Saint Maure By Me

Saint Maure by Me

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

Tomato and cheese season is the best season.

Fromage Free Press

Feta Brines; Paneer Shines

Bay View, Wis.– You know that gallon-sized jar of brine and cheese pictured in my last post?  I fished out a hunk to test the cheese at the 10 day point.  It’s standing up just fine.  Crumbly and dry on the inside.  Salty on the outside.  After a jolt of kosher salt on your tongue, there’s funky feta flavor behind there.  Strange thing though — it’s kinda chlorine-y.  I wonder why this is.  Perhaps filtered spring water would be better than Milwaukee’s best tap water.  Perhaps I should wait a full month before tasting again.  I’ve reached the upper threshold of my hobbyist cheese making resources so I have no definitive answer.  I wonder if I could get ahold of Sid at Carr Valley.  Sigh.  We’ll have to sit and wait for my primary research experiment to run its course in my basement fridge.

Paneer cheese.  Make it at home and you will be loved by all — at least for your cooking.  It happens so quickly, I forget to photograph the process and it’s eaten before I get my camera to document it in prepared dishes.  Here’s how to make it, sans photographs.

Obtain one gallon of whole milk.  In a stock pot on the stove top, heat the milk to just shy of 185 degrees.  Dump in about a quarter cup of white vinegar and you’ll see the curd start to separate right away.  Keep the temperature steady for 5-10 minutes while stirring occasionally.  You’ll see the whey get thinner, more watery and turn pale green as more proteins coagulate.  You’ll notice the small curds clumping up nicely in a slotted spoon.  Once you’ve got good separation of curds and whey, turn off the heat, line a big colander with cheesecloth (not the cloth you use to make sachets for mulled cider, honest fine weave cheesecloth), pour the contents of the stock pot through the cheesecloth (reserve  the whey if you want — otherwise, pour down the drain).   Tie up the corners of the cloth and hang up to drain for a few hours or overnight in a cool place.  Unwrap from cheesecloth and badda bing, you’ve got paneer.  You could shape it into a block with right angles at this point too.  I’m not that particular, so I cut it into cubes and serve in staple Indian dishes like Palak Paneer.  Or with pasta and herbs and olive oil.

Cast Iron Carnage

Burns-Boose Kitchen, Wis.– In tangential feta news, the pot rack that held up my cheesecloth-wrapped feta fell down while we were away for the weekend.  We showed up with out-of-town pals in tow to find our freshly-cleaned kitchen floor covered in bits of safety glass from a shattered pot lid.  Fortunately for us,  we had the sweetest houseguests of all time on our side, as they proceeded to help sweep up the mess before we brought in luggage.   I mean, hands and knees with dustpan sweeping.  So I’m not hyperbolizing when I say “of all time.”  Anyhow, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the carnage?  Not frustration over the gouges in our kitchen wall, but a grateful phew that the wreckage didn’t ruin a batch of cheese.  So new cheese draining area needed.  Preferrably one that doesn’t share space with cast iron skillets.

If that’s cheese, it smells good

One step in the process of making feta cheese is to hang the curds for a day or so while the whey drains.  This is feta hanging to the right. And below x 3.  I made a batch recently.  Successfully, even.

 

 

At hour 12 or so, the cheesecloth and its contents begin to smell a bit like cat puke.  Probably any small animal’s puke…or even my sophomore year roommate’s after 3/4 of a bottle of kiwi flavored Mad Dog 20/20.  Point being, the smell is a bit foul if you don’t know the source.  According to my significant other, when you realize the odor is coming from cheese, it still doesn’t exactly smell good but it no longer makes you want to wretch.

After a day of draining, you cut up the curds into blocks to cure at room temperature for another couple days.  Somewhere during this stretch, it begins to smell like delicious cheese, but not until you lift the lid a couple times to check on it, recoiling visibly as if you just retrieved from the back of the fridge last month’s leftovers.  At the 72 hour mark, it really does smell good and is ready to sit in a brine solution to develop flavor.  This jar is going to wait four weeks before opening.

