Making The Best of Sales--Cheese!

Right now milk is on sale at our local markets. $1.59 a gallon last week, and $1.69 this week. Although we don’t drink tons of milk, and we certainly don’t have freezer space to freeze it for later use, I do take advantage of these sales by making cheese. Yup, cheese.  Cheese is expensive although a little can go a long way (but usually doesn’t in our house as we LOVE it), so if I can take advantage of a great sale to make cheese cheaply, I do it. You can make a pound of mozzarella or 2 pounds of cream cheese from one gallon of milk, and you can decide whether you want it to be full fat, 2% , 1% or skim. I recommend 1 or 2%...skim sometimes doesn’t have the nice consistency.

Now you might be saying, I can’t make cheese…it’s too complicated, too time consuming, you need all kinds of equipment, etc.   Not so say me. First of all, I LOVE making cheese. A dream of mine is to have a couple of nice nanny goats and be able to make goat cheese for personal consumption and income supplementation. And yes, I DO know how to milk a goat…and cows for that matter too. Growing up in rural AZ (Cornville) had a few funny advantages!  It is a matter of heating milk, putting in a curding agent (buttermilk and liquid rennet or citric acid), and letting it do its thing. Now mozzarella takes a bit more work as you need to pull and knead it to get the consistency, but cream cheese is amazingly easy and scrumptious!

You can go on line to get ingredients needed, but I have never had any trouble finding them at my local natural food stores. If you want to read a great account of making mozzarella and have a fabulous recipe for making it, read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal Vegetable Miracle. It’s a great account of their year of living either off their own land or as locavores from their neighbors and community farmers at their farmstead in NE America. 

But for now, try the cream cheese recipe. I put chives and herbs de provence in the batch I made this weekend, but there are other suggestions in the recipe, and use your imagination for others your family may enjoy..

SWISS STYLE CREAM CHEESE

½ c. water                                   1 gal skim milk                 ¼ c. buttermilk

3 drops liquid rennet                 salt to taste

Heat milk to 180 degrees F.  Dilute liquid Rennet in water. Cool milk to 85 degrees F. Add buttermilk and Rennet solution and stir well. Cover with a towel and leave at room temperature 12 to 18 hours until firm curd forms and a little whey appears on the surface.

Gently lift curd with a large spoon, placing it in a large square of double cheesecloth or special dairy cloth. Lift four corners ( I did this over the sink and squeezed a bit to get a lot of the whey out first)—tie corners around a dowel, wooden spoon, or other kitchen utensil, and hang in a large stock pot so bottom does not touch the bottom of the pan. Leave for 2-3 hours, pouring off whey if it gets too deep and touches the cheesecloth. When most of the whey is drained, put cheese into a bowl, add seasoning (salt, chives, green onion, jalapenos, crushed pineapple, strawberries, whatever you like). 

Beat with electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Chill before serving.