Say Cheese!

Every month, my family tries to do "family dinner." It's about gathering together--but it's also about trying new recipes, and spending time creating in the kitchen. Each month we try a different theme: we've done everything from Chinese New Year to "things on sticks".

This month's theme is wine and cheese, (my mother got the Tillamook Cheese Cookbook for Christmas) and we're also using it as a little celebration of my stepfather's 75th birthday.

My mother, sister-in-law and I search for recipes that sound fun, that we want to try, and that my nephews will (most likely) eat while still enhancing both their skills in the kitchen and their inclinations toward new foods.

This month, I'm in charge of "befores" and "afters"--the appetizer and dessert. Before-sies is pretty simple (we always have too much food, and with cheese as our "Iron Chef" ingredient, the trick is to keep things as light as possible), so I'm just doing an herbed brie fondue with crackers and apples. But dessert....

Here in the desert, we've had a very mild winter--despite rain the last two days, and more expected come Monday. Which means that the citrus trees have been very happy. My friend Justine has a lemon tree that has been producing in large quantities, so last weekend I decided to try a new recipe. I took the resulting cheesecake into the office for feedback--and actually got a marriage proposal from the endeavor--from an avouched bachelor. (Don't worry, I was generous, and chalked it up to a temporary loss of wits due to my culinary skills.)

Since I still have quite a few lemons, I decided to make it again for tonight. As cheesecakes go, it's a surprisingly light dessert--and the lemon curd gives it a freshness and zing that I think clears the palate beautifully.

You want the recipe? Here it is:

Lemon Curd Marbled Cheesecake

Lemon Curd:
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh lemon zest (I probably use a little bit more than that--like 3 small lemons worth)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (from those same lemons--it worked out perfectly today!)
1/1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/4 cup butter

Whisk together the zest, juice, sugar and eggs in a saucepan. Add butter and cook over medium low heat, whisking frequently, until the curd thickens so you can see the tracks of the whisk, and it JUST starts to bubble. Pour the curd into a shallow dish to cool. If you're going to make the cheesecake right away, you can cool it uncovered; if you make the curd the night before, cover it by pressing wax paper onto the surface, and stick it in the fridge.

The original recipe says to force the curd through a fine-mesh sieve on its way to the shallow pan, but I just use a super small zesting grater, so that's not necessary for me.

Now, for the Crust:
1 and 1/3 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs (I actually usually use ginger thins, because I like the zing the ginger gives to a cheesecake crust)
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350.
Stir together the "dry" crust ingredients. (NB: I go a little shy on the sugar--and then I add a dry spiced chai mix--which is mostly sugar and spices. Again, zing.) Drizzle in melted butter so the crumbs begin to hold together. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the springform pan until you have an even layer of crust. Put the pan in a shallow pan to bake (sometimes the butter from the crust mixture leaks out the bottom of the springform pan, and this keeps it from dripping on the oven. I hate cleaning ovens. Seriously.) Bake for 10 minutes, then remove and put pan on a rack to cool.

And Now...the Cheese portion of our cheesecake:

3 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

If you're making the cheesecake all in the same day, if you put the cheesecake on or near your stovetop as you're doing everything else, it's just about the perfect softness to work with when you get to this point. If it's too firm, mixing it is a pain in the ass.

Set the oven back to 300 degrees.

Beat the cream cheese and sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth. Then add the eggs one at a time. (Last year, a pastry chef at a cooking demo shared that she liked to work with all her ingredients at room temperature, and that eggs should always be added one at a time. I don't know why, but it works--you get a much smoother product). Beat in the sour cream and vanilla. (Today, I discovered I was out of vanilla, so I substituted a half teaspoon of lemon extract.)

Pour about two thirds of the cheese mixture into the cooled crust. Then spoon about half the lemon curd on top of that. Take a knife and make pretty swirlies through the curd--but don't let the knife hit the crust below. Repeat this with the remaining cheese and curd.

Bake the cheesecake until its set to about 1 and a half inches from the edge--the center should still be a little loosey goosey. It'll set while it's cooling. The baking time is about 45-50 minutes. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack, and cool there for about two hours, then transfer to the fridge and let it cool at least f hours before serving.

It sounds intense, but it really is an easy recipe. And I love love love the results.

And Life Goes On...

Yesterday was momentous. I hope to take some time today to really write down my thoughts more cogently.

Monday was momentous in a different way. My 90 year old grandfather passed away peacefully in his sleep early Monday morning. He had been in extreme pain for about a month (the level of pain prior to that is hard to discern), but was lucid nearly to the end. When he finally decided he had fought long and hard enough, and he let go, he found peace. He was an amazing man, and my last living grandparent. I will miss him, and miss sharing more of my life's adventures with him. It's been hard not to be there to help my dad and aunts and uncle sort through things, but simultaneously it has been nice to not be swamped in it, and to be able to attend to all the issues and energy of beginning a semester.

I actually still haven't really "taught" my theatre history of the Americas class--which meets from 9:30 to 10:45. In this time zone, that was pretty much exactly the length of the inauguration ceremony and speech. I appreciated their accommodation of my schedule. So we watched it in my class as a study of the performance of American Identity. Right.

It was pretty amazing to watch with so many first-time voters, with so many that had never watched an inauguration before. Granted, I hadn't watched the last couple, but I remember watching Clinton's--and actually, I remember Reagan's second one, too. My students were shocked by how much of the arts were represented, by Aretha, by probably the most fabulous quartet possible, by poetry....it should be an interesting discussion on Thursday.

