Adventures in Cheesemaking....



Since E and I have both been down with this nasty summer cold we haven't been drinking milk, so we managed to store up quite a bit - enough to try making cheese for the first time. I make paneer - fresh Indian cheese - pretty often, just heating milk, adding lemon juice, then straining and pressing the curds. We decided to try mozarrella this time around - our first rennet/cheese combo...

We didn't manage to make true mozarella - it never got the "stretch" it was supposed to - but we made a soft, milk cheese and after I rolled it into balls and marinated it in herbed olive oil, it was delicious with fresh tomatoes for lunch today - I'll post our first successful mozz recipe once we try, try again :) We also used the whey to make ricotta - that turned out fine, just added a quart of so of milk to the hot whey, heated it with lemon juice, and strained it......

The next kitchen adventure will be some sort of canned peppers - E says "hot pepper jelly" just sounds too strange, and claims to not like relish, so I'll have to get creative with our pepper preservation - we have red bells, green bells, frying peppers, and jalapenos in the fridge just waiting to be canned! Any suggestions?

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Posted: Mon - September 6, 2004 at 09:46 PM        

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