper sandwich of roasted jalapeno peppers with colby jack cheese, cream cheese, crumbled corn tortilla chips on grilled sourdough bread. It was matched with a green lakes organic ale to try to cool the spice. Extra love for them because they gave out branded frisbees, which were great for balancing food and drink while standing. I saw that some thought this had too much heat and couldn't finish it, but I had no problems.
Garden State came with their famous meatball parmesan sliders with all natural beef and pork in a big meatball covered with mozzarella and marinara, paired with Mt St Hellens keller beer. It is as seriously filling as it appears.
Mum's Kitchen offered a South African influenced Indian spicy garlic pork curry with fresh squeezed IPA, a pairing which just didn't work for me.
My palatte was immediately refreshed and cheered by Flavour Spot's sausage&maple dutch taco (waffle sandwich) and their maple pecan version, both paired with maiboc. Extra shoutout for providing their branded wet naps for sticky finger cleanup, so thoughtful.
Potato Champion's poutine from Spudnik, paired with alma NWPA, met expectations. Really though, getting the real deal from the cart at SE 12th and Hawthorne after a few drinks where it is more loaded with gravy and chunks of rogue cheese can't compare to a sampler.
The excellent finish was Oregon Ice Works strawberry gelato, which I had with Green Lakes Organic Ale. The strawberry was the best of the three offerings they had, the other three being peach and chocolate black butte porter.
This means I passed on Whiffie's bbq brisket and mozzarella fried pie paired with Hop in the Dark- I was tempted for the beer alone, it being the only dark beer, but I had Whiffie's already at the Bite. For similar reasons of having experienced them before, I passed on Pyro Pizza and their margherita pizza on wheat crust with Twilight ale. I also passed on Ali Baba's gluten free chicken and kabob with gluten free pale ale, though the gluten free pairing was clever.
There are always survival strategies for food festivals. Back in Chicago, for Taste of Chicago, being the monstrous mess it was in terms of being spread out and full of so many people, it meant planning ahead to map what food you wanted, in order of how much you wanted the item and based on location, estimating the ticket cost (you paid for food in tickets), finding people to share items which were not available in "bite" portions who had the same taste, bringing your own beverages, and planning off times such as on a weekday and eating times (not so crowded that you had to wait in really lines, not so dead that food was just sitting around).
It's understandable to charge an admission fee- but payees
want to see the admission fee well at work at the event- and remember they might
be comparing multiple events offerings/costs. Particularly, Bite of Oregon comes after the Oregon Brewer's Festival, which in comparison has no admission fee but does require a one time $5 mug purchase if you wish to drink. For Bite of Oregon, the $8 per day is in otherwise high. Tip number one, there are always coupons and free passes given away by radio shows. This year they had a deal on Groupon even and did a two for the price of one weekend pass, which worked out for me to buy two admissions, and I went two days, which spread out the cost of admission to $10 for two people on Friday and me again on Sunday (and I could have gone Saturday but was too full and tired, so that is on me). Those seem like pretty acceptable costs, especially given the benefit to Special Olympics. The fact that the line for those paying at the door was moving twice as fast as the line of those who had prepaid- not so great. Oh, and try going though the gates on the waterfront side, not the street side where everyone who parked/public transited came from.
Second, the best part of the Bite has been the Wine Pavilion, not the food, because there is very limited representation of different restaurants and of those restaurants, even a smaller amount offering interesting foods that you couldn't just get anywhere else. Unlike other festivals where there are many wine booths and no place to just sit and relax, the atmosphere of the Bite allows you to get tastings and talk to the winemakers at your leisure because of their setup. Taste at a few booths, come back after eating a bit, or go sit in the shade for a while to chat, etc. No one is too intoxicated because drinking a lot is the not the main goal of the Bite, even if it's the Bite's best offering. For the chance to see this many winemakers in one place that includes tables and chairs and even several tents for shade, and several spread out bathroom locations (ok, still honey buckets) at a location easily accessible by public transit, the admission here isn't too bad. I created a "prioritized vendor list" to the wine area, even those I had visited before to see what new bottles they were now offering. And, the area is so small that there isn't a need to worry about mapping locations like the OBF.
Finally, don't plan to really get full here. I expect to try different tastes at the Bite, not have a meal's worth. I know it's advertised as Bite of Oregon, but when you see there are actually only 13 restaurants, 5 food carts, and 8 dessert booths, and of those 20 are from Portland, and realizing that just like many street food festivals restaurants are inevitably going to pick what's easy and cost efficient in this kind of outdoor atmosphere rather then what best exemplifies their restaurant/is tasty… so you need to set your expectations realistically. There's going to be the pizza or stir fry in a chafing dish or grilled/bbqed standbys that are usually forgettable, and lower the tasting list even more. It's sort of sad to think that event the Spring Beer and Wine Festival had more diverse offerings. I didn't even need to write anything down food-wise.
