I love goat cheese. My introduction to goat cheese was about 10 years ago at our town’s weekly farmer’s market. It was a free sample from a local goat farm, and it was CHOCOLATE. Now, there’s a sure way to get folks hooked on a product, and it definitely worked on me. Not too long after that, I went to a holiday cooking/entertaining class at Whole Foods, and one of the many amazing dishes we made that evening (along with a glass of champagne!) was a roasted red pear and goat cheese salad. Oh my. It was just delicious. Since then, I think I’ve bought a “log” of goat cheese close to once a week. Partly because it has such a nice creamy taste, and partly because I was unable to tolerate cow’s milk very well while healing my gut from years of gluten-eating, and goat milk products didn’t seem to be as troublesome – or troublesome at all for that matter. And if you do any amount of research at all, you’ll find that the calcium and other vitamins found in milk are more accessible to the body through goat milk when compared to cow’s milk.
It’s just good stuff – for many reasons.
So imagine my delight this week in finding an entire cook book devoted to goat cheese! It is simply called Goat Cheese, by Maggie Foard. I was just browsing my local library’s non-fiction section and it practically jumped off the shelf at me! I pulled it down and opened it up at random. The first thing I saw on page 123 was a very enticing photo of something called “Peanut Butter Mudd Pie with Espresso Caramel Sauce.” Wow. Then on page 116 a tall sundae glass filled with “French Vanilla Gelato.” And last, but definitely not least, on page 99 “Butternut, Portabella, and Chicken Italian Sausage Lasagne.” That was more than enough to convince me to check it out.
On Wednesday, while sitting and waiting for Kayla to take her weekly piano lesson, I paged through the entire book, and decided that since there were SO many recipes I wanted to try, I would just start on the very first page with “Morning Biscuits with Chevre and Meyer Lemon Jelly.” In order to make the biscuits gluten free, I simply substituted the 2 cups of flour with 2 cups of my gluten free mix (rice, potato, & tapioca) and added about a 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum to the dry ingredients. Here’s the rest…
2 cups gluten free flour mix
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup plain or vanilla goat milk yogurt (regular yogurt is fine, too)
1Tbsp butter, melted
1 Tbsp maple syrup
4 oz chevre or fromage blanc
Combine dry ingredients in medium-sized bowl. Add yogurt until a soft ball of dough forms. Knead dough for one minute adding flour if too sticky. Divide the dough in half and pat each portion into circle that is about 1 inch thick. Cut each circle into four wedges, and place each wedge on a baking sheet. Combine butter and maple syrup and brush each biscuit top with this mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes until golden brown.
Serve with chevre and Meyer Lemon jelly….
2 cups freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice (These are in season in winter here, so I used regular lemons)
2 cups sugar
1 envelope liquid fruit pectin, like Certo
4 8oz jam jars with new seals and caps
Combine lemon juice and sugar in saucepan, and bring to a rolling boil. Let boil a full minute. Add pectin and return to a boil for another full minute. Pour mixture into the 4 jars, seal tightly, and then invert on counter top for exactly 5 minutes. After 5 minutes upside down, return the jars to an upright position, and let cool. As the jelly cools, you will hear little “pops” that will indicate the jars have sealed themselves airtight.
Thank you, Maggie Foard, for your wonderfully creative, beautiful, and delicious cookbook!
And now for a short update on the kombucha….. : )
It was probably a good thing that I was away for 10 days for my dad’s surgery, because it meant I couldn’t keep incessantly checking the cabinet where the kombucha was supposedly fermenting. Well, when I got back it was ready! There was a new “scoby baby” floating on top of the tea and it smelled perfectly vinegar-y. I didn’t actually drink any until this week, and it was definitely “kombucha-tasting.” Kayla, who has had the store bought version tasted it, and siad, “Wow, Mom. That’s amazing. It tastes like……..kombucha!” So kombucha-tasting in fact, that it was not sweet at all anymore, and mixing it with a bit of fruit juice made it a much nicer experience. Otherwise, I think you could possibly get the same benefits from drinking apple cider vinegar! Maybe not the probiotics, but the anti-microbial properties of the acid for sure.
So here’s my glass from yesterday – iced kombucha with a bit of 100% cranberry grape juice – very refreshing on our 80+ degree day yesterday. The men in my family are not on board with this new drink yet, as the smell can be a deterrent. So remember… a word of advice to those trying it for the first time….sip before you smell….and then I can almost guarantee a happy gut and heart from the experience! 🙂
Hello~ What a fun blog you have! I have been making batches of Kombucha too. My is very tasty and I am enjoying it 🙂
I will be posting my Kombucha pictures this wknd.
Thank you for sharing your GF Biscuit recipe. I have been wanting to try them and now I shall 🙂
~Cinnamon
Your Kombucha is soooo cool!!!!!!!
Hi Cinnamon and Gidget…
Wish we could all get together for a kombucha party! 🙂