strawberries in paris

Homemade Mozzarella + Potato Vodka!

April 8, 2010 at 6:02 pm | Posted in Appetizer, Entertainment, Tools | 8 Comments

Well hello blogosphere! Sorry I’ve been gone so long, things are changing in my life and while they haven’t settled down completely, I am at peace again and can start doing the things that used to bring me joy. Like how this morning I ran 4 miles! Once I crested that long hill up Charles St and could see the view of Timonium, it was pure joy. The cut the cake challenge is basically at a stalemate for us, but I’m hoping that incorporating running back into my exercise schedule will help me shed some more pounds before the June wedding! So anyways, back to my trip to Maine! Lucky for me, I chose a weekend to visit Portland when there was a fun farm lesson in Freeport, ME!

This picture is obviously not from the farm, but from a vodka distillery we popped into after our farm lesson. Check out the cheesemaking adventure below.

So the recipe is below all these pictures, but here is a short step by step visual I took with my iphone. This cheesemaking was very enlightening and I have repeated it at home one time this past month and was successful!! So here is the milk that you heat up to a certain temperature after adding some citric acid.

Then we added rennet and let it sit and 5 minutes later poof you have a solid mass!

So then you take this interesting technique of slicing the solid mass at an angle using a long knife in one inch divisions. Basically go at a 45 degree angle on one half of the circle and then flip to the opposite 45 degree angle and do the other half of the circle.

Then you heat it up again and the whey will start to separate from the curds!

Then you have to go wishy washy and pour the whey from the curds, very gently and very slowly rocking the pot back and forth!

Then you take those curds that have been completely separated from the whey (as best you can do!) put it in a microwaveable bowl and drain it a bit more!

Then we stuck the bowl into the microwave to get the curds nice and hot and then started shaping the cheese balls!

Then heat it up again and then start stretching! Pretty soon after enough stretching it will look nice and shiny and make sure you salt it as you stretch! Cause who wants flavorless cheese?? not me.

Then we chilled the balls in some cold water and ate them a bit later with fresh foccacia bread.

The next part of our lesson was making butter! We took some fresh cream from the market and poured it into a mason jar and started shaking. and we shook and we shook and all of a sudden we had a mass and when we opened the lid, that is what we got!

So then we put it in a bowl and started mashing it with a wooden spoon and rinsing it with water. The water rinsing helps to remove the milk solids and once your rinsing water goes clear, you are ready to eat some butter! (of course after salting a bit!)

Voila! Deeeelicious.

Our teachers were so very informative and also very nice. Thank you KT for getting me to that class!

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:

* 1/2 rennet tablet
* 1/4 cup cool, chlorine-free water (most bottled waters are chlorine-free)
* 1 gallon milk (2%, 1%, or skim)
* 2 teaspoons citric acid
* Salt, optional

Preparation:
Crush the rennet into the water and stir to dissolve. Pour milk into a non-reactive pot (no aluminum or cast iron). Place over medium heat. Sprinkle the citric acid over the milk and stir a few times. Heat milk to 88 degrees F. Milk will begin to curdle.

At 88 degrees F, add the rennet solution and continue stirring slowly every few minutes until the milk reaches 105 degrees F. Turn off the heat. Large curds will appear and begin to separate from the whey (the clear, greenish liquid).

With a slotted spoon or mesh strainer, scoop the curd into a large glass bowl. (If it’s still too liquid, let it set for a few more minutes). Press the curds gently with your hand and pour off as much whey as possible. Microwave curds on high for 1 minute, then drain off all the excess whey. With a spoon, press curds into a ball until cool. Microwave two more times for 35 seconds each, and continue to drain the whey and work cheese into a ball. In the meantime, place the whey over medium heat and let it heat to about 175 degrees F.

When cheese is cool enough to touch, knead it like bread dough until smooth. When you can stretch it like taffy, it is done. You can sprinkle 1 to 2 teaspoons salt into the cheese while kneading and stretching it. The cheese will become stretchy, smooth and shiny. If it is difficult to stretch and breaks easily, dip it into the hot whey for a few seconds to make it warm and pliable. Then pick it up again and stretch it into a long rope. Fold over and stretch again. Dip in hot whey as needed to make the cheese pliable.

When the cheese is smooth and shiny (this takes just a few minutes), it is ready to eat. Shape it into a log or golf-size balls, then store in a solution of 2 teaspoons salt to 1 cup water.

Note: Citric acid and rennet are available through mail order, some pharmacies or health food stores.

Yield: about 3/4 pound mozzarella cheese (12 ounces)

Ah and now the other leg of our Freeport journey led us to this potato vodka distillery, Cold River Vodka.

Me, being the chem nerd, was very fascinated with the HUGE distillery apparati they had in the building.

There are two of these and the shorter one is for the second part of the distillation, the taller for the third and last part of the distillation.

I had never tasted potato vodka before, but when they gave us free samples and I downed that shot it went down very easily and I usually hate hard liquor! A very different flavor than grain vodka, but I think it gave it nice earthiness. They also have a blueberry version and they make it by soaking fresh maine blueberries in the vodka and then filtering after a long soaking time. The blueberry tasted very much like blueberries! Boy would that taste good with some iced tea! hell yeah icepicks.