Yes, You Can Milk an Almond

There's a great website called The Kitchn. I think it's a foodie off-shoot of another great site called Apartment Therapy - which I've visited often.  I discovered the site because a friend of mine kept posting recipes from the site that REALLY appealed to me. I found myself "sharing" a lot of these recipes, just so I could find them again. (I couldn't just go to the site and start following it, like a normal person...)

Anyway. One recipe that I simply HAD to try was "making almond milk at home". 

The first time I ever had almond milk was, as a very young person, during a visit to Sicily to see my family. My cousin (actually my grandmother's first cousin), Nino, took me for a passagiare, which is the practice of taking a post-dinner walk around town. As is common, we walked to the town square to have a treat and he recommended the having the almond milk. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Almonds figure heavily in Sicilian cuisine so I already had a familiarity and love for the taste but this was something else entirely - intense, smooth, slightly sweet. It was amazing. Unfortunately, commercial almond milk that's available here is too sweet and not at all like the drink I still have on those rare occasions that I get to visit Sicily.

So... off to try this, seemingly simple, recipe in my own kitch(e)n!

Step one: Soak raw, preferably organic almonds in water overnight or up to two days.

This step was easy - although I didn't read the instructions properly and I put them in a covered mason jar instead of an uncovered bowl. I'm not sure if this made a difference but the idea of leaving an uncovered bowl of soaking almonds on my counter seemed...um...disgusting and bug-attracting.

Although, after two days, this is pretty gross too

Step two: Drain and rinse the almonds

 Yep. Done and done.

Step three: Put almonds and clean water in a blender

Again, easy enough. Although, don't fill the blender too full or it will spill over. I ended up doing my blending in two batches.

Step four: Pulse until almonds are chopped up, then blend for a full two minutes

So, seriously, two minutes is a LOT longer than you'd think. I actually set a timer and was surprised at how long this seemed. I'd highly recommend timing it instead of going on instinct or, I promise, you won't have blended it enough.

Step five: Strain the blended almonds

My first (failed) attempt

So...yeah. Here's where things got sticky (and messy). My first attempt was to use cheesecloth. That got me nowhere fast. The stuff just sort of sat on top of the cheesecloth not draining and, again, I wasn't about to leave it on the counter and just walk away for a couple of hours while it dripped - glacially slow. So, I strained in two steps:

1. I strained the milk through a fine-mesh sieve, pushing against the solids with the back of a wooden spoon, squeezing out as much milk as possible. 
2. I filtered the milk a second time through coffee filters. The finer silt that was left was minimal but it made a difference in the "grittiness" of the milk. And I wanted the very smooth milk that I remember.

Part two of straining

The final product is smooth and very tasty. I chose not to sweeten it but, if I did, I would use a small amount of honey. The last tip I have is this: the actual recipe (link above) calls for 1 cup of almonds to 2 cups of water, with 2 cups of clean water to blend with in step four. I found my final product to be more watery than I would like and I think, in the future, I'll blend with 1/2 the water called for, in order to try to give the milk a little more "body".

Yummy on cereal!

Overall, it wasn't a bad first try although I would like to find a more efficient straining system. 

Finally, what to do with the left over ground almonds? The recipe suggests using them "as is" as an additive in smoothies or yogurt (good addition of protein) or drying it to make almond meal which can be used in baking. I decided to try drying it out just to see what the process was like. The answer... long and arduous. LOL  In a 200 degree oven, spread out on a cookie sheet, the meal took nearly four hours to dry to a point where it felt like almond meal. I had to go in occasionally and break up the lumps so they'd dry too. I now have a bag of almond meal in my freezer that I'll have to find a use for at some point. Maybe a coating for fish??

Oh! And the almond milk only lasts a few days to a week in the 'fridge so don't make a lot unless you're really thirsty. It will separate but that's not "going bad" - you just have to shake it. You'll know if it's bad because it will start to taste sour. A little honey could help extend the life because it wards off bacteria, for what that's worth.

Give it a try, if you like almond milk or think you might like almond milk. Then, on a warm summer evening, sit on the patio and sip a glass. You may feel like you're in Sicily for a few minutes. :)

- Alex

Bounce (but only if you're 21+)

Wisconsin has a lot of proud traditions - most surrounding food and drink (and sports). Some are
obvious, like the Green Bay Packers. Some are lesser known outside of the Midwest, like Friday Fish Fry and brandy Old Fashioneds  sweet. Some are nearly unknown, unless you live in Wisconsin, like Cherry Bounce.




Wikipedia has a tiny entry on Cherry Bounce, which doesn't allude to the Midwestern custom at all.

Cherry Bounce is a liqueur made by infusing brandy with cherries and sugar. Some recipes will use rum, whiskey or vodka instead of brandy.

The English hamlet of Frithsden claims to have originated the Cherry Bounce.

A lane leading off the Old High Street in nearby Hemel Hempstead is named Cherry Bounce and is shown having had this name in maps dating back to the early 19th century.

That's the whole thing...

On this side of the pond, Martha Washington actually had a recipe for Cherry Bounce (which can be found online) and legend has it that George packed a canteen of it for a trip west across the Allegheny Mountains in September 1784.

With the trend in craft cocktails and the resurrection of old, classic drink recipes, Cherry Bounce is making a national comeback of sorts. A Google search yields a lot of recipes from popular and trusted sources like The Beekman Boys, Epicurious, Imbibe Magazine, Cooks.com and more. However, these recipes are a lot fancier than a traditional Wisconsin Bounce. They call for spicing the cherries with things like cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. They also add a step that Wisconsin recipes don't bother with - macerating the cherries for a period of time before adding the alcohol.

The Wisconsin recipe is simple and calls for a total of four ingredients: tart cherries, sugar, alcohol, and time.

