This was meant to be a Quattro Stagioni, but since we didn’t have winter, turned into a Tre.
Another 16 incher, my self-imposed constraint being that I could only use things already in the house.
Delicious, with long-simmered tomato sauce and house feta.
Can you crack the code? The initials form three words that apply to our current suckiness. Other than mentioning that heavy whipping cream is the same as UHT cream, and that’s ricotta salata, you’ll have to rely on the visuals.
-R
See my previous post, “Delicious Taleggio Failure,” for the basics . . .
The recipe from cheesemaking.com recommends a maximum of eight or so weeks of aging, but mine was slow. After the initial wipings with brine and B. linens, I kept the rind moist. The color developed quite nicely, but I expected that, like a Limburger, eventually the rind would start producing its own moisture. So I kept on going . . .
Finally around week nine it started to develop a “tacky” rind, but I sort of lost track of that “eight week” recommendation. Here it is at week 12:
(top)
(bottom)
As you can see, not only did it start to develop white mold (not a problem, as I found out later), but the rind started to crack:
The rind itself is a lovely salmony-orange color:
Cutting into it, the paste was fairly dense, with only a few small holes (what looks like larger holes is just the result of my poor cutting!).
But, you ask, how did it taste?
I gotta say, delicious. Semi-firm paste with a buttery, tangy, complex flavor. The recipe describes this cheese as ‘mild,’ but I’d call it closer to medium, probably due to the longer aging. Just soft enough to spread on a cracker. I’m not sure whether you’re meant to eat the rind (probably not), and the rind on my “Failure” wasn’t nice, but it was thin enough (if a bit dense) and just added to the complexity of the flavor.
This one I’ll definitely make again.
Yum!
-R
I followed Ms. Karlin’s recipe. This is the first cheese that I’ve made that included goat milk, one gallon of cow, one of goat. It got its two rubs of honey/salt. The only way I didn’t follow the recipe is that the honey dripped off, so I flipped the cheese over and used my finger to re-apply the honey.
Six weeks of affinage in the cheese fridge, followed by six weeks in the real refrigerator.
It got some blue in the fridge, which doesn’t seem like it affected the final taste:
Cleaned up and tout pretty:
But, you ask, how does it taste?
I gotta say, pretty excellent. This is the first cheese I made with goat, and it has a wonderful complexity. And contrary to my expectations, you can actually taste the sweetness from the honey, which just adds to the complexity and makes it better. This is my best cheese so far.
Yum!
-R
The more you eat, the more you toot!
Two recipes, although the first is more of a suggestion.
Bean Stew. Delicious, and a good opportunity to use up all those partial bags of beans that are moldering in the back of your pantry. Optionally, saute some onions first. Chicken or vegetarian stock will make them better.
If you cook them for too long, and they mostly turn into mush, it will still be good:
Two is more of a recipe, “Lucknow Sour Lentils.” This is a variation on yer standard dhal recipe, with a souring ingredient, which won’t really make them taste sour, just a nice contrast against the richness of the dhal.
Cook 1-1/2 C. toovar or masoor dhal, or just plain old split yellow peas in 5 C. water. Nice additions are some chopped ginger and 1/2 tsp. turmeric.
Add the souring ingredient of your choice. I love tamarind, because it adds not only souring, but a nice fruitiness. Amchur (sour mango) needs to be ground before adding.
Now make the tadka, your choice of butter, ghee, or oil, with any spice of your choice. Sliced garlic is absolutely delicious, and my favorite. For this one I added kala jeera (black cumin), which has a nice flowery flavor. Cook the spices of your choice in the oil:
Then stir it all together.
I added a bit of fried ginger.
Yum!
-R
See my previous post about this cheese for the details. After eight weeks, it should have been ready, but I kept expecting it to get *really* soft and it didn’t, possibly due to my stupidly giving it a B. linens wash.
After 12 weeks, I couldn’t wait any more.
