Home Made Haloumi

My cheese making adventures have finally taken me to haloumi town. I followed the recipe in the Lakeland Soft Cheese Booklet (which I'm not going to link to because I'm not sure I recommend it) and felt, for the first time, a little underwhelmed by it.

It's not that it was a complete failure. I enjoyed eating it but... it's the first cheese I've made that tastes better in the shops. And I don't like that, not if I'm going to put in all that effort. I hate to blame the recipe (although I hate to blame myself more) but the big problem was the lack of salt which is just not right in a haloumi. Looks like I'm in search of a better recipe then. Meanwhile the haloumi was served with a couple of pitas, some spinach, some spring onion and a bunch of hot sauce. Just how I like it.

Ricotta

The last cheese recipe I had to make crom the the kit  was Ricotta. I saved this till last because I had no idea what I'd do with the ricotta. I really only eat cheese raw, and generally only use mozzarella for cooking  and Ricotta has never really made it's way into my life.

There once was an ugly duckling

I thought I'd just make it and figure out what to do with it when it was done. It was fun to make. I got to use the cute little ricotta basket. I think the curds ended up a bit too solid so the finished cheese wasn't as uniform as I'd like but it was quick, painless and tasty.

With feathers all stubby and brown

As a pasta maker has come into our life - borrowed from Stephen's parents while I develop a recipe - I thought I could use the ricotta to stuff some pasta. And what is my favorite stuffed pasta in all the world? Rhetorical question, it's okay if you don't know it's not like we're married or anything. Unless you are Stephen. Stephen you should totally know this... It's cannelloni!

And the other birds said in so many words

So I made some really quite ugly and misshapen pasta sheets which I then tore while cooking. I stuffed them with ricotta and spinach and slathered on tomato sauce. Bafflingly, deceptively, easy. And the broken pasta got covered up in the end so who cares. I'm only showing you the picture to prove it doesn't have to be perfect to be good. In fact the cannelloni was so easy to make that it's probably going to go in the regular rotation.

Nom, nom, nom, nom

I'm quite pleased with myself really. And my Mad Millie Cheese Kit.

Cream Cheese From Yogurt

After making Paneer Tikka (we're so obsessed with that stuff!) I had a bunch of leftover yogurt. I had no plan for it and I was worried it would go off. When I started making cheese a friend of mine mentioned the cream cheese she had made from yogurt. I thought 'how hard can it be to google that'... well you'll never have to find out. I used this tutorial.

It's not a true cream cheese - shockingly that would require cream to make - but it is delicious. I found it surprisingly light with none of the cloying aftertaste I get from shop bought. After I took the cheese out of it's cloth I mixed in some herbs straight off the balcony. Stunning green chives that have only just popped their heads above ground after winter.

I hastily snapped this before breakfast where the herby cream cheese was a big success. For me at least. Stephen thought it was a little too tart from the yoghurt. Looks like a true cream cheese is one of my next experiments.

Cheese making out of the box: paneer

I decided that I wanted to make some cheese that wasn't italian. Of course it had to be paneer, one of my favorite things in the world. I didn't have any instruction but I was armed with both whole milk and the whole internet. How hard could it be?

Well not hard really. A little hard perhaps. See the problem I had was that the recipes I found were written by people who had seen the process in action before and so some of the instructions weren't as clear as they could be. Not as bad as some confectionary recipes I've seen where it's all 'heat sugar and water and when it's runny enough...' but a few of the steps left me scratching my head.

I found a great recipe on Veg Recipes of India, got over my need to have my hand held and went with it. It worked! I got cheese. It's more crumbly than the commercial stuff but has a much richer taste. definitely worth the effort to make.

Unfortunately I didn't remember that it's more delicate and treated it roughly in the pan. Which is why the presentation of the panner tikka from Prashad is a little on the just pile it on the plate side. That and I keep forgetting to buy skewers.

Making Mozzarella

For my second project out of the Italian Cheese Kit I decided to make the mozzarella. It's more adventurous with the inclusion of rennet (vegetarian rennet tablets come with the kit) and with the added step of stretching and balling up the cheese. A little more stressful too.

I tried to take progress pictures but they were basically a variation on white goop in yellowish liquid so do forgive me if I keep them on the hard drive. Instead have a picture of the delicious finished project sitting happily on a pizza with some green olives and goats cheese.

How I Accidentally Started Making Cheese

While I was I Chester the other week something happened. Something that wouldn't have happened if I was walking through Exeter. The problem is impulse purchases.

You're walking around close to home and you see something in Lakeland that you kind of want and it would be such a good idea to buy it and blah blah blah. But you're at home and busy thinking about what you have to do tomorrow and your inner gump says 'no, don't neeed that'. When you are on holiday, though, and your good sense is gone. Which is why this is now living on my bookshelf:

Yeah, that's a cheese making kit. It has everything you need to make ricotta, mascarpone and mozzarella with the exception of milk and pans. And I bought it because I was on holiday. I don't regret it a bit though because cheese is awsome.

Mascarpone seemed like a good first option so I bought some double cream, added a bit of acid and went to town. It's amazingly easy and so much fun.

Of course then I had mascarpone on hand. I stirred it into some tomato sauce. Amazingly simple and amazingly yummy.