Cheese happens to be one of my favorite foods. It goes well with almost everything. However some cheeses are really expensive by the pound. So I started looking into the art of cheese making. My dad suggested that I look into a soft cheese made from yogurt. I found directions on how to make Labneh, which is a strained yogurt.
Labneh is a super simple recipe that is a great place to start making cheese. The basics are take a quart of plain yogurt, place it in a clean white cotton handkerchief (or similarly sized piece of cloth), and hang it up and let the whey drip out. It takes about 16-24 hours for the whey to drip out. I let the whey drip out into a pitcher and left it in the fridge overnight. I had to pour the whey out a couple times as the whey filled up to the point where the cheese was hanging into the whey.
Today I pulled it out and scooped it into a container for storage. At first taste I was not all that happy. Tami and I talked it over and we decided to try a couple of additions to smooth out the flavor and make my taste buds a little happier. We tried three different things. First was using a garlic press to press two small cloves of garlic into about a half cup of the cheese. Second I pressed a small jalapeño from David and Emmy's garden and mixed in the juice. After tasting both of those and being fantastically happy with the results I tried adding the crushed jalapeño and a clove of garlic both into about a cup of cheese. I am waiting for the flavors to mix before I try that. I will let you know when it is done.
If you are interested in learning more about cheese making check out http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Cheese/ or http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/cheese.html
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