Making Yogurt

In Thailand there's a drinkable yogurt that we bought almost every day. I decided I wanted to try to make some, and instead of using store-bought yogurt I looked into making my own. It turns out that it's pretty easy. It's even easier if you use dry milk instead of fresh. The thing to remember is that you want a sterile environment to put the yogurt culture into, so just keep track of keeping things clean. Boil about a quart of water (to sterilize it). Put 3 & 3/4 cups of the water into a (clean) 1-quart mason jar or other similar container. Once the water has cooled down some, add 1 & 1/3 cups dry milk powder and mix. I just put the (sterilized) lid on and shook it so I didn't have to worry about sterilizing a stirring implement. Let the milk cool to less than 140 degrees and add a few tablespoons of live-culture yogurt. Keep the mix at ~110 degrees for about 8 hours. I filled two other mason jars with boiling water and put them in our handy Thai cooler, with a towel under them so as to not melt the plastic. I then put the towel over the top of them a bit and put the jar with the mix on top and put the lid on the cooler. When the mix has become suitable yogurt, flavor as desired. I was able to match the Thai stuff pretty well by mixing in some juice and sugar. I haven't tried yet, but adding more milk powder is supposed to thicken the yogurt up substantially. I need to come up with some appropriate title for my kitchen experiment series. Any ideas? Next up--beef fat candles.

Pepper Jam

So a month ago my friend Conrad (aka the Chief), his wife Dani, their friend Syd, and my pal Dave (aka Little Davey) came up to Seattle for a concert. They stayed with us and were kind enough to take us to a Mariners game and out to dinner at Anthony’s Bell St. Diner. Dani and Conrad also brought a good deal of produce from their garden--a few squash and zucchini (as dictated but Utah tradition), a couple bell peppers, and ~15 Hungarian hot peppers. That weekend Michelle went to cross country camp and I had to figure out something to do with all those peppers. We've had some pepper jam before that we got at Pike's Place Market, so I decided to try making some. I found a recipe in the pectin package insert (here) for jalapeño jam, so I just used that. It was technically a recipe for canning jam, but I just put it in freezer containers and froze it.

It turned out pretty well. It packs more of a kick than I expected, and it doesn't look great, but it tastes pretty good. It's really good on zucchini bread or with cream cheese and cracker.

SAFETY NOTICE: While you can use a canning jam recipe for freezer jam, you SHOULD NOT use a freezer jam recipe for canning jam. Canning jam recipes are formulate to preserve correctly, while freezer jams aren't.

Lessons Learned:

	If/when I make this in the future, I think I may go with yellow food coloring instead of green. It took me a couple tries to get the color somewhat appealing, while not looking to much like a mint jelly.
	I also think I'll leave out any red peppers. There was one in the bunch, and I though it would add some cool color to the jam, but I think it makes it look even less like food.
	You always need a bigger pot. I thought this one would be big enough to allow for the foam/bubbles/froth, but it wasn't. Runny jam mixture is a real pain to clean up, and I don't think the stove burners liked it very much.

Pretzels

Pretzels are made by first boiling the shaped dough in a brine of sodium hydroxide (lye), sodium carbonate (washing soda or soda ash), or sodium bicarbonate solution (or possibly by just dipping it in the brine), and then baking. The boiling process is what gives them the shiny coating. Bagels are prepared using a similar method.

I tried making pretzels with some leftover scone dough. They almost tasted like pretzels, but the consistency of the dough wasn't right. I'll try using a real pretzel recipe this weekend.