Cheese | The Slowvelder

Almost always associated with a fresh Greek salad, salty and soft feta cheese provides a creamy texture to the crunchy veggies and olives. Because it’s cut into blocks and packaged in a salty whey brine, feta is referred to as a ‘pickled cheese’. One of the main components of the spinach and filo pie spanakopita, feta is also eaten as part of a mezze platter and is added to dishes with fish and meat as well. Although the cheese doesn’t melt, it can be used to add texture to baked pasta dishes and pizza, mixed with pesto to make a stuffing for chicken breasts or crumbled over a baked potato with a sprinkling of oregano.

We like to add it to quiches with spinach or butternut and when braaing we make a foil parcel containing feta, chopped tomatoes and garlic – heat it on the grill and serve it with warm homemade bread.

Ingredients and equipment

2 liters fresh milk (cow or goat)
1 tablespoon fresh plain yogurt (with live cultures)
1/2 tablet rennet, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
1 large pot with lid (stainless steel with heavy bottom is best otherwise use an enamel pot. (No aluminium or cast iron pots)
Thermometer
Cheese cloth, muslin or dishtowel
Colander

Steps

Warm milk to 30°C (86°F), stirring it regularly so that it does not burn on the bottom. Remove it from the heat and set aside.

Mix 1 tablespoon of yogurt with an equal amount of milk to blend. Stir the blended yogurt and milk into the warmed milk and mix thoroughly. Cover and and allow the inoculated milk to sit for one hour at room temperature.
While the inoculated milk sits, dissolve 1/2 tablet of rennet in fresh, cool water. (I used powdered rennet – 1 capsule)

After the inoculated milk has sat for one hour, add the dissolved rennet and stir to mix thoroughly.
Let the inoculated, renneted milk sit covered overnight at room temperature. (I did this step in the day time and 5 hours was sufficient.)
Check for a clean break the next morning, by which time the milk should have gelled and some of the whey will have separated.

Close-up of clean break

Not so clean break

Cut the curd by starting at one side, and cut straight down to bottom. Make the next cut 1/2 inch from and parallel to the first, but sloping slightly (the sliced curd will be wider at bottom than top). Repeat increasing angle with each cut. Turn the pot 90° and repeat cuts. Repeat cuts and turning two more times. The curd pieces should be about ½ inch cubes or slices as you prefer.
With a very clean hand and arm, reach to the bottom and gently lift the curds to stir. Cut the large pieces that appear with a table knife so that they are ½ inch cubes.

Let the cut curds sit, with occasional stirring, for 10-15 minutes until curd is somewhat contracted.
Decant off the whey through the colander lined with the cheese cloth (folded double), pouring the curds into the cheese cloth. Save the whey for a later step.

Let the cheese drain in the cloth until no more whey drains out (about 2-4 hours). It may be drained at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

Place the drained curds into a bowl. Mix in a 1/2 of a tspn of salt, breaking up the curd.
Press the cheese into a mold. Line the can withcheese cloth, place the curds inside, fold over the ends of the cloth, place the end on top, and place a weight on top of that. Let sit overnight.

Prepare pickling whey brine (12.5% salt): mix 350ml of whey (saved from before) with 5 tablespoons of salt. Stir to dissolve. The brine must be acidic or else the cheese will melt on the surface. The whey is made acidic by letting it sit out at room temperature, covered, for 12-24 hrs.

Cut the cheese into 1.5 inch cubes and place them in a wide-mouth jar. Pour brine over to cover.

Let the cheese pickle for several days in the refrigerator. The cheese will become drier and more easily crumbled with time.
Store in the refrigerator. Rinse before use to remove excess salt.

Great tasting feta cheese. The process takes much longer than cottage cheese but much shorter than aged cheeses. If you work outside of your home I would recommend starting the whole process on a Friday evening – that way you should get your cheese into the fridge to pickle by Sunday morning. There are only a few steps to do each day so it’s not labour intensive.

My recipe is adapted from this one at WikiHow.

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This weekend I was determined to start with my cheese making experiments, and although it was a full weekend with dinners out with friends and sleeping out on Saturday night, I still managed to fit in my first attempt at making cottage cheese.

Last week I had trawled the interwebs looking at various cottage cheese recipes. There are very many different recipes, some of which are really simple, to those that use fancy equipment and take a lot more time. Because I like simple things using few ingredients I decided to start at the very simple recipes and work my way through them till I find one that I love. The result was absolutely divine and will search no further for a cottage cheese recipe. If you are interested in trying to make cottage cheese, you do not need rennet, double boilers and 12 hours draining time as some recipes specify. You also don’t have to use skim milk as some other recipes specify – full cream does really nicely. This simple recipe worked like a bomb.

Simple, delicious, cottage cheese.

Equipment needed:

A stainless steel or enamel pot that can contain the amount of milk you choose to use. (Do not use aluminium.)
A plastic or stainless steel stirring spoon.
A plastic or stainless steel colander. (Not essential but it makes things a little easier.)
Double layer of muslin or cheese cloth ( you can use a clean dish towel also.)
Food thermometer. (Handy but not essential for this cheese.)
Sharp knife
Measuring cup

Ingredients:

Milk (full cream or skim – raw or pasteurized but NOT homogenized or UHT)
White vinegar (you can also use lemon juice (1 tbsp per liter of milk)
Fresh cream
Salt to taste
Optional herbs and flavorings

Volumes:

For every liter of milk you use you will need 50 ml vinegar and 3 to 4 tbsp of fresh cream. 2 liters of full cream milk will make about 300 g of cottage cheese (just over one standard store-bought tub of 250 g)

Method:

Warm milk gently to just before boiling point without scalding it on the bottom – I used a thick based pan to spread the heat and warmed it slowly eliminating the need to use a double boiler. I heated my milk to 80 deg C, checking it with my new nifty cheese thermometer.

Turn off the heat and pour in the white vinegar and stir for 20 seconds till curds form. (This happens fast.)

Allow to cool for a little then pour into a colander lined with a double layer of cheesecloth.
Allow whey to drain out of the curds for about 10 minutes.
Hold together the corners of your cheesecloth and twist to force all of the whey out of the curds.
Keeping the curds in the cheesecloth bundle, wash the bundle under running cold water loosening and tightening the bundle a few times to rinse all the whey out of the cheese. Do this for about 5 minutes.

Tightly squeeze as much of the water out of the curds as possible.
Remove the curds from the cheesecloth and place in a bowl.
Cut up the curds to the desired size – I like my cottage cheese quite chunky.

Salt the curds to taste, add any herbs or spices that you would like to use, and stir in the fresh cream. (I did not use any flavoring besides salt as I wanted to taste the cheese itself). Feel free to add more cream if you want a wetter product.
Serve.

If you have not tasted homemade cottage cheese, then you have not tasted good cottage cheese yet. It’s so very easy to make and takes less than an hour from beginning to end. Yum!