Goat Cheese Pizza Pockets

Since I won't be writing anything for about a week, I thought I'd give you one of the favorite things I made so far... Goat Cheese Pizza Pockets. I have to make them again and I will, but it's always quite the process... especially if I make fresh Mozzarella to go inside.

You can make this with meat or not. I used a meat sauce since I already had one frozen. I love them with a good meat sauce. I tried them later with just red sauce which is also good.

Start by making the dough which needs to rise. I used the pita bread recipe from the Peace Corps Morocco cookbook. There are no names used to credit an individual person for this recipe, so I'll just credit it to the cookbook (which is fantastic).

1 1/2 t dry yeast
1 t plus 2 t honey
1 c warm water
1 1/2 t salt
3 c flour
oil

Dissolve yeast in water with 1 t honey. Let stand for 5 minutes. Add remaining honey, flour and salt, mixing until well combined. Turn out and knead for 10 min. Add more flour if the dough is sticky. Oil a mixing bowl, place dough in it and lightly oil dough surface. Let rise in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours covered.

After that, you're supposed to divide it and roll them up a half inch thick. Instead, I divided them by however many "pockets" I wanted... I'll get back to this part later.

While the dough is rising, make the sauce. For a meat sauce, I cook the meat in a little bit of oil and add it to the sauce after it cooks together for a bit.

For a good sauce, I saute garlic and onions in olive oil until the onions are slightly softer and the garlic is just starting to get brown (if you let it get too brown it will start having kind of a burnt taste after it cooks awhile... some people like this- like the brown onions on bagels, but I don't prefer it for a sauce). Then I add tomato paste and let it break down for a minute. After that, I add tomatoes (peeled if you don't like the peels), and let them break down for a few. I generally use just a little tomato paste and lots of tomatoes. Add oregano, basil, salt and pepper as you go. I like a touch of heat so I'll add some hot red pepper or dried crushed red pepper. I let everything meld together for quite a while. If it gets too thick add a little water. You don't want it too thin for these pizza pockets though.

When the dough is ready, split it into however many portions you want to make (though you don't want to make them too big. Maybe make 6 or more with this amount of dough). Roll them to about a quarter of an inch, or maybe slightly thinner. I put red ball cheese(Edam or whatever else you might want... this is what we have in Morocco), then the meat sauce, then a few chunks of goat cheese in the center. I wrapped the right and the left side over the top overlapping, and then folded up the ends pinching them (so they look like a pizza pocket).

I lightly greased a cookie sheet with olive oil and placed all the pockets on it. I preheated the oven to about 200 degrees C... not very hot because you want the insides to get hot as the dough bakes. When they are browned on the top, flip them over for a few minutes. When the other side is slightly browned, they should be finished... careful, they will be hot on the inside... but SO GOOD!!!

Notes From my "Book"

Before I decided to have this little blogging adventure, I started keeping a food journal. There are some worthwhile entries in here that I thought I should share. I made quite a number of things before deciding to take it public. I had varying degrees of success.

1. Fresh Salsa
2. Ranch Dip (not the powdered stuff)
3. Pita Bread
4. Pizza Pockets
5. Pizza
6. Lasagna
   
7. Red Sauce
8. Pita Chips (a good use for the failed Pita Bread experiment)
9. My mom's chocolate no-bakes (my fave... finally got it down here in Morocco)
10. Hash browns
    
11. Mashed Potatoes
    
12. Breakfast Burritos
13. Flour Tortillas (to go with the burritos)
14. Pretzels
15. Matar Paneer (Indian pees and cheese- yes I made the cheese too)
    

