Reclaiming the Kitchen
(Page 7 of 8)
June/July 2008
By Barbara Kingsolver
As the whey separates out, lactose goes with it. Heating, pressing and aging the curd will get rid of more whey, making it harder and generally sharper flavored. As a rule, the harder the cheese, the lower the lactose. Also, higher fat content means less lactose — butter has none. A little biochemistry goes a long way in safely navigating the dairy path.
RELATED CONTENT
FAST, COMPLETE DINNERS FOR TWO...PREPARED IN ONE PRESSURE COOKER November/December 1978
...
THE HEALTHY PLATE: A double crust can do in a diet. Cut the crust for a healthier pie...
Today's Home Cooking: More Geography Than Method April/May 1999 BITS AND PIECES With all the health...
Here's an easy way to keep your catch super-fresh and put extra flavor in the frying pan, including...
Tours With That Extra Touch September/October 1980 MOTHER has some great adventures in store for yo...
At our house soft cheeses were the tricky terrain. Fermentation and whey removal take time that mass production doesn’t allow. Some factory-made soft cheeses are not cultured at all, but curdled simply by adding an acid. But I don’t like to give up. If I could monitor the process myself, seeing personally to lactose removal, I wondered if I might get something edible.
Soft cheeses are ridiculously easy — and cheap — to make, it turns out. The hardest part is ordering the cultures (by catalog or online), but a few dollars’ worth will curdle many gallons of milk. With these packets of cheese making bugs in your freezer and a gallon of good milk, plus a $10 thermometer, colander and some cheesecloth, soft cheeses are at your command: in a stainless steel pot, warm the milk to 85 degrees, open the culture packet and stir the contents into the milk. Take the pot off the stove, cover, let it stand overnight. By the next morning it will have gelled into a soft white curd. Spoon this into a cheesecloth-lined colander and let the whey drain. Salt it, spread it on bread, smile. Different cultures make different cheeses. The bugs stay up all night doing the work, not you. Is that not cool?
Our chevre and fromagina were so tasty — and digestible — we were inspired to try hard cheeses. These are more work, but it’s basically the same process. Most recipes call for both a bacterial culture and rennet, which together cause the milk to set into a firm curd in just minutes, rather than overnight. For mozzarella, this curd is kneaded like dough, heated until it’s almost untouchably hot, then stretched like taffy, which is a lot of fun. The whole process — from cold milk to a beautiful, braided, impress-your-guests mozzarella on the plate — takes less than an hour. For hard cheeses, the curd is sliced into cubes, heated, then pressed into a wheel and, ideally, aged for months.
At Ricki’s workshop, we lunched on our first three cheeses: queso blanco stir-fried with vegetables, sliced tomatoes with mozzarella, and mascarpone-filled dates. We congratulated ourselves, and headed back for the next round. We put our cheddar in a press to squeeze out extra moisture, while Ricki talked about aging and waxing as if these really lay ahead of us — as if we were all going home to make cheeses. I’d be willing to bet we all did.
Why Do This?
It’s hard to say. Some are refining exquisite products, while others of us are just shooting for edible, but we’re all dazzled by the moment of alchemy when the milk divides into clear whey and white curd, or the mozzarella stretches in our hands to a glossy golden skein. We’re connecting across geography and time with the artisans of Camembert, the Greek shepherds, the Mongols on the steppes who live by milking their horses — everybody who ever looked at a full-moon pot of white milk and imagined cheese. We’re recalling our best memories infused with scents, parental love, and some kind of food magically coming together in the routines of childhood.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
Next >>
