The Yogurt Cheese Experiment
Once, a long time ago, back before the Universe decided I needed the excitement of my first broken bones and a renewed relationship with poverty, I discovered why Meyer lemons are not the ideal lemon. Many a Californian has a deep love for the Meyer*, but I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that the ONLY thing a Meyer lemon is good for is for making lemonade. A Meyer tastes great...but they are lemons with all the fight and zap bred out of them. I suppose that most of the time it is not an attractive quality to be able to make anything curdle.
If anyone told me that I made them curdle inside I would feel very wounded.
However, one of the uses to which lemons are put is to curdle milk. To make most cheeses you need to curdle the milk. You can do this with rennet, a very disgusting liquid or tablet that is made from the stomach linings of mammalians, (I reckon we could harvest human rennet too, but for obvious reasons we don't), or you can use a vegetable rennet, vinegar, or lemon juice. If you are going to use lemon juice it must be the really sour kind.
Not Meyers.
I know this from personal experience.
This holds true for any baking in which lemons are featured. Lemon curd is best when the lemons are Eurekas or Lisbons. This is true of marinades too which involves the acid of the lemon to slightly cook the food you are marinating.
If you want to suck a lemon though, always choose the Meyer.
I am a little afraid of trying to make farmer's cheese again right now (paneer is basically an Indian farmer's cheese) because motivating to do anything that takes actual EFFORT will hurt my head, but I'm trying to work up the courage to make feta. (Do you hear the angel's singing?) Not sheep feta or goat feta...I like cow feta. I miss it. I want it. I need it. Feta is one of my all time favorite cheeses.
So here's the plan: make yogurt cheese which is similar in texture to cream cheese and is about the easiest cheese to make (I will tell you how in just a minute). Next I will make a farmer's cheese but give it the Riana treatment (she cures it in brine which makes it similar to feta) and then, lastly, after I have seen a new psychiatrist, I will tackle the more involved craft of feta making.
To make yogurt cheese you need:
2 pounds yogurt (32 ounces)- make certain it is a "live culture"** yogurt like Nancy's.
Cheese cloth
A colander
A bowl to set the colander in
A long wooden spoon
A tall pot
Fridge space
You line a colander with the cheese cloth. Set the colander in a bowl that is large enough to catch the whey that will drain from the yogurt. Dump the yogurt (or pour it if you're one of those more elegant types) into the colander and stick the whole mess of it in the fridge for a few hours.
My colander is not blessed with enough holes for this to work really well. So after a few hours I skipped to the next step which is to gather up the cheese cloth and knot it over the handle of a spoon like this, and rest the spoon on the edge of the tall pot. More pressure from being suspended will force more whey out which is what will make the yogurt thicken.
Put the pot in the fridge and let sit for up to twenty four hours. You can eat it at any time, really, it all depends on how thick you like it. I'm going for cream cheese consistency because I have some pepper jelly that I would love to eat (I would have to make homemade crackers for it too) and it's perfect with cream cheese. So I will check it in the morning.
It will last up to two weeks in the fridge. When it's at the consistency you desire, you put it in a container, and keep it in the fridge. Or just eat it.
If anyone else makes it, will you please tell me how it turned out and what you ate it with? I'll bet it would be incredible with home made bagels (Which Riana has written about making and included the recipe so you can troll her flickr pages for it if you like.)
*Don't be offended Claire! I do love a good Meyer, but I have to report the truth about their culinary usefulness. If I could give you a thousand Meyers...you know I would!!!
**"live culture" means that the healthy bacteria that makes yogurt what it is have not been killed off during the pasteurization process. If you are eating yogurt for health benefits, then it should always be a live culture kind. Otherwise you're just eating custard.***
***Yogurts that have stabilizers and sugar and weird crap in them are not the wholesome food many Americans think it is. My favorite of the yogurt impostors is Yoplait, but I haven't eaten it in years because it's total junk. For a brief period of time I let Max eat "Gogurt" which is a hideous fake yogurt for kids (by Yoplait) with all kinds of dyes in it that turned Max's poop blue. I draw the line at blue or green poo.