I'm sure there were probably others, but these were some of the more noteworthy items in my book. I won't tell you what I did to make all of them... This would be a ridiculously long blog entry. I will tell you that the Ranch Dip wasn't exactly Ranchy enough... too much garlic. I didn't have powder so I had to use fresh. The pita bread didn't turn out like pitas (there wasn't really a pocket) though they made yummy chips. Pizza pockets were a real favorite of mine as well as the others who were there to eat some. I did it once with goat cheese and Edam, and once with Mozz and Edam. I think the goat cheese was my fave. So good! The no-bakes are an absolute must... I will post that recipe! I love them and they're so great for a chocolate fix. You can get all the ingredients here in Morocco. The mashed potatoes- I've made them so many times that I think I've perfected the amounts to my liking (and others too... they didn't last long at all). Breakfast burritos rock and I can do pretty good flour tortillas at this point. The Pretzels were great with garlic, Parmesan cheese, and sesame seed toppings. Finally, the Matar Paneer wasn't exactly Matar Paneer as I didn't have the right spices but it was pretty good never the less. The Paneer (the solid cottage cheese) turned out well and fried nicely, but next time I'd leave it on a little less... it was a bit too brown and didn't absorb the other flavors at all. I used curry powder and the flavors worked... it just wasn't like restaurant Matar Paneer.

So anyway, some of these recipes are definitely worth their own blog entry and I'll get there shwea b shwea (little by little). I'd hate to divulge all my new tricks so early. Plus, I'll be training all of next week in a town called Agadir and won't be cooking a thing.

Cheers!

Say Cheeeessssse

Though I didn't cook anything of note tonight, I thought I should update you all on my cheese-making. Making cheese is quite a process, and I'm not sure it would be worth it (besides just being able to say that you know how to make cheese) in the US. It would cost just as much money if not more to make your own cheddar as to buy it. I make an exception to that with Fresh Mozzarella which is relatively simple, fun, and so freaken good.

Alas, here I have no cheddar... and I love it. It's one of my favorite cheeses. So I made cheddar the other day.

Now I made Mozzarella twice before trying the process for cheddar. Fresh Mozz might be one of my favorite things in all the world. Nothing is ever simple here in Morocco, but it only takes about 45 minutes to make and it's WORTH IT!!! The first time was a real challenge. Our milk here comes in little baggies, so after I figured out how many little baggies are in a gallon, I started the process. To make it you use this stuff called rennet, milk, citric acid and salt. You dissolve the rennet tablets in water (a quarter of a tab in this case), mix the milk and citric acid together, heat the milk to a certain specific temperature (88 degrees) and then mix in the rennet. You let it sit until it curdles (it doesn't take long at all), and then start the process of making it into stretchy Mozzarella.

This is a process that is really easy if you have a microwave to reheat the cheese and not so easy if you don't- like me in morocco. It's messy and hot (since I also have no thick rubber gloves) so I just use a spoon to kneed the cheese like dough until it cools off enough for me to touch. Then I continue dipping the cheese curd in the super hot whey until it melds together and I'm able to stretch it. I then stretch it a few times and mix in the salt (as this process is going on)... And you have fresh Mozz... It's so yummy for pizza and ziti and all the other things that need some good Mozz. My problem is that I just can't stop eating it... I can't save it for pizza because it's so good warm just to eat. :-)

Back to cheddar... that was quite a process. It took several days to finish it. You make it like the Mozz but with cultures, draining the curd and then putting weights on top of it for 24 hours. 12 hours, flip it in the mold, and then 12 more hours. Unwrap it, let it dry until there is a rind on the outside and it isn't moist anymore and then wax it. But now I have a red cake-looking round of cheese in my fridge. It needs to age at least 4 weeks before I can eat it. I'll let you know how it goes.


Here is my lopsided round of cheddar. Hope it tastes good! :-)

Memorial Day Potato Salad

It's Memorial Day in America... not here. But there is something I love more than anything else in the summer, and that's BBQ!!! Cookouts are the greatest things ever. Hanging out in the sun, eating ribs, hot dogs, burgers, wings, potato and macaroni salads... Yum! So for Memorial Day at our little house in Morocco, my site-mate (the other volunteer in my site), a friend, and I thought we'd have fried chicken and potato salad. My site-mate is trying to perfect her fried chicken, so I made the potato salad.

