Ingredients: * 2 to 3 tablespoons pastured lard, bacon fat or coconut oil * 1 small onion, minced * 2 garlic cloves, minced * 1/4 cup tomato paste, preferably homemade * 1/2 cup cider vinegar * 1 cup blackstrap molasses * 1 cup whole, unrefined evaporated cane juice * 2 tablespoons fish sauce * 1/2 teaspoon unrefined sea salt * 2 tablespoons onion powder * 2 tablespoons garlic powder * up to 2 tablespoons chipotle chili powder
Equipment * saucepan * woodenspoon * quart-sized mason jar with lid
Method 1. Melt up to three tablespoon pastured lard, bacon fat or coconut oil over a medium flame, then toss in the minced onion and garlic. 2. Fry the minced onion and garlic in the hot fat until fragrant and translucent. Allow its edges to caramelize a bit. 3. Reduce the heat to low, then spoon about 1/4 cup tomato paste into the saucepan. Take care because the tomato paste could splatter in the hot fat. 4. Stir one cup molasses, one cup whole unrefined evaporated cane juice and two tablespoons fish sauce into the tomato paste. Continue to stir the sauce together until the molasses completely dissolves into the tomato paste and the sauce becomes uniform in color. 5. Stir unrefined sea salt, onion powder and garlic powder into the sauce and continue to stir until the flavorings are fully dissolved in the sauce. 6. Gently and incrementally spoon the chipotle chili powder into the sauce, tasting it periodically and adding only as much heat as you can handle. Remember, the heat of the chili powder will increase as the sauce cooks and ages, so it may be wise to under-season it. 7. Continue to cook over a low flame for another twenty minutes, taking care not to let the sauce bubble. 8. Pour the sauce into a quart-sized mason jar and place it in the refrigerator. 9. Allow the flavors to marry for at least a day before you plan to serve the homemade barbecue sauce.
YIELD: about 1 quart
TIME: about 30 minutes (preparation and cooking), 24 hours to set
NOTE: While you can serve it immediately, this homemade barbecue sauce can really benefit from a day to allow the flavors to marry. If you serve it too soon, you will be able to distinctly identify the sauce’s prominent flavors individually: molasses, tomato, fish sauce, but by allowing it to rest for a day before you plan to serve it, those dominant flavors will mellow a bit as they marry together for a strikingly sweet and hot barbecue sauce. It will keep, refrigerated, for six months or longer.
Cheese from Kefir Cheese is most easily made from kefir. For a hugely extensive read on the subject of kefir and the cheese you make from it click here, however, he does not cover my favorite kind of kefir, which uses no grains, so you can start right away without finding a starter culture. Here's how to do that: 1 tablespoon of raw honey in one quart of raw milk. Leave this at room temperature for 12-48 hours, until it sours. It may take even longer for the first couple of batches depending on your ambient temperature and your honey's enzymatic activity, etc. The kefir is done when it is sour, slightly thickened, and not yet separated into curds and whey. On the first batch, the results are not usually very tasty, so you can take 1/4 cup of the finished kefir out as starter for your next batch, and then let the rest sit until it separates, and even a bit longer. This will become your cheese. Start your second batch by adding that 1/4 c kefir to a new quart (or two) of milk and waiting. Repeat for the third batch. You can expect a great-tasting (less pungent) kefir on your third batch.
