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Image source: New York Times

So that yogurt recipe? Yeah, it works (with a little bit of help from a more technical recipe).

Oh, and it’s delicious. 

It’s less gelatinous and more delicate than store-bought versions since there are no stabilisers. Flavour-wise, none of the sourness but still tart. It’s probably the healthiest yogurt you can have.

Like bread starters, you can reserve some from each batch to make subsequent batches. Since it keeps for up to two months, you could potentially have yogurt for the rest of your life at the price of milk.

A little planning and preparation makes the whole process go by very smoothly. Having all the equipment ready to go before you start and your incubator definitely helps, and choose a day where you can have four whole uninterrupted hours. 

Homemade yogurt
Based heavily from here. Less science-y, more brevity. Makes 4 quarts / 3.75 litres.

• 1 gallon of whole milk. Whole milk means a richer flavour, but most importantly, make sure it’s as fresh as possible. (I used organic Straus whole milk.)
• 1 cup of plain yogurt. Look for yogurt with ingredients that end with -illus and -icus. And, as with the milk, make sure it’s super fresh. (I used organic Straus plain whole milk yogurt.) (Keepin it Straus, sugar.)
• Srsly. THAT’S IT.*

Bring the milk to just below boiling over a medium heat in a thick-bottomed pot. Don’t burn the milk nor boil it. Stir occasionally.

Submerge the pot in a dish with cold water and bring the temperature down to 50ºC /  122ºF. Best way to determine this without a thermometer is to do the bottle test — put a few drops of milk on the inside of your wrist. It should be warm without burning.

Pour 1 cup of the cooled milk into a measuring jug, then add enough yogurt until it makes 2 cups. Mix thoroughly until completely incorporated, then add to the remaining cooled milk and stir thoroughly again.

Divide the milk between your containers, seal immediately, and then incubate for 3 hours. Don’t jiggle or move them during these 3 hours. Take a nap, read a book, run errands, anything — just leave them alone.

After the 3 hours, transfer the yogurt to the fridge to set. If you leave it out any longer then the yogurt will become too acidic, and eventually separate.

For Greek-style yogurt, spoon the yogurt through a collander lined with cheesecloth (some people use a coffee filter) and let the whey drip through for several hours. Apparently the liquid is good for you, so drink up.

* Since I mentioned equipment, you’ll also need:

• Dish of cold water. To cool the milk after you scald it.
• Measuring jug or anything with a cup measurements on it.
• Sterilised containers. Either run them through the dishwasher just beforehand, or if using mason jars, place jars in a pot of water and bring to the boil, then keep boiling for 10 minutes. Run the lids through the hot water too. You can reserve this hot water later for incubation.
• Anything required for your method of incubation. I used the leftover pot of water (for sterilising the jars) as a warm “bath” and put the lid on it. I then filled a deep dish with more hot water, sat the pot inside the dish, then wrapped the lid with a thick towel. Insulating a pot of warm water with hot water, basically. There are many ways to go about it, but the goal is to keep the jars warm for 3 hours at 50ºC / 122ºF. Any higher than this, you’ll kill the bacteria. Any lower than 37ºC / 98º F and the yogurt won’t set. 
• Wooden spoon for stirring.
• Funnel or a soup ladle to distribute the milk into jars.

The recent “biblical Forrest Gump in Vietnam” rain (as a friend appropriately puts it) is apparently what qualifies for winter in San Francisco.

Nobody knows miserable weather like the British, so naturally, traditionally, and deliciously, you can’t go wrong with bangers and mash. Juicy hot bangers (giggle) are often served with

1. Mash
2. Some form of gravy
3. Beer

The mash and beer parts are easily found, but the gravy part is slightly different to your Thanksgiving version in that it’s more like a sauce.

The easiest to make (and also my favourite) is onion gravy. Onions are cheap and all you have to do is let them go to do their sweet sticky onion thang.

