Swapper profile: Kelly White + Fresh Cultured Cream Cheese Recipe

Name: Kelly White

Home (+ hometown swap): San Francisco, SF Swappers

Profession: Recovering attorney, budding knitwear designer, die-hard fermenter, newly-minted natural cheesemaker, and stay-at-home mom.

How did you first get involved in food swapping? How long ago?

In the November of 2015, I was listening to an episode of the Local Mouthful podcast (http://www.localmouthful.com/tag/food-swaps/) in which the hosts were discussing food swaps. I had heard of food swaps before (although I couldn't tell you where or when), but the hosts' excitement about food swaps was particularly inspiring. I remember pausing the podcast so that I could search online for a swap in San Francisco. I pretty quickly found SF Swappers, got on the mailing list, and eagerly awaited the next event so I could try it out! 

What did you make for the last food swap and what inspired your choice?

I made fresh cream cheese, cultured naturally with kefir grains. It seems like cheese is always on my mind lately. Over the last seven months, my almost 5-year old son and I have been "cooking" our way through David Asher's book, The Art of NaturalCheesemaking. I have been chronicling our cheesemaking adventures (and mishaps) on my blog, www.stringandtwig.com, and I have been tending our aging cheeses almost daily. A couple of weeks before the swap, David Asher was in the Bay Area teaching classes and workshops. I attended his class on Blue Cheeses (through Pollinate Farm in Oakland) and during class, he mentioned that it's very easy to transform kefir-cultured crème fraîche into cream cheese. I had made cream cheese before, but only with freeze-dried cultures, and his mention was all I needed to start experimenting to find the cream cheese recipe I liked best. Homemade cream cheese is so much better than store bought, and I figured my fellow food swappers would appreciate it.

Cultured cream cheese: delicious!

What’s your favorite thing about swapping?

Preparing food at home and sharing it with your friends and family can be fun, but preparing food and trading with fellow food enthusiasts who have different culinary backgrounds is really inspiring, eye-opening, and delicious.

Who or what most influences your cooking?

Taking Harvard University's free online class, Science & Cooking, made a huge impact on my cooking. Ever since that class, I think more critically about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it when I cook anything. I also find inspiration in podcasts, like Local Mouthful and Cooking Issues, and in fermentation books including Sandor Katz's The Art of Fermentation, and Amanda Feifer's Ferment Your Vegetables. I also love hearing about new recipes, techniques, or ingredients from friends.

What’s your favorite kitchen tool?

My Benriner JapaneseMandolin Slicer. I have the original size, in mint green. It makes vegetable preparation a dream. I use it almost every day.

Your current flavor or ingredient obsession?

Whole Spice's CrushedUrfa Chili and Crushed Marash Chili. These spices seem to make pretty much everything taste better. 

Biggest food surprise?

People say your tastes can change and that you can learn to like things, but actually experiencing that shift really surprised me. I used to hate beets. Like really, really hate beets. They tasted like dirt to me. Ever hopeful my opinion of beets would change, I kept trying them when they'd show up on my plate at a restaurant. I continued to hate them until several years ago, when my husband and I were on vacation in New Zealand. I tried a beet there and was astounded to find that I actually liked them. Now I will eat beets pretty much anywhere or anytime, and I am a zealous advocate for continuing to try the food you didn't like yesterday.

If the Rapture came tomorrow, what would your last meal on earth be?

Oysters on the half-shell with a drizzle of mignonette, and a bottle of crisp white wine.

When I'm not in the kitchen I'm _________.

I'm writing, knitting, or galloping around town with my son.

Favorite local food experience:

I love the cheese counter at Rainbow Grocery. The staff is so knowledgeable and helpful, and the cheese selection (and samples) are incredible.

Recipe by Kelly:

Fresh Cultured Cream Cheese (makes about 12 ounces)

Equipment:

·         Clean, fine cheese cloth or butter muslin (not the loose stuff you can get at the grocery store)

·         Fine mesh strainer (for straining kefir)

·         Quart jar or other similar vessel

·         Pot or bowl for catching whey

·         Colander

Ingredients:

·         2 cups of fresh, heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized)

·         1 cup of fresh whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized, and preferably not homogenized)

·         1 teaspoon (or so) of kefir grains OR about 2 tablespoons of homemade kefir

·         Kosher salt

Directions:

Mix the cream and milk together with the kefir grains or prepared, strained kefir in a quart jar. Loosely screw on the lid of the jar or cover with a tea towl secured by a rubber band. Let the jar sit for about 24 hours at room temperature. You're basically making crème fraîche, so keep an eye on when the mixture has thickened to that consistency.

