Why buy something when you can make it? Recipes, crafts and ideas for everyone.

Creton, a pork spread, is a breakfast staple in the province of Quebec. There are many versions going around but this one has pretty simple ingredients and preparation and the taste is great with just the right amount of spices. It’s based on the creton recipe in L’Encyclopedie de la Cuisine by Jehane Benoit, a classic French Canadian cooking book.

Cretons are usually eaten on toasts (sometime with a dash of mustard) or on crackers. This makes a pretty big batch for one person but it can be frozen and it will be as good when thawed.

Ingredients

1 lb (454 g) of ground pork
2 slices of white bread
1 cup of milk
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

• Remove the crust from the bread and tear in small cubes. Put in a pan with the milk and stir together.
• Add the pork,the spices, the salt and the pepper to the pan and mix. Cook over low heat for about an hour, stiring from time to time.
• Once the cretons are well cooked, you can eat them as is or put them in the blender and chop a few seconds for a smoother texture. They can be stored in the fridge for a week, or in the freezer for a long time.

This is a nice recipe to use up vegetables lying around in the fridge, with a few extras to make it really good. I’ve also used tofu in this recipe before, but the paneer fits even better. If it’s firm paneer or tofu I usually sauté it a bit, but since my homemade paneer is pretty soft I just used the cubes as is. It adds a nice creamy taste to the dish that goes well with the olive oil and herbs.

 

Ingredients (Yield : 2 plates)

Around 140g of homemade paneer , cut in small cubes

85g of dry whole wheat spaghetti

1 carrot, diced
1 zucchini, sliced thin
3/4 cup of green beans
Half a red pepper, diced

4 dried tomatoes (or 8 dried tomato halves)
10 black olives, sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of oregano
1 tablespoon of basil

Preparation

• Put the dried tomatoes in a bowl of hot water to soften them up a bit.
• Cook the pasta following the instructions on the package.
• Arrange the prepared vegetables on a baking sheet and cook in the oven at 350 F for about 15 minutes.
• Drain the cooked spaghetti, put it back in the pot and mix in the olive oil, the oregano and the basil. Arrange the pasta in the plates or bowls.
• Top the pasta with the vegetables, the olives and the paneer cubes. Chop the softened dried tomatoes and add them on top.

I’ve been curious about cheese making for a while, but many of them require special ingredients like rennet or are quite long to make. Paneer (or panir) on the other hand, is a soft, unripened cheese made from a few simple ingredients. I’ve first learned about how to make paneer in the book Home Cheese Making. It’s a good read if you want to learn how many popular cheeses are made :

 

I usually use it like tofu in a variety of dishes, since it’s a bit bland on its own. Paneer can also be found in some grocery stores if you’re lucky : I’ve bought some once and it was firmer and less creamy than the one I make with this recipe. With more weight, my homemade paneer would probably be as firm, but it hold together well enough for my needs.

Ingredients (Yield : about 140g)

1 liter (4 cups) of whole milk (I used milk with 3,25% fat)
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Preparation

Warm the milk slowly over low/medium heat until it boils gently, stirring often so it won’t burn. Remove the pot from the fire as soon as the milk boils to prevent spills, especially if you have a small cooking pot.

Pour the lemon juice over the milk, stir slowly until large curds form and let them set for about 10 minutes.

Ladle the curds gently in a mold or a colander lined with cotton cloth or cheese cloth (I used my tofu mold). Hold the corners of the cloth together and rince the curds under a light stream of water to wash off the lemon juice.

Put the curds back in the mold, close the cloth over them and cover with a weight. Leave the cheese to press for about two hours. After this, the cheese can be used right away or stored in the refrigerator for two weeks at most.

A castille soap is simply an olive oil soap. It’s an easy soap to get started with since you don’t need to meld any oil and it reacts slow enough to see what’s going on. It takes a bit more time to harden than some other soaps to harden, but it will harden up nicely while being a wonderfully mild soap.

Ingredients

The only things you really need for this recipe is olive oil and lye. I usually use cheap olive pomace oil for soap. Pomace oil is obtained from the last pressing of the olives and is poor quality for food, but is great for soap. Since there are more impurities, you won’t need to stir as much. You could always try with the best quality extra-virgin oil, but you will have to stir alot before your soap is ready. Also, make sure that what you buy is 100% olive oil by checking the label carefully : some cheap brands sells olive oil mixed with canola oil and the results are unpredictable in that case.

The maths

Now, we need to figure out how much lye you need to use. Soap recipes are always in weight of oil. We’re going to do a small 1 lb (16 oz) batch, so we already know that we’ll need 16oz of olive oil.

Then we’re going to use a ratio called SAP that express the amount of lye needed to make the oil react completely. This ratio is different for each oil, but since we’re going to use only oil this is going to be easier. The ratio for the olive oil is 0,134 and is expressed in oz, so :

With this amount of lye, 100% of the olive oil will react, and we don’t really want to do that. You need to add a little safety margin to make sure all the lye has reacted with oil, with some extra in the soap so it will be milder. You don’t want too much though, or the soap will be soft and mushy. A 5% superfat, or 5% extra oil, is calculated this way :

It’s not a huge change since the batch is small, so you’ll have to measure as precisely as you can. The only thing left is to calculate how much water will be used. This is not as important since the water will evaporate, but too little will make it hard to dissolve the lye and too much will increase the time the soap takes to harden. A 40% solution is a nice compromise for most soaps. So, to calculate it :

The final recipe

To sum it up, the recipe will be :

1 lb (543,6 g) of olive oil
2,0368 oz (57,74 g) of lye
3,0552 oz (86,61 g) of water

You can double-check those calculations with the MMS Lye Calculator. The default values are fines, just write the amount of olive oil (in oz by default) and press “Calculate Lye”. The amount will not be identical, since SAP is a approximation and I don’t know which numbers they use. Next time, we’re actually going to make this soap.