Lemon Cheese

Did you know you can make a pretty decent cheese in about half an hour's actual work with nothing but milk and lemon juice? Well, I did, but hadn't ever done it before. I like the process of fermentation too much to be put off by the extra work it entails. So the other day when I got hit by the urge to make cheese but no starter to ferment it with, I dove into the wonderful world of acid precipitated cheese.

All you need is a quart of milk (I recommend whole, but any kind will work), and 1/4-1/3 cup of lemon juice, preferably straight from the lemon, but bottled works ok too.

Simply heat the milk on the stove until it is 180-185 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer the milk will be steaming and will hold a froth when you stir it. It is far from critical that the temperature be exactly right, but you definitely don't want to boil it or your cheese will taste like cooked milk.

Once it's hot, turn off the heat and add 1/4 cup of lemon juice and give it a good stir. It'll curdle almost immediately. Let it sit for 10 minutes. It should look like this:

Yum, right?

If the whey (the watery part) is still cloudy, add the rest of the lemon juice, stir, and let it sit another 5-10 minutes.

Place a piece of muslin or several layers of cheesecloth in a bowl and pour the whole cheese mix in there.

Thus.

Tie up the corners and hang the bag over the bowl for an hour or so. This type of cheese drains pretty quickly too, which is nice.

I had just hung it up, and most of the whey just gets left behind.

When it's pretty much stopped dripping, put the cheese in a bowl. Add some salt and stir it in. Taste and add more salt as needed. You can eat it right now if you want, but I like to refrigerate it for a couple hours so it's a bit more sold and sort of sliceable. That and room temperature cheese sort of squicks me out. That's right, squicks. It's a technical term for what slightly icky but not quite gross things do to you. Anyway, this particular cheese I wrapped in basil leaves (yes, I did just read the Hunger Games, why do you ask?), which was kind of a pain in the backside, but the next day the cheese had picked up a lovely basil flavor I really liked. I do plan on doing the basil thing again with a real fermented cheese, since this type of cheese doesn't have really any sour cheese flavor at all. I think an actual goat cheese would be fantastic wrapped in basil if I could find a place to get goat milk around here for less than $20/gallon.

This is a really great option if you want to make cheese, but are worried about messing up the entire fermentation process. This process is pretty hard to mess up, even for a total beginner, so long as you're careful not to burn the milk when you heat it up.

The BEST way to eat berries

Seriously, yum. This is by FAR my favorite way to eat berries of any kind. AND it's reasonably healthy. As a dessert, heck, sometimes just for lunch.

And it's SO easy, and you can use whatever kind of berries you have, or even any other fruit you have on hand. Peaches would be good (if you like peaches. I don't.), or maybe mangos, possibly even pineapple. I always have to have strawberries, because duh. This time I did six or seven strawberries, sliced, a handful of blueberries, and a handful of blackberries. I wish I had some raspberries to toss in, but they're too expensive to buy regularly, and sadly I don't have anywhere to put raspberry plants.

The berries are followed with a teaspoon or two of sugar. Not much, just enough to enhance the sweetness of the berries, and a tablespoon or two of cream. Yep, cream. Heavy cream, if possible.

Then, eat. Enjoy. Yum.

What to do with leftover pie crust

Every time I make pie (not often enough) I have a handful of pie crust dough leftover that I trim off the edges of the pie. Now, one could cut out small shapes and put them on top of the pie with an egg wash, which would make a lovely pie, but wouldn't use ALL the crust dough, and I just can't toss it! That's wasteful! Ok, I may be a little crazy, but these cinnamon-sugar buttery pie crust bites are tasty, and totally worth it to me!

What you need:

• Pie crust trimmings
• Butter, melted (1-2 Tbs, depending on exactly how much pie crust you have leftover)
• Cinnamon sugar 
• Pastry brush (You can easily use your fingers if you don't have one though)

I only line my baking pans with foil because they're old and gross and I'm lazy.

I wouldn't go out and buy already mixed cinnamon and sugar. That's just silly. Just put 1-2 Tbs of sugar in a little bowl and sprinkle in cinnamon and mix until it looks about right. Taste if you like. Actually, you should taste it so you'll know if you've got a good mix.

Simply tear/cut the pie crust into larger than bite size pieces. You can do bite size too, but it's really hard to butter them without making an enormous buttery mess. If you have some that are thin or just too small to really be useful, smush them together and roll out again. They'll be the slightly tougher ones, but it's pretty hard to tell unless you're looking for them.

