American Cheese & Pickle

American Cheese & Pickle Sandwich

Construction

We all know that I make a study of British food. What we may not know, since I haven't written the post yet, is that one of my areas of concentration is sandwiches and another is pickle. As in branston pickle. The ease of obtaining a cheese and pickle sandwich is a never ending source of delight... When in the UK.

When in the US, we are more or less fucked. It's possible to import some branston, but it's far from common. The cheddar you can get is never quite right, nor is the bread. Sometimes I try, obsessively, to recreate the exact experience that I've had across the sea.

Sometimes, I give the fuck up. This is a recipe I developed in the kitchens of my old job. Cheese and Pickle with the most American of ingredients possible.

Since the only kind of pickled anything we have here is pickled cucumbers, dill chips are the obvious choice. Since the cheddar is never right anyway, we have some nice american cream cheese. Spreading cream cheese requires toast. This all makes sense.

The results are not unpleasant but they're not British either, like an english muffin. This is a tasty sandwich that makes me feel sad and out of place.

Cheese and Wine

Broiled Provolone

Yes, this is dinner. It's made of cheese.

There's nothing quite like the simplicity of a cheese and wine dinner. Except, of course, it's not simple at all.

Making cheese is a pretty complicated. Have you ever tried it? You can make queso fresca with stuff you've got in your kitchen but even then it's complicated. If you want to make stuff that's going to be aged, pwwft.

Wine is the same way. Think you can just chuck some grapes in the blender, add some time, and get wine out? Well, you can't.

Bread, Cheese, Wine

Even bread. I've made bread. It's not that big a deal. You just add the magic yeast granules and... And oh, right, where do those come from? If you had to make bread with out a packet of fleischmann's yeast would you know how? Will all post-apocalyptic breads be flat?

These days, even the simple pleasures are facilitated by a vast conglomeration of teams of people. And that's a lot of people. Think on that the next time you have a cheese and wine. Though to what end, I have no idea. Really. There's not much of this wine left...

bread and butter

Rakka got this cheese making book. I thought she was taking this whole self-sufficiency lark a bit far, but I picked it up and flipped through it. And of course, I'm the first one to attempt one of the recipes. Butter!

it's butter, which I made

It turns out that making butter is astoundingly easy. You don't need an official churn or anything, just an old pickle jar or something. Make sure to wash it out pretty thoroughly though. Learned that the hard way.

Anyway, put your room temperature heavy cream (has to be heavy milk, learned that one the hard way too) in the jar, put the lid on tight and shake for 5-10 minutes. That's pretty much it. You've just got to pour off the buttermilk, push the rest out with the back of a spoon, and rinse it a bit. You can mix in some salt.

It's the best butter ever.

And the best thing to put it on is homemade bread.

sourdough came out pretty good this time

This is a recipe from the book of bread. Or, two, really. I made the sourdough starter a couple weeks ago. Attempted the bread last weekend, and it sort of worked. It worked better this time, but still not great.

I have a long way to go before I really understand bread. I always end up using nearly twice as much flour as the recipe calls for. The sourdough in particular always sticks to every freaking thing. The work surface, my hands, the bowl, the pan. Everything.

Maybe it's like driving a stick shift. Keep grinding the gears long enough and one day you just get it.

update: changed "whole milk" to "heavy cream". Whole was the stuff I tried the first time, and it didn't work at all.

Green Eggs

I'm not the only person in my house that thinks about food all the time. Rakka's suspect and fugitive involves the nosh quite frequently. She has a pretty different perspective than I do, though. And, of course, she tries not to waste stuff. So...

Green Eggs in Pan

Yes, my eggs are green. And why? Well, 'american ferrera' had to go somewhere.

American Ferrera on Suspect and Fugitive

If it was amusing in the pan, it was frightening in the eggwhich it was destined for. But it was just food die, so it tasted fine. It's like that green ketchup they had for a while.

Green Eggs and Fake Ham

So, if you're the one reader who hasn't seen S&F, now you have no excuses.

Seattle Cheese Festival

I wouldn't be a Seattle Food Blogger if I didn't make it to the Cheese Festival. It's the second year I've gone. It seemed more crowded than last year, even though there were less people. Maybe it was the umbrellas.

People and Cheese

Look at these crowds. They're too big to be fun, really.

More People and More Cheese

What was fun was the "Cheese Nun" movie (scroll down to Friday Afternoon at the Movies). The Cheese Nun, Sister Noella Marcellino, was there to answer questions.

Sister Noella Marcellino, the cheese nun
(sorry about the poor quality photo)

I thought she was just a nun that made really good cheese. It turns out that her desire to make the best cheese she could for her cloister took her to University, where she ended up getting a Doctorate in Microbiology. From there it was off to France to work with cheese researchers. It's a neat story.

So next year I'm just going to the special events. That's where the fun is. The giant crowds around the free cheese tables just aren't worth it. Think about it. How are you really going to appreciate a fine cheese while you're getting elbowed in the face?

road food (oregon coast trip)

My so and I went on a Goonies trip this week. That means driving up and down the Oregon coast, which is fantastic. Since this isn't strictly a Seattle food blog you get to hear about it. The food parts anyway. (If work is really boring today, you can read more about the Goonies parts)

Astoria, OR. Home of tasty mexican

We learned that Astoria sports some incredibly tasty Mexican food at El Ranchero Dos. Of course, it was about 3pm and our first meal of the day. Our judgment may have been... off. I think I would have enjoyed eating a phone book at that point.

Pizza a Feta (Cannon Beach, OR) makes crab pizza

Cannon Beach (home of Haystack Rock, the famous 'Goonies Rock') is an 'upscale resort town', so it's full of over priced surf and turf restaurants. Like Doogers. Which I went to once, and that was enough. Instead Rakka and I wandered around until we found Pizza a Feta. We fell prey to the Coastal Seafood Fever, or CSF, and ordered the crab pizza. Rakka loved it. I thought the crab was good and the pizza was good, but they didn't much meld together. The crust was fantastic.

This is where cheese comes from

Since it was only another 30 miles south (of Cannon Beach) we just had to go to Tillamook, home of Tillamook cheese. They don't have factory tours, they just have a factory with windows. You can walk around the observation deck and watch what goes on. Of course, most of the stuff was closed down for maintenance. They were doing some packing though. I got some video of the magic cheese rotator.



They also have free samples, and a store. At the store you can buy Tillamook cheese at grocery store prices. In other words, no factory special discount.

free samples! the extra sharp cheddar is the best!

Of course, Tillamook also makes ice cream. Since we were on the Goonies tour we got some rocky road.



Oh, and there's a cafe.

the ice cream counter is in the background

I got the grilled cheese. (what else?)

grilled cheese, a pickle and some chips. classic.

Rakka got the 'gobbler', which was a grilled cheese with turkey on. I think she was expecting some fancy stuff like lettuce. It didn't happen. But it was, what, four bucks. Mine was the best grilled cheese I've had in a while. The homestyleness was refreshing after the fancy grilled cheese sammiches that Seattle is famous for.

To sum up, the Oregon coast was not only fun and beautiful, it was tasty too.