The rind was completely wrong (peau de crapaud), but the spruce band holding it together had the proper mold:
I left it out at room temp for some 12 hours. Freed from its bondage, the paste starting gooping out and broke the rind, which shouldn’t have been that dense/dry.:
But, you ask, how did it taste? Okay, not great. Camembertish with some hints of Limburger, certainly due to the incorrect wash. The parts nearest the rind were a bit ammoniacal, unsurprisingly after such a long aging. Otherwise pretty good, unctuous if a bit over-salted.
Yum (-ish).
-R
It started so well:
I followed Ms. Karlin’s recipe, but after the recommended 4 weeks, they were still really solid, not soft at all, as expected, so they went back into the vault for another month.
Then soft-ish. Dryer rind than I would like.
But looks promising:
However, nasty and bitter taste. I think I know where the bitter taste came from. Pasteurizing/homogenizing removes much of the Calcium Chloride from raw milk, which means it’s more difficult to get good solid curd, so you have to replace the CaCl. When I first started making cheeses, I used a commercial CaCl solution, but it’s ridiculously expensive, so I started to use “pickling spice” (pure, dry CaCl), and somehow even basic chemistry deserted me and I was using e.g. 1/2 teaspoon pickling spice instead of 1/2 teaspoon 32% CaCl solution.
And I should stop waiting for the advised “softness” and just start eating when they’re good!
Not yum,
-R
The UK has some of the best restaurants in the world. Maybe not in 1967.
I picked Chicken Maryland because it’s the state just north of mine. Coincidentally, it’s one of the primary states that manufactures (choice of word not random) chickens.
There are a couple of problems with this recipe, even if you aren’t camping. It’s almost impossible to keep the heat low enough to cook breaded chicken pieces without burning them, plus they will lose their crispiness, so what’s the point? so I added some water. And it will take hours to cook tomatoes in the same way. Plus it has bananas!
In the end, I lacked the heart to add bananas. Farfalle with pesto from my garden and feta, farfalle with Chicken Maryland.
Yum!
-R
When I get too many:
The key to getting the best flavor out of mushrooms is to cook them over high heat for a couple of minutes to sear them, then lower the heat to way, way low and let them cook for at least 10 minutes, which concentrates the flavour.
Then add an allium (onion, shallot, etc.) I like using scallions, because they cook a bit, but still have freshness and stay a pretty green.
Meanwhile, make the pasta of your choice.
Pick any combination of souring ingredients. My fave is sour cream mixed with a bit of homemade yogurt.
Stir it all together over low heat:
Yum!
-R
I used the recipe from cheesemaking.com, and was hoping for something like this, picture from their website:
All seemed to be going well, according to the recipe:
Two gallons of whole milk + 8 oz. of whipping cream, and I got three cheeses, all between 400 and 420 grams. But, six weeks later, ended up with this, almost hilariously different from their pic:
Toadskin, plus it was attacked by a very productive strain of Geo (I assume it’s Geo), so productive that just touching it leaves your fingers covered in spores:
Disappointingly, after two months, there was very little growth of blue:
Only bits:
But, you ask, how did it taste? Actually pretty darn good. Not at all Camembert-ish, in the sense of having a goopy texture; rather, the paste was pretty dense. Just at the limit for my enjoyment of sourness, with some complexity, and there was a subtle “blue-ness,” which changed from bite to bite, and maybe is the point of a CamBlu. If I hadn’t had different expectations (more blue flavor), I probably would have been very happy with this.
I’m trying an experiment . . . of the remaining two cheeses, one got brushed (litterally, I used a dish brush under the tap), then dried and re-skewered. T’other I left alone. They will both now go down for refrigeratization for a month.
-R
One of my UK buds sent me this pic of Bibendum’s cheese cart.
What I find striking is that they’re pretty fearless, in the sense that they have cheeses that probably wouldn’t show up on a cheese cart in the U.S., even in a high-end restaurant, like the lovely moldy one bottom left.
Yum!
-R