To get started in cheese theory 101 (and 102 & 103), I recommend checking out this book called American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheesesby Paul Kindstedt.  No recipes in there but textbook facts and guidance. For example, your brining solution and cheese should be the same temperature for maximum salt absorption and to minimize the risk of subpar or sketchy cheese.  Go to Dairyconnection for help with supplies and recipes.  Great service from these folks.

I made this batch with two gallons of whole cow’s milk and one quart of goat milk.  Traditionally sheep and/or goat is used in feta but I didn’t have that readily available so I, as usual, went into guerilla culinary mode and made do with a recipe deviation.  Ha, you can’t stop me.  I’m wild.

Chevre Sounds Fancy, But…

Ingredients for Goat Cheese

Originally uploaded by jizo.sama

 

 

This is totally comfort food. You’ll feel empowered if you make it yourself.  Here’s how you do it.

If you can, I’d suggest going in on supplies with two or three other friends who are interested in making cheese at home. Then just divide up the rennet and dehydrated culture. Otherwise, you’ll just have a decade’s worth of rennet for your home kitchen. It’s cheap though, so don’t fret if you’re going solo.  All products mentioned can easily be shipped to your door from the Dairy Connection.

Rennet

The bottle of rennet pictured in this post is derived from vegetable sources instead of a bovine stomach. It fits one popular definition of vegan in Wisconsin — no animal products except for cheese. *wink*

Culture

Order the MM100 mesophilic culture or mesophilic aromatic type B.  Either is good for goat cheese.  I use the MM100.

Auxillary Supplies

Get yourself two molds of your chosen shape, and a foot or so square of cheesecloth — and not the loose weave culinary variety, a fine weave cheesecloth or butter muslin — or even paper coffee filters for a Chemex carafe.

Steps to a Kitchen Fromagerie

1. Pour two quarts of room temperature goat milk into a stock pot. If the milk isn’t room temperature give it a low heat on the stove top until the it measures 72 degrees on a candy thermometer.
2. Add 1/4 teaspoon of MM100 culture crystals. Stir. Add one drop of rennet. Seriously, one drop. Stir again. Put the cover on the stock pot and let it sit in a warm spot (72ish degrees again) for somewhere between 12 and 18 hours. Our timing is sometimes bad, which is why I give leeway for forgetfulness and/or overscheduling. If you start your cheese at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday, that doesn’t mean you have to set your alarm for the middle of the night to tend to it.
3. After 12-18 hours, line a collander with your cheesecloth or paper coffee filter. Ladle a bit of the now separated curds and whey into the collander. Keep doing this until you can pour the entire contents of the stock pot into the collander. Leave the whole mess on the countertop to let the curds drain away from the whey for 8 hours or so.
4. After 8 hours, scrape the creamy white curds (it’ll look like heavy sour cream) into a clean mixing bowl and season with whatever you like. I’d start with salt to taste. Maybe black pepper. I’ve used crumbled saffron threads, curry powder, caraway seed crushed by a mortor and pestel, pressed garlic, fresh basil leaves (which turn black in the fridge, so save them until the next step and line the mold forms with leaves)… the list goes on.
5. After seasoning, spoon the curds into your mold forms. Two quarts of milk should fill two pyramid molds about 2/3 full. You’ll need something underneath the molds to catch the remaining whey as it drains off. I used pint glasses for this batch pictured here. I also covered the tops loosley with plastic wrap to keep the top from drying out too much. That’s optional.
6. Leave the mold forms out to drain for another 24 hours. After one day, put them in the fridge and leave them to firm up for 2-3 days. Unmold and eat your cheese. If it is too bland for you, sprinkle with salt, wrap it in plastic and leave it in the fridge for a day. Eat the cheese within a week for best consistency. Yay! Cheese. Easy.