If anyone told me that I made them curdle inside I would feel very wounded.
However, one of the uses to which lemons are put is to curdle milk. To make most cheeses you need to curdle the milk. You can do this with rennet, a very disgusting liquid or tablet that is made from the stomach linings of mammalians, (I reckon we could harvest human rennet too, but for obvious reasons we don't), or you can use a vegetable rennet, vinegar, or lemon juice. If you are going to use lemon juice it must be the really sour kind.
Not Meyers.
I know this from personal experience.
This holds true for any baking in which lemons are featured. Lemon curd is best when the lemons are Eurekas or Lisbons. This is true of marinades too which involves the acid of the lemon to slightly cook the food you are marinating.
If you want to suck a lemon though, always choose the Meyer.
I am a little afraid of trying to make farmer's cheese again right now (paneer is basically an Indian farmer's cheese) because motivating to do anything that takes actual EFFORT will hurt my head, but I'm trying to work up the courage to make feta. (Do you hear the angel's singing?) Not sheep feta or goat feta...I like cow feta. I miss it. I want it. I need it. Feta is one of my all time favorite cheeses.
So here's the plan: make yogurt cheese which is similar in texture to cream cheese and is about the easiest cheese to make (I will tell you how in just a minute). Next I will make a farmer's cheese but give it the Riana treatment (she cures it in brine which makes it similar to feta) and then, lastly, after I have seen a new psychiatrist, I will tackle the more involved craft of feta making.
To make yogurt cheese you need:
2 pounds yogurt (32 ounces)- make certain it is a "live culture"** yogurt like Nancy's.
Cheese cloth
A colander
A bowl to set the colander in
A long wooden spoon
A tall pot
Fridge space
You line a colander with the cheese cloth. Set the colander in a bowl that is large enough to catch the whey that will drain from the yogurt. Dump the yogurt (or pour it if you're one of those more elegant types) into the colander and stick the whole mess of it in the fridge for a few hours.
My colander is not blessed with enough holes for this to work really well. So after a few hours I skipped to the next step which is to gather up the cheese cloth and knot it over the handle of a spoon like this, and rest the spoon on the edge of the tall pot. More pressure from being suspended will force more whey out which is what will make the yogurt thicken.
Put the pot in the fridge and let sit for up to twenty four hours. You can eat it at any time, really, it all depends on how thick you like it. I'm going for cream cheese consistency because I have some pepper jelly that I would love to eat (I would have to make homemade crackers for it too) and it's perfect with cream cheese. So I will check it in the morning.
It will last up to two weeks in the fridge. When it's at the consistency you desire, you put it in a container, and keep it in the fridge. Or just eat it.
If anyone else makes it, will you please tell me how it turned out and what you ate it with? I'll bet it would be incredible with home made bagels (Which Riana has written about making and included the recipe so you can troll her flickr pages for it if you like.)
*Don't be offended Claire! I do love a good Meyer, but I have to report the truth about their culinary usefulness. If I could give you a thousand Meyers...you know I would!!!
**"live culture" means that the healthy bacteria that makes yogurt what it is have not been killed off during the pasteurization process. If you are eating yogurt for health benefits, then it should always be a live culture kind. Otherwise you're just eating custard.***
***Yogurts that have stabilizers and sugar and weird crap in them are not the wholesome food many Americans think it is. My favorite of the yogurt impostors is Yoplait, but I haven't eaten it in years because it's total junk. For a brief period of time I let Max eat "Gogurt" which is a hideous fake yogurt for kids (by Yoplait) with all kinds of dyes in it that turned Max's poop blue. I draw the line at blue or green poo.
Labels: cheese, cheese making, cooking, exotic food, homemade cheese, local food, skills, urban homesteading