Instead of white wine I used beer, since I had no further plans to cook with white wine in the near future. Besides, you can drink the rest of the bottle while you wait for the gravy. Plus if you’re drinking the same beer used in the meal with your meal, it makes for better flavour synergy.

(I totally made that last part up. “Flavour synergy” does sound smart, though.)

Red Onion Gravy
Adapted and modified from a Jamie Oliver recipe.

• 1 vegetable bouillon cube
• 4 red onions, very finely sliced
• A small knob of butter
• Olive oil
• 1 cup of beer (preferably an ale, not something dark like a stout.)
• 2 sprigs of sage, leaves picked and finely sliced
• 1 teaspoon of Worchestershire sauce, or to taste.

Boil just over a cup of water and dissolve the bouillon cube.

Heat a large (and I mean LARGE) frying pan or saucepan with the butter and a dash of olive oil. Sauté the onions for about 40 minutes over medium low heat, until sticky and caramelised.

Add the beer and reduce by half, then add the sage and stock. Season to taste, add the Worchestershire, then bring to the boil. If it’s too watery for your liking, simmer until thickened slightly.

wave-ohs. Baked eggs from Cafe Gitane.

I love eggs. Until this year, I ate those self-contained little palm-sized packages that expand into a squillion forms of deliciousness every single day since forever.

But then, starting a few months ago, my stomach decided that it wanted nothing to do with them. At first I thought it was the bacon that often accompanies the eggs (and if I became bacon intolerant, in all honestly it wouldn’t be as upsetting.) Then I thought it was heavy butter + olive oil use. Which led to blaming my preference for large breakfasts.

It took a boatload of eggs, just as many hours in fetal position, and a bunch of trial and error before I came to the realisation that I have an intolerance to whole eggs. Things like pasta and cake are okay — but they might not be after spending a whole afternoon in bed because of pancakes. Hey, at least it’s not a life-threatening allergy.

Developing food intolerances just happen, even as adults, and there’s nothing you can do except avoid the food you’re intolerant to. I’ve had a good run with eggs and perhaps they will return one day. But I miss you already.

Because latkes are greasier and sexier than leek and potato soup. Especially with meat. Rawr.

Leek and potato latkes
Recipe adapted and modified from here. Makes 8 latkes.

• about a pound / half a kilo of waxy potatoes (like Yukon Gold)
• 2 small leeks, tough green leaves trimmed off and finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon flour (have some more handy in case the mixture gets too watery)
• salt and pepper
• vegetable oil

Bring half a cup of water to the boil in a shallow pan and blanch the leeks for a few minutes until tender. Drain completely and set aside.

Grate the potatoes by hand using the coarse side of a grater (the side with the bigger holes). Squeeze out as much of the water as you can, either by wrapping the grated potato in a tea towel or squeezing by hand over a sink.

Add the garlic, egg, flour, drained leeks and season with salt and pepper. If the mixture is too watery then add more flour — it shouldn’t be like pancake batter, but it shouldn’t be soupy either.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Each latke is should be about 2 tablespoons — spoon carefully into the skillet and flatten. Fry the latkes for 3 minutes on each side until golden and drain on a paper towel.

Serve hot with bratwurst (or any other sausage) and onion gravy.

OH HAYYYY FAT CHOI, ERR’ONE!!!! (Yes, I know, etc.)

Bonus points if you get the Pulp Fiction reference.

Alice Waters calls it “wild mushroom pasta gratin”. Which is basically a fancy way of saying baked mushroom pasta. Especially after blowing a heart-attack amount of money at Bi-Rite, I’m calling this the $24 pasta. 

Because I’m Chinese and inherently a tight ass, I skimped a little here and there, and still managed to make an astoundingly delicious dish. It’s like a lighter but more mushroom forward version of boscaiola.

Maybe it tastes better at $40, but Chez Panisse Vegetables was published in 1996. So we’ll call this the recession buster version.

Recession Buster Wild Mushroom Pasta Gratin
Adapted from Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse Vegetables 

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