Kitchen happenings

If I don't keep track of what I'm doing in the kitchen somewhere, I will lose it. I'm gifted like that. So I thought I'd post it here. If anyone out there in the big wide world is curious, all the better. Otherwise I at least have a record of what silliness I've been up to in the kitchen, or at the sewing table, depending.

Cheese.

That's what I've been up to lately. I haven't get gotten my hands on rennet (I will be ordering some from this place, but there's a plethora of choices and I haven't yet decided what I want. So I've been making basic acid cheese. Which sounds entirely more psychodelic than it is. In a basic sense.. it takes the milk, adds acid (vinegar, lemon juice) to get the curds and whey to separate and then you can strain the curds out and have a lump of cheese.

The type of acid used affects the flavour of the cheese (uh duh) and the milk itself affects the consistancy of the cheese. (as I now know). Skim milk? Even with extra skim milk powder to give it a little more oomph? Rock solid little lumps of cheese. Yummy.. but solid and kinda rubbery. Sort of odd really. This most recent batch was 125 ml of 18% cream tossed into a bag of 2% milk. (er.. bag is 1.3 litres, welcome to Canada) So a total of about .. 1.45 litres of milk. Previously I used 1 bag of skim milk, 3 tablespoons of milk powder and 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar OR 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.

We liked the lemon juice better, so batch two is the higher fat milk and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. Much softer curd, just looking at it while it's draining. I'm going to drain the daylights out of it again and see how it goes.

Right, draining. A clean hankie, in a strainer over a bowl. Once it's gotten the bulk of it strained out, I clip the corners of the hankie in a binder clip and hang it from the cupboard door with an elastic band. Oh yeah, I go high tech here.