Brush those puppies with melted butter. Don't skimp, but don't make a huge mess either or they'll just be greasy.

Sprinkle everything with cinnamon sugar. At first I tried to keep it all on the pie crust, but that was nearly impossible, so it went everywhere. I'm much more at peace with wasting a couple teaspoons of sugar than wasting pie crust. I mean, pie crust is good.

Bake it right alongside your pie for about 10-15 minutes. If you're just making pie crust yumminess that'd be 375F for 10-15 minutes. Just keep an eye on it and pull it out when it gets lovely and brown.

I failed to get a picture of the baked bites before they were devoured, sorry. They were really good.

Makin' Yogurt!

We eat a lot of fermented milk products in our house. My kids LOVE yogurt, sour cream, and cheese. But yogurt is crazy spendy if you eat as much as we do, so I most often make it. It's really easy! Granted, it requires a good bit of attention at the beginning of the process, and it's really disappointing when you wait for a gallon of milk to ferment and something goes wrong. But after you've made your own yogurt a few times you get a good feel for what works, what doesn't, and how much attention you really need to pay to it.

You don't need any fancy yogurt makers or other special equipment. A heating pad, like one you'd get for sore muscles, is handy, but if you can do without your oven for 6-8 hours that'll work just as well.

So, what you do need is a pot big enough to hold the milk, a whisk, a spatula, and a candy thermometer. You could get by with a meat thermometer too, actually, but the candy thermometer will clip to the side of your pot, and that's really handy. You also need the milk and a yogurt starter. We like to use whole milk, because it's more filling, richer, and makes a thicker yogurt. You'll need to make sure that the yogurt you buy has live active cultures in it, and that it's one you like. Your homemade yogurt is going to have the same flavor and texture as you starter, so you don't want to waste your time making yogurt from one you won't even eat. Our favorite is Nancy's, partly because it's local for us, but I know others use Dannon, or even some types of Greek yogurt. Just read the ingredients; it'll say live active cultures on it, or it'll have a list of crazy Latin sounding names at the end.

The yogurt I'm using this time is Nancy's vanilla. I recommend using either plain or vanilla yogurt, so that you can flavor it however you want later. 

First you want to sanitize your pot. I just put an inch or so of water in it, toss in my whisk, spatula, and thermometer, and boil for 5 minutes or so. I put the lid on top (even though everything sticks out) to help hold the steam in. 

When that's done, dump out the water and pour in the milk. Set it back on the stove, this time on medium low heat. You want to get the milk up to 185F, but do so slowly. Heating it too fast will make it cook and stick on the bottom, and your yogurt will end up with a cooked milk flavor. You don't have to stir it constantly, but give it a good whisk every few minutes to keep it from cooking on the bottom.

While it's heating, make sure your sink is empty and at least mostly clean. Maybe do the dishes while it's getting hot. I don't know, do whatever you need to do. :D Once your milk is 185F, you want to cool it down quickly. I put in a sinkfull of water with a bunch of ice. Stir it while it cools, so you get an accurate reading. Get your yogurt out of the fridge and let it warm up a bit while your milk is cooling off. When it's right about 120F is when you add your yogurt. If you dip your pinkie in it should feel like a nice warm bath, not hot. Definitely hotter than a baby bottle should be.

Pour a bit of the warm milk into the yogurt and whisk it up. This makes it easier to mix the yogurt into the whole thing. 

Whisk that well, get it nice and uniform. Then pour it back into the warm milk.

Hey, counter, your 1970's is showing.

Slap a lid on that puppy and leave it somewhere to warm. I set it on top of a heating pad like thus:

and wrap it in a towel:

Leave it there for 6-8 hours, until it smells like delicious yogurt and is thickened. You can also put it in your turned-off oven, and just leave the light on. That'll keep it at just about the right temperature for yogurt. Don't forget to turn your heating pad off and back on every couple hours or so if you have one like mine that automatically turns off. That's why I normally opt for the oven method, but I needed my oven today so heating pad it is!

You may notice I didn't give any measurements. That was intentional. The measurements aren't super important. This time I happened to use 1/2 gallon of milk and about 1/2 cup of yogurt. You can easily make a whole gallon of yogurt if you eat a lot (we normally do), or make just a quart. You want to have at least 1/4 cup of yogurt no matter how much milk you use, but the precise amount isn't critically important.