Cheese Amidst Chaos

With a packed weekend on the cards, the wife kinda pushed me into making cheese on Saturday. I understand nagging is 2-way traffic.
I chose feta since it does not require too much surveillance while making. Since 2 litres (which is my standard volume for cheese making) would produce a significant amount of feta, I split a litre to indulge in some cream cheese.
With all the happenings on Saturday, the wife's stained glass project and my RTO work, the feta turned out to be the best decision. Will leave it for a couple of weeks in brine to age.
The cream cheese though turned truant. I'd forgotten to check on it on Saturday night - exhaustion got the better of me. It moved on to the next stage of aging - sour cream. No matter, sour cream dips are still wonderful. Add a few skinned and seeded fresno's, a pinch of salt & sugar and you've got yourself some amazing spiced dipping sauce.

This was probably one of my better results with cream cheese. Awaiting some sourdough from the wife to complement this.

Can mascarpone and tiramisu be far behind ??

Green with Pizza

What do you do with a bunch of basil, fresh mozzarella that's been made a week ago, disinegrating in brine and a lazy weekend ? why pesto pizza of course!!!

The love affair with pesto started with the discovery of that amazing dry fruit - the pine nut. Costing over $6 a pound at the time in the local grocery stores in Ames, these were looked upon as treats to be enjoyed over special occasions on a student budget. Healthy doses of Emeril & Mario Batali introduced us to the magic of pesto. I still remember one of those Emeril shows dedicated to pizza's. The magical journey with pesto had begun.

Back home in B'lore, locating the chilgoza turned out to be a nightmare. Luckily, with a globalized population and fair amount of relatives and friends buzzing beween here and the US meant a fairly steady supply of the revernial nut.

Once you've had fresh mozz, its tough to go back to the greasy breads the normal folks term pizza's, and so it is with me. How often can you say you make your pizza from scratch, I mean the real scratch, even your cheese.
I don't do the traditional overnight rise of the dough for the base coz pizza urges happen at the drop of a hat.

My basic recipe has been to use a 6yr old supply of Fleishman's active dry yeast, suitably stored in the freezer over the years, along with good old chakki-ground atta. Allow this to rest for about 30mts, and hand stretch my dough to fit the baking pan (the stone has arrived, need to season it before use).
The pesto is a simple basil, pine nut (or toasted walnut) with parsley or coriander, generous tablespoons of parmigiano or plain powdered parmesan, garlic and salt to taste, with olive oil as binder. I'd love to be able to do this in my mortar and pestle, but used the blender(the photo is to show off)

Raiding the refrigerator, I found just green - capsicum, greeen olives and canned jalapenos. With the oven at 225, laid out the base on a square sheet and slathered the pesto on with the toppings. Crumbled the mozz on top and baked for 20mts.
Result below, total bliss :-)))

The Havarti Experiment

This one is over a month old. I finally go to adding the picures to complete the enry.

I've been making cheese for a while, all of which have been the soft varieties with a fair degree of success. I 've tried my hand at neufchatel, feta, cream cheese, mozzarella & ricotta with fairly ok results.
Time to move up the chain. If there's ever going to be a "Gurjar's Cheese Co.', its time I got into the tougher varieties - the aged cheeses.
What makes these tricky is that in India, especially at home with limited equipment, you never know what you'll get - either dry inedible chunks of milk fat or putrid blue-mould goop masses.

My first experiment is with a cheese called 'Havarti'. Its a relatively quick ageing cheese - about 2 weeks (upto 12 weeks if you have he paience) if all goes well. Here's the story.

Day 0 - Got my usual 2 litres of fresh cows milk from the friendly folks near home. Found I was out of meso culture. Scraped the ice tray to get about a cube and a few scraps of the leftover. Added a whole tbsp of thermo culture to cover up - not a good beginning at all. Hoping it wont come back to haunt me later.

Right now in the pressing stage - started off with a 6lb load, followed it with a 10lb and now a 15lb improvised load (atta container at home). Will keep this on for another 6 hrs


Day 4 - I'm getting some form of a rind developing. Not sure if its a rind or just the cheese drying out, but the colourations on the edges suggest something is happening along with a decidedly more fuller taste. No mould so far. I'm checking on this twice a day to make sure there's no mould. Pictures of the cheese below, notice the colourations on the edge.

Day xx - lessons learnt. I'd say for a starter, the cheese came out ok - thats to say that it had to be thrown away in the end coz I didn't control humidity and moisture tool well. Thats a learning I can take away pretty quick. What really encouraged me was the fact that I was able to get a faint 'bite' to my cheese with the aging processs - something I'm quite proud of.

I'm hooked now. Done with the soft cheese for now, will concentrate on the havarti for the next few months. If I'm able to control temp & humidity in the refrigerator to some degree, I feel I should be good to go. Problem ? Waiting for the minimum 2 month ripening period means I'm going to have to wait till March to have a steady supply of this cheese :-(

Of Saucy Tales & Stinky Prawn

Its finally here, thanks to a dear colleague of mine. Now to experiment (evil grin!!)
Sambal it will be. Some nice Fresno chillies await their fate at the hands of the twisted (confused) chef this weekend

House Cleaning (Part 1) - Cheese & The Joys of Sunny Days

Winter has come to Bangalore. My immediate temptation is to reach for my soup recipes. But first, there is the small problem of clearing the cheese rack in the refrigerator. My latest batch of mozzarella was in its brine for over a week, not something you want to subject fresh cheese to.
There was bread that Shantala had baked the day before. and there were 2 full packets of fresh italian basil. The orders from the kitchen matron were to finish what was lying around before embarking on further exploits with broth.
A couple of week ago, we had some lovely sunshine. I took advantage of that and made my first batch of tomato confit, the remnants of which I present below. This also emptied out my EVOO (Rachel Ray acronym). I didn't bother with any marjoram since getting it fresh is such a bother. I must say that allowing the tomato to get to it being rubbery is the perfect way to enjoy it.
I was all for making a fresh batch of feta o blend with this and make a great dip or even a pasta sauce for a rainy day, but it was not to be.
The irresistable homemade bread and the presence of basil was enough to rustle up some rustic bruschetta. We had a German guest who I would like to believe was missing food from back home. The bottle was pretty empty once we were done with it.
Fresh mozzarella is really something. The only reason I buy it is if I have to feed more than 4 people - and I haven't done that in a while. Milk hunting over 2 litres can be a strain on the body on a weekend :-)
Still have half the quantity of mozz. With all the basil around, its probably going to land up on a pizza with the new oven at home.