Fried, grilled, or baked, paneer is a great fresh cheeses to make from scratch. The delicious milky lemony flavor can be tilted to sweet or savory dishes. Paneer is a lightly pressed cheese, which makes it easy to slice, dice and plank. This is great for one important reason. Paneer doesn’t melt! Read more ›
Exciting news this month! I wrote an article for the local Twin Cities beer rag, Growler Magazine, with how to make three fresh cheeses from one easy recipe. Check it out! Read more ›
Let’s talk blue cheese. Blue cheese is one of those preserved foods that even home preservers are hesitant to try making themselves. The main ingredients are deceptively basic – milk, culture, rennet. Then comes the penicillin mold. Eeeeewwww! Read more ›
On my recent trip to New Orleans, I was on a search for Creole Cream Cheese. I’d read about the cheese in my copy of Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. Surprisingly, the cheese proved incredibly hard to find. I rode my bike all over the city looking in shops, at the Crescent City Farmer’s Market (great cheese, just no Creole Cream Cheese) Read more ›
Acid cheeses are some of the easiest, quickest cheeses you can make at home, not to mention much less expensive and tasty than store-bought. Ricotta and mascapone cheese are both made with some kind of acid added to heated milk or cream, then strained.
The party of the summer season is the underground Dinner in White. The Dinner in White (Dîner en Blanc) began 25 years ago in Paris as an upstart flash mob that took over public spaces (without permission), throwing a fabulous fete filled with elegant diners dressed in white, feasting and drinking under the stars. They were way ahead of their time. Read more ›
Behold! It’s time to unmold (pun intended) the Cumin Jack Cheese with Smoked Paprika that I made back in January. After the cheese was coated in smoked paprika and the surface had dried for several days, I coated it in red cheese wax and tucked it into my wine fridge. Because the cheese is inside the wax, I did not have to add humidity to the fridge as I do for charcuterie and unwaxed cheeses. The cheese aged for just over two months. Read more ›
I wish I had a cow. Then I could make cheese all the time with an endless supply of fresh milk. When I was a kid we had neighbors with a milk cow. If we wanted fresh milk we just stopped by the pump house along side the main road and picked up a couple of gallon jars. The first few glasses of milk were the best, since they were loaded with the cream from the top. That milk would have made dynamite cheese. Read more ›
Yogurt is a staple in my house where we make it by the half gallon. But constantly dipping a spoon in to the big container turns the yogurt into a slimy, runny mess. I’m encouraging my daughter to eat more yogurt, but one look in the tub yields an instant ‘No thanks, Mom.’ Enter, the single-serving yogurt jar. I had never tried making these before without a yogurt maker, but thanks to the arrival of a crockpot in our house, now was the time. Read more ›
From my muddy gardening tomes to sauce-splotch cookbooks to dog-eared DIY manuals, I really love my resource books. On a cold winter’s night there is nothing better than paging through a reference book looking for fresh inspiration. Above is my Christmas wishlist (fyi, family) of new and recent books from all the areas in my blog; preserving meats, growing food, canning, fermenting, cheese making and foraging. Read more ›
I’d like to say that feta is my favorite cheese, but that would be a lie. I love cheese, all of it, so I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite. But feta is one of my favorites to make at home because it is so easy. Most folks think you have to make feta from goat or sheep’s milk, but that’s just nonsense. Cow’s milk can be turned into a lovely feta, you just need a little something called lipase powder to pull it off. Read more ›