To make the cheese: Do not use cheesecloth for cheese, because the holes are too big to use only a single layer and it is not reusable. Instead, use unbleached muslin, which is cheap and reusable and has exactly the right filter size for cheese. Line a colander with the muslin and set it in a large bowl so you can collect and save your whey for other uses. Dump in all the curdled kefir. Don't be alarmed if it smells very strong. As long as the smell is not like acetone or particularly "gross", you are on the right side of the microbial population. The sharpness of the smell (almost burns your nostrils) decreases later in the process. It is fine (and often important) to taste the cheese at any point in the process. Collect the whey that comes off immediately, and put it in a jar in the fridge. then set the whole operation in your soaking cabinet (or on the counter) and leave overnight to drain. When you come back to it, stir it to help it continue draining. Repeat this every few hours until the curds are not very glossy. Remember to get rid of the whey in the draining bowl each time. You can dump it or save it. Either is fine. Now salt your cheese to taste. The flavor will be quite unpleasant without salting, so taste it several times after you've mixed each addition of salt in well. You want to get the salt right! Next, pick up the corners of the muslin and gather them together, twist them all tightly together and twist up the ball of cheese in order to squeeze out more moisture. Tuck the "tail" of the cloth under the ball and set it back in the colander. Now, each time you visit your cheese, give it a little twist. You will be amazed at how much whey comes out of that curd! Eventually, your cheese will dry, in its cloth, to be quite firm to the touch. Now you can unwrap it and oil it all over with olive oil or butter. Do this each day for 2 weeks. This step prevents the growth of surface mold. Then coat the entire thing with beeswax and put away to age for at least 3 months. After the salting stage, you have a very nice, spreadable cream cheese which you can use with no further attention. The cream cheese is great on soaked dough flat bread, which you can make with some of that whey in the fridge.
Butter Cream is fairly easy to skim, but even easier to buy, since skim milk is not really suitable for human consumption. If you must skim your own, it is pretty easy to cut off the top of a milk jug once the cream has solidly risen (give it a couple days). Or set it in a bowl to rise, to make skimming easier. To make butter, use an electric mixer. Start with the cream at room temperature and beat it on the highest speed with your hand or stand mixer. It will go through the whipped stage and start to clump after that, getting yellower all the while. You will begin to think it looks like butter before it is butter. Don't give up! Keep beating, periodically scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber scraper. Then, fairly suddenly, the buttermilk will "fall" out. The first clue that this has happened is always the feeling of splattering buttermilk on my hand. At this point, stop the mixer and look, and you will see the oddly- colored buttermilk in the bottom of the bowl. Use a large spoon to press clumps of butter together off to one side of the bowl. Pick up this clump and form into a ball with your hands. Rinse it in a bowl of cold filtered water and then squash it again and rinse it again. If the water is sufficiently cold, the butter should not stick to your hands. Rinse a few more times until the buttermilk is all out. Stuff it in a jar, and there you go! Salt is also recommended by some, but I don't bother. I just add salt when I use it
Ricotta cheese Heat 1 gallon of milk to 206 degrees and then stir in 1/4 cup cider vinegar. Then drain the curds into a colander (you can get rid of the whey, it's wasteful but there is no real usefulness in it because it is so acidic, except apparently, if you want to feed it to acid-loving plants) for a few minutes. Put curds in a bowl. You can also add 3 tbsp soft butter and 1/2 tsp baking soda into the curd and mix but this is optional.
Hungarian Easter Cheese 2 dozen eggs ½ tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 qt milk
Beat eggs, salt, sugar and vanilla together in a large bowl. Heat the milk slowly in a large saucepan. Add the egg mixture and stir well. Cook until the cheese comes together in a ball (10-30 min). Line a colander with a cheesecloth and drain cheese for 2 hours. Mold curds into a bowl and refrigerate.
Sunflower Sesame Crackers Presented by Valerie Howells at the February 2010 meeting 1 cup each of sunflower and sesame seeds A little bit of water – about 1/4 cup salt to taste (optional)
In a food processor (or by hand if you’re game), create a sort of flour from the sunflower seeds. It will take about 2- 3 minutes for the seeds to break down and turn into a more flour-like consistency, although it will be thicker and heavier than regular flour. Add the sesame seeds (and salt, if desired) and pulse a few times (or mix in by hand) and then slowly add water, stirring or pulsing until a thick paste forms that can be rolled out. Between two greased pieces of baking (parchment) paper, roll out the paste as thinly as you can. Remove the upper piece of parchment. Lightly score the batter into squares with a sharp knife, and sprinkle with salt and pepper/herbs if you'd like.