Now I can't remember where I got the original recipe... Nevermind, it's right here:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pats-Potato-Salad/Detail.aspx

But of course like anything else, we can't do everything exact here in Morocco. Here is how I did mine:

5 med-large potatoes cooked, peeled, and cubed
1 small red onion chopped
3 containers "natural" yogurt (without sugar or sweetener)
1/4 C chopped parsley
1/8 C vinegar
1/8 C sugar
2 t Dijon Mustard
1/2 t salt

Combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt and yogurt in one bowl. Mix in the parsley. Mix the potatoes and onions together in another bowl and then pour in the mix combining until everything is coated. Refrigerate. It stays yummy for quite a few days in the fridge. The recipe online says it even gets better with time. I don't know about that, but it's definitely just as good days later.

Anyhow, good Peace Corps recipe. One of my favorites, and probably good for home too.

Cheers! Happy Memorial Day.

Orange and Cheese

So I picked orange for my blog color because isn't that supposed to make you hungry? There is this rumor that McDonalds uses it for this very reason. Who knows if it's really true. Blue is soothing, red is exciting, and orange makes you hungry... hmmmm.

Something that I've also been interested outside of the realm of basic cooking is cheese. There is one common type of cheese here that we refer to as Redball cheese. I believe this is Edam. It's really quite good, but I miss some of the variety we have at home. Cheddar is my favorite. Sometimes I can find a French cheese in Ouarzazate that resembles a VERY mild swiss. They do have Camembert available from time to time. I have also seen Parmesan, and Mozzarella. Goat Cheese is pretty common.

These are all pretty hit or miss depending on what the Supermarche (French supermarket) has. The Mozzarella doesn't quite have the same consistency or melt-ability that I'm used to. One of my favorite things in the world is fresh Mozzarella. I love the salad with Mozz balls in EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) with pepper flakes and parsley. I know it's not difficult to make. We used to go to a restaurant called "English is Italian" in NYC that made Fresh Mozz at the table right in front of you. So, I did a little google research...

www.cheesemaking.com

They sell cheese-making kits. There is a beginner kit for Fresh Mozz and Ricotta that includes a thermometer, cheese cloth, rennet tablets, citric acid and non-iodized salt. Perfect! I bought that and a kit for making hard cheeses. They even shipped directly to Morocco. Shipping was quite expensive... 36 dollars, but to me, learning to make cheese and having some of my favorite kinds would be worth it. I want to make (and have made, but that's for another blog):

Fresh Mozz
Ricotta
Feta
Cheddar
Monterey Jack
and maybe... Parmesan

I probably won't do Parmesan because it requires a lower fat milk (which we don't really have- just extra-pasteurized which you can't use), and 9 months to age, which I don't really have. I have about a year and six months left which is just not enough time.

Anyway, I've already given it a start, so I'll let you know more as my blogs go on. Cheers!

Why?

So... blog blog blog. I wasn't going to do this because I thought I couldn't keep up with it. That is, when it comes to writing about my adventures in Morocco. One thing I have written about regularly in a journal is cooking, so I thought maybe it would interest more than just me.

Learning to cook is really something I never considered. I'm a food lover, but a take-out queen. I love food. I'm dating a boy now who loves to tease me about one of the first things I said to him which was "food makes me so happy". He likes good food too.

Good food to me doesn't have to be from the most expensive restaurant. The local bbq joint can have some of the best kinds of feel-good food. The greek diner down the street can throw together a salad that just amazes me. It also never hurts to check out the pricier options every once in a while... see what top chefs have to offer. I'd love to be a food critic except that I have trouble keeping my portions to just a little bit. I would be huge!

In any case, I mention my love of food so I can tell you why I've decided to dedicate a good portion of time to learning how to make it. I never would have done it in the states. I have no patience and restaurants can often do it better anyway. Now is the perfect time for me to learn. I'm spending 2 years in a country with few restaurants and very little concept (in my small town at least) of take-out. The fresh food is cheap here while the packaged food is expensive- completely opposite of the US. While the fresh produce is of amazing quality, there is a limit to availability of products (for example, there is no all-purpose flour). It is very difficult if not impossible to get certain ingredients. So, I need to learn to be creative, and innovative in my quest to be an amazing chef.

Wish me luck! I'm so excited to have this opportunity to learn. I'll try and keep you all up on recipes, projects, and fun stuff.