What drew me back to the Bite was the Oregon Chef's Table tent, and this is where you should look for offerings next year too. There, a
few restaurants hold a shift of 4 hours or so offering some examples of
what is served at their restaurant. Everything is in a taste portion, a
la Top Chef style during their episode challenges. This was the only authentic representation of
exploring new food that the Bite had (besides an offering of a few
food carts, which is nice for those who don't work downtown or come late
night to catch these carts- though honestly, the Food Cart Festival was
a better example of taste exploration then this, offering more variety
then the Bite).
Take my Sunday visit. Here is what I had.
A taste of the award winning chili by Bill Hess, the Southern Oregon Regional Chili winner. Ok, maybe two tastes. And, this was free.
During the rest of my brief two hour snack visit, I sampled three interesting taste portions, and all were from Oregon's Chef Table for $3 and I didn't even have to buy a happy hour drink.
From Alu Wine Bar and Restaurant, a house smoked salmon with radicchio and kumquat salad with a tamarind reduction and poppyseed lavosh. Although I appreciated the nice mound of smoked salmon in the portion, this was a bit of a mess to eat in this atmosphere. You can't really get this all together in a bite.
From Soluna Grill, an ambitious concept considering this venue, their taste portion was oregon mushrooms, caramelized shallots, bacon, and roasted garlic corn flan. This looked beautiful, though the flan was a bit bland without making sure your forkful had the other accompaniments on it as well. And, as long as you assembled your bitefuls strategically, it was pretty tasty though a little on the saltier side for me.
From Pitxi Restaurant and Wine Bar, my favorite Oregon Chef's Table offering, a duck mousseline with berry chutney. This was a great snack in the bright summer sunshine, simple to prepare and assemble (and thus smart), but with bold flavors melding both rich savory and fresh tartness well in a package that works well for an outdoor summer festival like this.
I still give a hand to these Oregon's Chef Table chefs for rising to this mini-Top Chef challenge. And, maybe Bite organizers should hang out with organizers of the Food Cart Festival, of the Portland Monthly/Deschutes Beer n Burger, and this week, the Deschutes Street Fare, for some event planning advice, and how to get restaurant vendors to step up to showing their signature fare. Really, I can see the logistical argument being difficult on how to get restaurants several hours away from all over Oregon to camp here for a weekend feeding masses of people who probably will not make it to their actual location and make it worth their while to market to them… unless it was wrapped up much more obviously and neatly into a coastal or dessert or central oregon staycation or long weekend trip, those "zones" on the map aren't cutting it.
And honestly, we don't need all fancy restaurants or gourmet tastes to be added- even just a lot of ethnic restaurants offering examples to open up tastebuds to different cultural cuisines that some may not have ever tried. You might not commit to walking into for dinner but a taste of something you've never had of… isn't that what this is supposed to be about, some food exploration? Why not even go "International" instead of "Oregon"?
You can get a good experience out of anything- you just need to set your expectations and plan according to what is the most realistic return on your resources. I can see Bite is trying to grow, thanks to the addition of Food Carts this year and partner with Groupon- I hope they continue to think long and harder for next year. There's potential, but probably only so much patience by those coming to give the event another try while waiting for the Bite Organizers to understand and deliver to their audience.
I woke up at 6am this morning, excited that today I was making cheese. Actually, I did that on Thursday too, but then realized I still had to go through Friday. But, today was the day!
HipCooks is a studio located in Northeast Portland, actually tantalizing only a few steps away from Tasty N Sons and Pix Patisserie. The Cheese Whiz class, taught by Cheyenne, ran from 11am to a little past 2pm, but she made sure to let know in advance that as we were classing through lunch, we should plan to have eaten beforehand. I found out later that most of the classes they teach there's a lot more eating apparently and this one is more "workshop". Have breakfast and you'll be good.
We made 5 fresh cheeses,which included from easiest to hardest, fromage fort, mascarpone, ricotta, goat cheese, and mozzarella, though actually we made the fromage fort last as it took the least amount of prep time and waiting until it was ready to eat. The cheeses were made in a shared hands-on experience of generally groups of 4-5 and a total class size of 14. We also then ate each of these cheeses in her suggested recipe for serving, though at that point with the breaking out of the wine, a light effervescent white Vinho Verde, we also broke out into more socializing and conversation subgroups during actual recipe/eating time and she had to recruit single/pairs of helpers for the "using the cheese in a recipe" preparation.
BTW, the Vinho Verde is an easy to drink wine that would please anyone with its light flavor with little bubbles, and has low alcohol content so everyone can drink freely with less worry about quantity! During the class, they also had water and a pitcher of minty tea to keep us hydrated. After class, she had put together some small cheese starter kits that were optional for purchase, a great idea since otherwise you might have to stop at a few locations. I almost wish they stocked everything they used equipment, and the wine. Particularly I strongly feel the need for a Creuset.