LIVER SAUSAGE Shared on the Realnutrition Yahoo group - here
The amounts do not have to be exact. It is recommended that you use 2 or more kinds of liver. Pork/beef hearts or beef tongue can be used. They are all rich meats. If introducing liversausage to picky eaters, try using more ‘meat’ and less liver. For pork belly &/or salt pork, you can substitute nitrate free bacon/ham (ends if available). Remember to ask your butcher to grind these for you if you do not have a grinder. After in the kitchen left, I added more onion powder, more ginger AND clove to the recipe on my last batch. I liked the extra flavor. I changed it here to reflect the change I made.
1 TBSP ground clove 2.5 TBSP Salt 2 TBSP Onion Powder 2 tsp Pepper ½ tsp Coriander ½ tsp Nutmeg ½ tsp Ground Mustard Seed ¼ tsp Sage ¼ tsp Marjoram 4 tsp Ginger
Working with Coconut Flour from ehow How to Make When wheat flour isn't an option in baking, whether that is due to a gluten allergy or a low-carbohydrate lifestyle, coconut flour is a viable alternative to a certain degree--plus, it's high in fiber. Coconut flour cannot be substituted cup for cup with wheat flour, as the resulting texture of the baked good is far too dense. Store-bought coconut flours, such as from Bob's Red Mill, can be more expensive than wheat flour. So instead of purchasing it, make your own coconut flour from coconut flakes while also making a byproduct of fresh coconut milk.
1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes 4 cups water
Soak 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes in 4 cups water for several hours.
Transfer the coconut and water mixture to a food processor and process until smooth.
Strain the mixture through a cheesecloth; squeeze to get out the most liquid. This liquid is your coconut milk Transfer the liquid to a container and refrigerate.
Spread the pulp from the cheesecloth onto a baking sheet.
In a 200-degree oven, bake the pulp until dry.
Grind the dried pulp until you have a fine powder texture
Use the same amount of coconut flour as wheat flour, but add one additional egg for each ounce of coconut flour. This will help the flour to stick together.
Mix coconut flour and wheat flour in baking recipes by replacing 10 to 20 percent of the wheat flour in the original recipe with coconut flour, then adding an equal portion of water to coconut flour. You can also use coconut oil or coconut milk instead of water.
Add more sugar than required in the recipe. If you want to avoid adding more sugar, add more liquid.
Grease your pan with coconut oil and lecithin to prevent cookies, cakes and so on from sticking.
Watch the oven carefully. Recipes with coconut flour can take half as much time to cook as wheat flour recipes at the same temperature.
Cilantro Chelation Pesto 4 cloves garlic 1/3 cup Brazil nuts (selenium) 1/3 cup sunflower seeds (cysteine) 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds (zinc, magnesium) 2 cups packed fresh cilantro (coriander, Chinese parsley) (vitamin A) 2/3 cup flaxseed oil 4 tablespoons lemon juice (vitamin C) 2 tsp dulse powder Sea salt to taste
Process the cilantro and flaxseed oil in a blender until the coriander is chopped. Add the garlic, nuts and seeds, dulse and lemon juice and mix until the mixture is finely blended into a paste. Add a pinch to sea salt to taste and blend again. Store in dark glass jars if possible. It freezes well, so purchase cilantro in season and fill enough jars to last through the year.
Cilantro has been proven to chelate toxic metals from our bodies in a relatively short period of time. Combined with the benefits of the other ingredients, this recipe is a powerful tissue cleanser.
Two teaspoons of this pesto daily for three weeks is purportedly enough to increase the urinary excretion of mercury, lead and aluminum, thus effectively removing these toxic metals from our bodies. We can consider doing this cleanse for three weeks at least once a year. The pesto is delicious on toast, baked potatoes, and pasta.
Pancakes and Waffles Prep the night before Presented by Dan Juffernbruch, June 11, 2011 Soured raw milk Freshly milled flour Use amounts called for in your favorite recipe Mix ingredients together the night before making pancakes or waffles. Cover the bowl and leave at room temperature overnight. In the morning, add remaining ingredients and proceed according to your recipe's instructions.