It was also pretty amazing that one of my colleagues brought her scene painting class to join mine. It was great to experiences with the students--but I didn't realize how much more momentous it was to share with someone around my age, who had a similar understanding of the politics of the last two decades. I think we both appreciated the fact that Obama's speech acknowledged the work ahead (which oddly enough made the budget meeting I had later that afternoon much less depressing).

I need to carve out some time to write about this more, to acknowledge the history, to consolidate my friends' experiences...but for now, I have my own hard work to do.

Tea Time

While I did accomplish a thing or two thus far today, I still have quite a bit on the list of things that still need doing.

However, I decided to abandon the office at around four this afternoon, swing by the library to pick up a book that I'm contemplating using for one of my classes, and then came home and made myself some tea.

Honest to goodness, old-school tea. Loose leaves and bits, in my new teapot that has a slick little silver warmer-cover. And I'm drinking it from a Haviland demitasse, no less.

I'd feel a lot more elegant if I weren't in my sweats.

This time of year, I really like to drink hot beverages throughout the day--and frankly, the coffee is beginning to get to me. So...tea. Granted, my favorite at the moment is still a black tea, but it's a mandarin black tea, with these great little curls of mandarin peel in it.

I'm still learning the trick of steeping the tea for just the right amount of time--too long, and it gets bitter.

But there's something lovely about the ritual of tea to me right now, so I'll embrace the process of learning.

New Year, new me?

I'm usually not one for new year's resolutions, and I'm not sure if my determination to get back to being in my whole body and not just my head qualifies, but there you go. 2008 was a tumultuous year, full of extreme highs and lows. I'm ready to take care of myself more in 2009.

Which is why, in part, I started with the soup. (It was a hit, by the way). And why yesterday, instead of punishing myself for not getting through my "to-do" list, I still went for a quick hike in Sabino Canyon with La Essin.

Sabino Canyon is one of those lovely, very popular hiking areas in The Coronado National Forest (for those of you who think "forest" and "desert" are mutually exclusive, think again--but embrace the fact that this particular forest is full of scrubby trees and saguaro at its lower elevations). About five years ago, many of the trails at Sabino Canyon were destroyed by flash flooding, but the folks around here did a lot of fundraising, and now all of the areas are once again open.

Sabino Canyon is a busy place--perhaps busier than places I normally like to hike. Yet it was a gorgeous sunny Saturday afternoon in January, so you put up with a few extra people to feel the sun on your face (and to wear shorts comfortably!). I took a few pictures, but it's hard to capture the ragged expanse of things in the desert.

Despite getting more winded than I wanted (I'd love to blame it on the cold from which I'm still recovering, but really, I've been that much in my head over the past year that my cardio is pretty shot), it felt so GOOD to be out and enjoying the weather. I am determined to do that more.

These posts won't be in order...

Lots of catching up, or starting over with 2009.

But first:

It's not really a new year's resolution, but my crazy colleagues and I are determined to move beyond survival mode after our first semester together this fall, and try to thrive. One of the key issues for all of us (whether it be emotional, psychological, financial, etc), is FOOD. All three of us are single women living alone, and not long ago were bemoaning the issue of fresh veggies going bad before we can eat them solo.

So: this spring, we'll be cooking for each other. The idea is that one of us will cook a big meal a week, and the fourth week of the month we'll try out a new restaurant here in town--treat ourselves, after being economical for the month. We haven't really set a "start" date, but I'm expecting them for dinner tonight.

So I've made soup--or rather, potato/corn chowder.

It's a recipe I've adapted mightily, having had initial success with it after one of my "chill and grills" while living with J & K in Maryland. We had a TON of leftover grilled corn, and I didn't want it to go to waste, SO...

When I can, I make sure the corn and peppers are grilled or roasted, to give a fuller flavor to the soup. Unlike most versions of this chowder, mine's all-veggie--I have too many vegetarian friends, and really, I'm not a big fan of bacon-flavored veggies, anyway. So, here's the version of the soup I made tonight:

Roasted Corn Chowder

About 3-4 cups roasted corn (Trader Joe's has an excellent frozen roasted corn)
About 1/3 cup chopped celery
2 or 3 cloves are garlic, sliced
one red bell pepper
two small sweet orange peppers (these came from the UofA's hydroponic greenhouse--my stepdad hooks me up)
some olive oil
red, white and blue baby potatoes (I like the color variety, and with the baby ones you can leave the skin on and just wash them well)--cubed (I used two of each color)
1 can veggie broth
About 2 cups veggie bouillon
A little over a cup of milk
A tablespoon of flour
some salt
some pepper

Okay, so here's what I do with all that:
First, I cut the peppers in strips, toss them with a little olive oil, and throw them in the oven at about 400 degrees to soften them and give them a little extra flavor. I suppose you could do the same in the soup pot...but I didn't.

I did soften the garlic and celery in a little olive oil in the soup pan...I think doing them all together may cause a little more liquid to be produced than you want at that point.

Anyway, once the celery started getting translucent, I added the peppers (which by them I had removed from the oven, cooled a bit, and diced). Then I added the potatoes, and the broth and bouillon, brought it to a boil, and then simmered it for about ten minutes (while I made some guacamole). Then I added the corn, and let it simmer for another ten minutes or so.

Then I took the flour, milk, salt and pepper and combined it, and then added it to the soup to thicken it--stirred it for about a minute, went and checked my email, came back, and decided since I'd used 1 percent milk, it didn't "look" creamy-colored enough. So I added a splash of heavy cream I had to make some cheesecake later on.

That's it!

The girls should be here shortly, so we'll have the taste-test then. I'll let you know how it turns out.