Fromage fort is the meatloaf equivalent to using a bunch of random cheeses, and is more assembling and putting together then real preparation of cheese, though you need a food processor and some already existing cheeses (though whatever leftover cheese you use doesn't matter). This was garlicky cheesy goodness that we spread onto some baguettes that had just been toasted in the oven. It takes longer to toast the bread then it does to do any of the prep/putting together! Awesome hat trick to pull out for easy entertaining snacks if you like to have cheese in the fridge to snack on anyway.
Meanwhile, the mascarpone only needed a few steps, literally heat the milk, add the acid, flavor, and chill. We talked about different options for flavoring mascarpone since so many mascarpone you can purchase in the store already come somewhat flavored… and we all got passed spoons to taste virgin mascarpone right then and there, and then after flavoring, and then it went to the fridge for a couple hours and that's it. The particular recipe for this class was to use the mascarpone, sweetened with vanilla paste and lemon zest, into mini-sandwiches between sliced poached apricots and rolling the outside with pistachios to make very light dessert bites.
The ricotta was our first visit into really seeing the curds and whey separating after heating, and using the cheese cloth to assist in that separation over time. It was funny as we passed the bowl around to poke the curd (with clean fingers!) to get a feel for it. The final recipe for the ricotta was to pipe it into roasted tomato halves and drizzle some olive oil and fresh basil.
The goat cheese was only more difficult because it was more a test of patience. Unlike the fromage fort which had no weight until you could eat it, or the mascarpone which would sit in the fridge chilling, or the ricotta which would sit draining, the goat cheese includes putting the curds into molds and waiting for the whey to drain. As the whey drains, the curd compresses into the mold, which means you can fit more curd… so it was almost like watching water boil in the sense that you had a bowl of curd still and really wanted to stuff it all into the mold, but had to wait for draining.
After the molds are finally really full and you've got all the curd you can fit, the goat cheese can be left to age much longer then the other fresh cheeses we learned about- more patience testing. The cheese below was made using the molds in the photo above- look at all that compression, it's like half the size! Although Cheyenne was using a fancy mold she had been gifted with, she explained we could use anything as long as there was drainage for the whey- including empty yogurt containers with holds punched in. We talked about various ways to flavor the goat cheese, both during the making of it or as we did in this class, by rolling it in extra flavor such as freshly chopped herbs. After that, the spreading of the herb goat cheese chevre onto toasted crusty bread is super easy.
The fresh mozzarella took the most steps, and is apparently a fussy fresh cheese. She made sure to explain how many times she failed in trying to make it, how she kept a cheese journal on all her attempts trying to track her attempts, and how to tell it's not turning out as it's much more temperature sensitive and milk sensitive, and what to do if the mozzarella doesn't quite turn out (put it in lasagna/treat it like ricotta!)
Everyone in class all made a watery mess everywhere on the counter in forming our mozzarella balls as we kneaded and stretched by hand cheese that had just been poached in hot whey. Mozzarella also has an extra complication in which after you have separated the curd from whey, you then return the curd to hot whey later in order to make balls step… which leeches out whey which you want somewhat but you don't want the mozzarella to be dry either, which can be based on how much handling of the cheese you do or the temperature of the whey. Temperate mozzarella!
The shape of the balls and size didn't matter though in this case, since they were then cut to be used for pizza bianca (just on top of dough with olive oil and basil).
This class was really fun, and the entire 3 hours well thought out to keep everyone interested. Her teaching style is laid back but also detailed because she had a lot of knowledge and experience, and explained in a way understandable to anyone. She emails after class out all the instructions, including where to buy various supplies/ingredients and tips for preparation/Plan B if the cheese making didn't work out, and the recipes as an initial idea of what to do once the cheese was finished. This makes you less focused on reading a list of instructions or writing notes and more on just listening and watching and feeling and tasting, like a bunch of little apprentices. It was like she was a friend you have that knows how to cook but also knows better then to try to impress you with techniques or references to what others in the professional industry do- she knows you care about putting together good food not being fancy, so focuses on teaching in a very practical way, including her own personal stories from the everyday attempts. The entire format made this Cheesemaking 101 very approachable and seemingly easy.
I would recommend this Cheese Whiz class to anyone who loves cheese and is interested in getting a good basic introduction to what is the cheesemaking process and foundation of some easy make at home cheese with very little time, effort, or equipment. No special terminology of French words that have you looking for a dictionary or chemistry science in this class beyond reading a thermometer- just practical DIY cheese loving that includes making and eating and is a mix of demonstration by the instructor as well as a little hands on, sampling and touching mid process to get a feel, and then enjoying samples of the fruits at the end of class.
Despite telling us to eat beforehand, everyone left really stuffed from tasting milk and cheese as we were working, and then the final products which included basically 3 appetizers (on bread or tomato), a main (the pizza) and a dessert (the apricot and mascarpone) from the 5 fresh cheeses we had practiced creating. In fact, I was so full after this class I couldn't make it back to the Bite… though admittedly we got distracted exploring Mississippi Avenue as well. I do plan to go tomorrow.
pech 