I saw a board topic on Chowhound where someone listed her top five cooking goals for the year, and the subsequent foodie replies were inspirational. Just thinking about cooking goals can break a person out of his or her box and excite in the process. Usually these types of lists are done in January, but I will give myself until the end of 2010 for completion. So in no specific order, here are my goals for this next year.
(1) Make my own butter. I was inspired while researching an article for this site recently. And more than that, I want to try it out, then make it for a holiday dinner. Other people can bring dishes — I am going to make butter on location.
(2) Learn to make sushi rolls. It is hard to get good sushi here in central Minnesota, but I can buy sushi-grade fish, so I might as well try my hand at it.
(3) Make my own cheese. First I need to find a good supplier of milk, but that shouldn’t be hard here in Minnesota. This will probably the first goal I tackle.
(4) Make a good French rustic pork terrine. I lived in Europe enough to discover good terrine, and this is one of the foods I miss the most.
(5) Make my own artisanal sausage. This way I will finally know how sausage is made. I want to use local lamb or yak meat or both. I am thinking of lamb sausage with grappa soaked local grapes, spicy fennel lamb sausage, or wild rice and yak sausage.
(6) Get pizza making down so it is almost as easy to make my own as it is to throw in a frozen one — but better.
(7) Learn to make my Grandmother’s lefse, which is an unleavened potato flat bread. I used to love watching her make it, and I have all of the cooking equipment. That will be for next Christmas though.
(8) Make Korean kimchi. Nothing too difficult, just a simple kimchi.
(9) Experiment with ice cream. I’ve already started making my own ice cream, but while living in Yemen I loved an ice cream made out of bread and pistachios. To this day, I think this is the best ice cream I have ever had. I want to experiment with sour cream, bread, and herbs such as mint, basil, and tarragon.
(10) Learn how to sharpen my own knives. If I am going to buy good Japanese knives, it is a good idea to learn how to sharpen them properly.
So that is it. It seems like an ambitious list, but I am lucky that I have already identified local suppliers in some cases and have recipes picked out for others. Strangely, I think the pizza thing is going to be the most challenging, but making the sushi, terrine, and sausage will also take me in new directions.