Once the cream and milk mixture has thickened, strain out the kefir grains (if you used them) and place them in fresh milk. (If you used prepared kefir, there's no need to strain anything.)

Spread the cheese cloth evenly over a colander that you have placed over a pot or bowl and pour the thickened cream and milk mixture into the cheese cloth. Knot the cheese cloth at the top and either hang it from somewhere in your kitchen with a pot or bowl below to catch the whey. Knotting the cheese cloth on a wooden spoon placed across a tall pot works. You can also just knot the cheese cloth and  leave it in the colander over a pot or bowl. Let the mixture hang for about 8 hours at room temperature, or until you have the consistency of cream cheese that you prefer. 

Sprinkle kosher salt into the cheese and mix it thoroughly. I like about a teaspoon of kosher salt for this recipe, but you can use more or less depending on your taste.  Store the cream cheese in a covered container in the refrigerator. You may notice that after your cream cheese has sat in the refrigerator for a day or more, it becomes slightly effervescent. That's totally normal.

Swapper profile: Jen Choe + Bahn Mi Carrots Recipe

Name: Jen Choe 

Home (+ hometown swap):

San Francisco, SF Swappers

Profession:

By day I'm a production manager in digital publishing. By night, a fermentation enthusiast. And starting this month, I'll be spending my weekends helping CUESA produce market demos, classes, and farm tours. 

How did you first get involved in food swapping? How long ago?

It was mid-2015 when I started using Instagram as a medium to document my grocery habit (@grocery_choe). Soon enough, I learned that others around the world that were documenting similar things as well (#groceryhaul is a thing?). I think it was the DC swappers group that got wondering if SF had one too...and we did! And here we are. 

What did you make for the last food swap and what inspired your choice?

The same day of the last swap, my husband was scheduled be flying out to New York. There's nothing sadder than airplane food when you're confined for 5-hours straight, so I wanted to make something he could take with him. Veggie lox (or "mox" as Leo cleverly calls it) is savory, completely vegan, and travels well. I doubled the batch, sending him off with a jar and sleeve of crackers (an apple and a banana too, naturally...). The rest came with me to the swap. 

Recipe discovered—while trying to find a use for carrot juice pulp—from a vegan blog.

What’s your favorite thing about swapping?

For me, it's hard to ignore the fact that human interaction is increasingly being commodified in our society. You see it in examples like babysitting, staying with friends while travelling, getting a ride to the airport, sharing a homemade meal with a friend, borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor....We rarely reach out to our social circles for any of our needs anymore, because why burden our loved ones, when, "there's an app for that?" 

But what happens to the bonds with our loved ones, when we completely stop needing their support anymore? How do we make and strengthen new connections when money is slid-in between every interaction?

Rad events like food swapping help to remind us that there is this other way.

I always leave these events with a sense of connection, mutual respect and gratitude for the folks that participated. 

The delicious haul is a beautiful physical representation of that. 

Who or what most influences your cooking?

From my mother, I picked up late night cooking habits, a tendency to cook in large quantities, and her Korean recipes. The other day I found myself making 10 pounds of kimchi at 3 AM...when it dawned on me that our fridge doesn't have room for the gallon jar it ripens in!

What’s your favorite kitchen tool?

The julienne peeler is a miracle worker for anyone that likes texture in their food. It saves me hours of prep time every month, especially on my beloved bahn-mi carrots.

Your current flavor or ingredient obsession?

Rose! Since discovering food grade rose petals in the bulk section at Rainbow and I've been flavoring my milk kefir with it.

I thought I knew rose, but no, not in this way... Its fragrance is pure, and simply heavenly. Rose shortbread, rose whipped cream, rose ice cream...

OH—I would be remiss to not give a shout out to homemade kefir-cultured butter. MY GOD I've never eaten so much butter in my life, but it is SO GOOD, and everyone must start making this.

Biggest food surprise?

My mind was blown when I learned that you can make almond milk in a hurry by blending 2 Tb almond butter to 12 oz water! Great for smoothies and chia pudding.

If the Rapture came tomorrow, what would your last meal on earth be?

