Buffalo Chicken POUTINE

I love poutine.  I also love anything with buffalo sauce.  So why not combine the two... thanks to the googleverse, someone thought of this idea before me.  Thankfully, a recipe that made sense existed and combined all that is buffalo goodness into one gravy mixture.  Two gravies are featured below.  One kid friendly and one for a Buffalo sauce obsessed person.

But with all good things, there are a couple of modifications.

One: More wing sauce.  Did I mention that I am obsessed?
Two: Plain fries.  Honestly, they need the ranch. Don't skip this step.
Three: I mixed my chicken with the gravy.  I prefer a more moist meat. And wing sauce.  The meat needs the wing sauce.
Four: I topped mine with a drizzle of ranch.
Five: I used my own home-made locally-sustained artisinal cheese curds and some store bought blue cheese (not quite that advanced in cheese making yet).

The kids thought the meal was "terrible."

Verdict: It exceeded my expectations.  I was expecting good, not great.  Maybe that is the mojito talking... maybe not.

Until next time.

Chicken from Full Heart Farm.  Full Heart Farm also provided the chicken feet used to make my stock.
Curds made with milk from Terra Firma Farm.

All other items purchased in an adequately-supplied LOCAL grocery store.  I suppose you could purchase some of the dry goods from Amazon.

You're so cheesy

My goals in life are simple: eat food I like and enjoy life.  Most of my enjoyment involves food.  And cheese.  So, I decided to try cheese making and followed a recipe from CheeseMaking.com.  The pictures made it easy to follow the process if you lacked some of the beginner confidence like I did.  My first batch was okay (well, really it was sub par).  It lacked some of the saltiness I crave and crumbled like Feta.  It wasn't bad, but lacked the squeak and was dry.  The other problem is my stove.  The temperature is difficult to regulate being at it is electric and from 1958.

My second batch was a bit less dry and also lacked saltiness.  So I added kosher salt to the batch after the whey was pressed.  Still dry, but not as bad as the first batch.

Now for batch three: went to the farm to get non-homogonized milk (but it was pasteurized).  I'm not 100% sure that this was the reason the curds came out better, but I'll roll with it.  This time, I was quite tired of the temperature deregulation with my stove.  Once I reached a temperature above 96 deg, I turned the stove off.  Yes.  I would turn it on to maintain 96 deg, then off again once I was above the recommended temp for ripening.  I also simmered the curds for the lower end of the recommended time.  Maybe cooking them too much dried the darn things out.  I also added salt to the whey.  I should have added more.  There are a few suggestions for salting cheese through an interwebs search.  Pros about this method: squeaky cheese, melty-ish cheese (seriously, it has the consistency of a good hispanic won't goo when you fry it cheese), and almost salted appropriately.

So, why bother with the whole cheese making thing?  It is because I love Poutine.  Fries. Cheese. Gravy. Toppings.

My next venture will be making a blue cheese.  Because I need Buffalo Chicken Poutine.