Tart cherries. In our state, there's yet another thing we're mighty proud of - Door County cherries (tm). Yeah... they're probably not REALLY trademarked but they should be. For truly traditional Wisconsin Bounce, Door County Montmorency pie cherries are the ones you want. Fortunately, my backyard cherry tree has Montmorencys on it and it was VERY prolific this year.

Sugar. Get a lot. Cherry Bounce is a liqueur - very thick and syrupy.

Alcohol. Like all Wisconsin cocktails, brandy is the preferred and traditional alcohol for Bounce. I'm not sure what the Wisconsin fascination is with brandy... it's too sweet for me. This is one place where the east-coaster in me takes over and I make my Bounce with bourbon. I've also seen it made with rum.

Time. So, the rule is that you put up your Cherry Bounce in early July when the Door County cherries come ripe and you let it sit until Christmas. If you're smart, you save some cherries in the freezer and put up a new batch of Bounce just before Christmas so that you have some in the early summer just before the Door County harvest happens.

Now, how you put your Bounce together is up for debate. Ask 10 Wisconsinites and you'll get 10 variations (within a small range of variables). Last year, I put up Bounce using unpitted sweet cherries because that's what I had too many of. I used bourbon and I cut the sugar back a bit. The resulting Bounce was good but not great. It wasn't enough of a liqueur (not enough sugar) and the cherry flavor was okay but not great. This year, I followed the more traditional recipe and I have great hopes for a truly excellent Christmas.

Traditional Wisconsin Cherry Bounce
makes one quart

• Fill a 1 qt Mason jar half full with pitted, tart (pie) cherries (Montmorency)
• Cover the cherries with 2 C white cane sugar*. Screw on the lid and shake vigorously until the cherries are coated.
• Add 1/2 qt of brandy (or bourbon, or rum, or even vodka) to fill the jar.
• Screw on lid tightly and shake to mix well. 
• For the next day or so, shake the Mason jar occasionally to finish dissolving the sugar.
• The cherries may settle a bit and it's worth opening the jar back up and adding enough pitted cherries to fill the entire jar.

 Put the jar in a cool, dark place and let it sit until Christmas.  Open and enjoy as a shot, mixed with club soda, or with hot water for a cherry toddy.

*I used a cup and a half of sugar. I simply couldn't bring myself to add that much sugar to the jar. We'll see how it turns out.

Last week, we got blueberries in our fruit CSA and my friend Kristine got really creative and made Blueberry Bounce with them. She used vodka as her liquor (which I think was a good choice for blueberries). There may soon be some jars of blue nectar curing in my closet with the red ones.

- Alex

Cocktail Hour

 When its hot outside, there's nothing better than a cool, refreshing summer drink. And using fresh summer flavors make any cocktail (alcoholic or non-) even more special. A peek at the (very hip) craft-cocktail movement reveals the use of completely unexpected flavors in today's drinks - often to extremely refreshing effect. Specifically, the use of uniquely flavored bitters, herbs, vegetables, and even tinctures and oils have introduced entirely new flavor profiles to imbibing.

This past weekend, I was invited to Sunday lunch at a friend's home and was tasked with bringing along some type of mixer for our cocktails. The host suggested making a "mojito" of sorts with basil, mint and cucumber. I decided to take it a step further and create some syrups that could be mixed with seltzer to make both a refreshing fizzy drink or a mixer for gin or vodka.

In the end, I made two syrups - my host's suggested combination as well as a strawberry rhubarb (because I had leftover strawberries that were over-ripe and a MOUNTAIN of rhubarb in the backyard). For a first go-'round, I think they came out really well. The kids particularly enjoyed the "strawberry soda" and the adults tried both concoctions with either gin or vodka. My favorite was gin mixed with the cucumber syrup.

Today, I'm going to share the recipes for the two syrups with the caveat that I'm still experimenting and I reserve the right to update the recipes at a future date. Since the basic construction is the same, you can do this with nearly any fruit/vegetable/herb/etc. If you start experimenting and come up with anything particularly awesome, please share in our comments section. Thanks!!

Please remember to drink adult beverages responsibly!

- Alex

Strawberry-Rhubarb Syrup

2 C water

1.5 C sugar (you can use up to 2 C sugar but that's too sweet for me)
Juice from one lemon
1 C strawberries (cut up)
2 C rhubarb (chopped)

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to a boil, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Then lower heat to a simmer and cook for approximately 30 minutes, uncovered. Once the strawberries start losing their color, use a potato masher to mash the strawberries and rhubarb in the syrup. Turn off heat and let the pan sit and cool for a little bit. Then, through a fine mesh strainer, strain the mixture into a Mason jar or similar, glass container. Use the back of a spoon to push the liquid through the strainer.

I reserved the strawberry/rhubarb mush to put on ice cream.

Let the syrup cool completely then mix with seltzer for a fizzy strawberry/rhubarb soda. If you're over the legal drinking age, try it with vodka, gin, or white rum!


Cucumber Basil Mint Syrup

2 C water
1.5 C sugar or less (this particular syrup was WAY too sweet with 1.75 C of sugar which is why I'm still experimenting...)
2 large cucumbers (cut up) - approx 2 C
1 C basil leaves
1/2 C mint leaves

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to a boil, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Then lower heat to a simmer and cook for approximately 30 minutes, uncovered. Once the cucumbers are very soft, use a potato masher to mass the cucumbers and basil/mint leaves in the syrup. Turn off heat and let the pan sit and cool for a little bit. Then, through a fine mesh strainer, strain the mixture into a Mason jar or similar, glass container. Use the back of a spoon to push the liquid through the strainer.

Let the syrup cool completely then mix with seltzer for a fizzy, refreshing herb/cucumber soda. If you're over the legal drinking age, try it with vodka, gin, or white rum!