Oh boy...

First course

--Dozen beausoleil oysters, lemon, dill pickle brine mignonette, with a glass of an exceptional white burgundy

Second Course

--A pile of warm, fresh tortillas from Nopalito or Gracias Madre, a generous side of cultured butter

--Fermented uni, with a glass of Japanese beer

--A bite of kobe beef filet mignon (or similar) that Leo determines is "worth it" for a vegetarian to cheat with

--Taco salad from Nick's Crispy Tacos, with both red and green house salsa bottles--full and within reach

Dessert

An arrangement of fruit, in this way:

--Huge bowl of the plumpest, sweetest local strawberries, blueberries, blackberries

--Medium size bowl of the plumpest sweetest cherries (stems intact, please)

--1 perfectly ripe, good-sized cherimoya

--And on the side, 2-3 coffee cherries, a scoop of cocoa bean fruit, and a fistful of actively fermenting cocoa beans 

When I'm not in the kitchen I'm...

exploring the aisles at a local grocery store, or talking to vendors and shoppers at the farmers market.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the space between food and eater. What I mean by that is: Everybody eats...and it's the what, the how, the where, the when, and the why that I find really quite fascinating. There's so much anthropology to be gleaned from our eating habits...One day I'd love to author a historical guide to San Francisco's grocery stores.

Favorite local food experience:

I had first read about Berkeley's Cultured Pickle Shop in Sandor Katz's The Art of Fermentation. In it, he swoons over their innovative flavors of Kombucha—Buddha’s hand/mint/bee pollen, turnip, beet. Wait—TURNIP? For real? Ever since that day, I had been obsessed with the idea of turnip flavored kombucha. Months and months went by...as you see, this kombucha is only available at the Berkeley Farmers Market, or at their shop, which is open M-F, 9-5. As a city girl, with a 9-5, without a car... satiating this thirst was not going to be easy.

My blind attempts at trying to flavor MY homemade booch with turnip were complete failures. Despite my strange obsession, my fiancé still married me. Our wedding celebrations were getting costly, so we decided to simply have a staycation honeymoon. And I bet you can guess our first stop on that honeymoon...

Yes! The first stop on our honeymoon was the Cultured Pickle Shop! Unbeknownst, but lucky for us, the weekday that we went turned out to be a quiet catch-up day for the shop. Stepping into this promised land, I was as awestruck as I'd ever been, yet Alex was very gracious, offering us glasses of fennel kombucha (FENNEL!) while she created a pickle plate for us... Long dream short--we bought a ton of stuff, I got a tour of their shop, and even a photo with Alex in front of the large glass barrels of the beverage that had seduced me so long ago...

Anyway, this isn't even the experience, guys.

My most memorable local food experience was...wait for it... 

STAGING at Cultured Pickle Shop for a day. 

For those that do not speak restaurant industry French (which, included me), a stage is an opportunity for a cook to work unpaid at another chef's kitchen to learn and be exposed to new techniques.

My incredibly thoughtful husband had set this experience up for me as a Christmas gift. Isn't that the sweetest thing? 

Recipe by Jen:

BANH MI CARROTS

I always have a jar of banh-mi carrots in the fridge. A heaping of the quick pickles instantly add dimension to breakfasts, farm bowls, taco nights, or yes, sandwiches of the Vietnamese persuasion.

My favorite type of recipes are easy to make, requires few ingredients, and makes a lasting impact. Banh-mi carrots fulfill these criteria, and I'm happy to share with you here!

Ingredients (organic when possible):

--1 lb carrots 

--1 large daikon (apx. 2/3 lb)

--1.5 cups distilled white vinegar

--1/4 cup sugar 

--1 heaping teaspoon salt 

Wash and peel the carrots and daikon, reserving the peels for stock*.

Fine julienne all vegetables and toss in a large mixing bowl. (If you plan on making this regularly, a julienne peeler will become the best $10 you've ever spent.) 

Add vinegar, sugar and salt to a quart size mason jar, twist on the lid tightly, and shake until solids have dissolved.

Pour vinegar mixture over carrot/daikon. With clean hands, toss and turn to ensure that the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout. Pick out miscut vegetable pieces at this time.

Let stand at room temperature for a minimum of 30 minutes, turning the mix occasionally. Transfer into 2 quart size jars and refrigerate. Let pickle in the fridge for 12 hours before serving.