Making cheese at home is our challenge this month. That probably
sounds much more daunting than it is.
Do not fret- no cheese cave needed.
Since we are novice cheese makers,
let us start with some simple recipes for fresh cheeses. Click here for recipe links: paneer, goat cheese, mozzarella, ricotta and mascarpone.
Some take a little more effort than others, so choose what speaks to
you.
If you want to read more about what you can make out of your
kitchen look at the book Artisan Cheese Making at Home by Mary Karlin. The book has recipes for all levels of home
cheese makers. Who knows, maybe you will
want to join the American Cheese Society and meet up with other cheese geeks
once a year to discuss your cheese making passions.
Results:
Results:
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| Deb's Paneer |
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| Deb's Paneer, browned in butter atop saag |
The idea for this challenge was my original Food Resolution 2013. Deb asked me to set a Food Resolution, and it was to make goat cheese. Sadly, I was not able to make goat cheese this time around because of the constraints of having the house on the market- the stress of having to have it clean at any moment and the reality of having a toddler destroy any sign of cleanliness all day every day. I am in no position to take on major projects at any hour. So I decided to make the simple recipe of ricotta.
ReplyDeleteOne week I bought a really expensive gallon of full fat milk from Cruz Dairy in Knoxville as inspiration to get the challenge done. The top 20% of the gallon was a pure, golden fat cap. It sat in my fridge until the day before the sell by date. This gallon was a thing of beauty and I admired it each day it sat there on the top shelf of my fridge like a painting in a museum. Then I waited until 10:15 PM the night before it was going out of date and I found the energy and time to make ricotta. The whole time I babysat the pot of slowly heating milk, I was engrossed and delighted. I love cheese. It is my career. Why have I never done this before? Watching the curds and whey separate was my favorite part.
One thing I will do differently next time is not drain it as long. I squeezed a lot of the liquid out after letting it drain for an hour. Then I refrigerated it. When I went to use the ricotta to make dinner the following day, the cheese was firm instead of fluffy. Liesel didn’t mind, though. I had to remove the container from the counter because LJ was shoveling it in her mouth and would have eaten the entire container had I permitted. We used it as a filling for a calzone with roasted red peppers and caramelized onions. I could easily tell the difference in quality and texture of this ricotta verse a commodity ricotta. Really, really cool experience.
I've been milking goats up the road at our neighbors for some time now to get raw goat milk, and my friends at Vida Verde had taught me how to make a really simple farmer's cheese by adding heat and vinegar, then draining off the whey and mixing in some salt. Voila, cheese! That process was always exciting but comfortable, so I decided to up the ante on this challenge and use some culture from New England Cheesemaking Supply. The first one I tried was a super simple direct set culture, where you basically just stir in the packet of culture and let the curd set and drain off the whey. Even easier than farmer's cheese! And really delicious soft chevre. But I also bought some French chevre culture that requires making a mother culture first, and though there's this extra step, you only use part of the mother to make a batch, leaving the remainder to use on future batches or to start a new mother. In other words, you don't have to keep buying the culture. As long as you use it periodically and keep reculturing new batches, you can keep it going for a long time like you would a sourdough starter for bread. This batch came out incredibly good! The process started with sterilizing some milk and culturing it, then adding some of that mother culture to my raw goat milk, along with rennet. I let that coagulate in my dehydrator, which regulated the temperature. Next I spooned the curds into molds and let them weep for a day, draining off the whey. The end result was four cute little chevre buttons. I cracked black pepper on one, sprinkled meyer lemon salt on another, thyme on the third. And the last one was coated in toasted cumin and crushed smoked pepper. It made a perfect cheese course! And we served it alongside a salmon fillet from a 12 pounder Jay and I caught on our first chartered fishing trip in the Pacific. Sadly, I completely forgot to get a photo of my cheese buttons until we had demolished most of them. You'll have to imagine them in their pristine form. Next up, we got citric acid and rennet to make mozzarella.
ReplyDeleteI have made ricotta in the past - ridiculously easy and super delicious. So, I wanted to try something new. I've searched several times for the items needed for homemade mozzarella, but didn't have much success. I decided on paneer. I love making saag paneer (from 101 Cookbooks blog - so freaking good - make this immediately!!!). All the times we've made saag paneer, we've tried different brands of paneer from various stores and even tried haloumi once as a substitute. Nothing was really outstanding, all a bit bland and some even rubbery (gross). Homemade paneer turned out to be really easy - essentially the same as making ricotta with the extra step of smushing it with a heavy pot to push even more liquid out. I did forget to set a timer during the smushing part and let it smush for several hours while we (attempted) to put the kids to bed. But it still stayed together during cooking. I cut it into squares (probably should have made them a bit smaller) and browned them in butter to put atop the saag. It was really, really tasty. Fun experiment!!!
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