Say Cheese (Recipe for Bocconcini Mozzarella Balls)
I just got around to finishing this post about making cheese last semester in Garde Manger class. In fact, I was supposed to post this as part of a make-up cook-at-home assignment. (I thought she had said my product was sufficient, but later mentioned she never saw the story. Oopsie! I still made an A despite the missed points, though.) A promise is a promise, albeit a late one. Here you go, Chef C.
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Awfully pretty, isn't it? Too bad it had some fatal errors...
Making cheese, I don’t think it too scandalous to say, is a bit of a glimpse into the mind of God. Or witchcraft, I guess, depending on whose side you take. (Vegans, make your joke here.)
You start with such a completely plain, innocuous substance as milk, throw some other stuff at it, wave your hands in a prescribed motion, and, poof, you have cheese.
Okay, so it’s not quite that simplistic. But it is quite amazing.
In Garde Manger class, we’ve spent a handful of weeks on fresh (unaged) cheeses, because they’re quick, useful, and a good starting point for learning the ropes.
I showed you earlier our fresh lemon cheese, which is somewhere between ricotta and cream cheese in consistency. It was amazingly delicious and made a lovely filling for the sweet applications we used that day.
The next week, I was awfully sick with one of those might-as-well-be-the-flu-but-it’s-not sort of things. I went to class and powered through the lecture, but the chef knew better than to put my snotty, contagious self in the kitchen. I guess since I bothered to show up, she felt sorry for me and let me take some lab work home.
The project: Mozzarella.
I remember passing through the kitchen once last year when this class was doing this same project. Nibbly bliss!
Here’s the process, for those wishing to try at home. It’s awfully fun:
Bocconcini (Mozzarella balls)
(Adapted from Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen by Culinary Institute of America)
- 5 1/2 oz. salt
- 1 gallon water
- 2 lbs. cheese curd, cut into 1/2″ cubes
Right off the bat, I know you’re asking yourself, where in the world do I buy cheese curd?
Cheese curds courtesy of Ben E. Keith and Pulaski Tech.
Honestly, we were just given the curds, purchased from Ben E. Keith (a restaurant/foodservice supplier), to save time. But the awesome folks over at Fermentables, who offer supplies to make beer, wine and cheese at home, sell an inexpensive cheesemaking kit with the goods (rennet, for example) to make your own. Easy peasy.
But I’m leaving it to you to read those instructions on the package.
Properly diced cheese curds.
Add salt to your water, and bring it to 160 degrees. Then take the pot off the heat.
And here’s where I made a BIG ol’ mess.
The instructions in our book say to put the curds in a colander and lower it into the water so the cheese is covered. Thinking myself clever, I used a wire colander. Not so smart. Let’s just say that half the cheese stayed with the device, which had to go in the trash.
See that wire colander? I miss it.
Then I dumped the curds directly in the water. We were instructed to use chopsticks to pull the cheese into the smooth strings that make this cheese what it is. Turns out I overcooked my curds, and I ended up with something more like rubber bands than delicious cheese.
I carried on anyway, laying the stretched curds out into a long log atop some plastic wrap. This is supposed to be only 1 inch in diameter, but since they were so rubbery, mine were about 1 1/2″ or 2″. Oh well.
Twist the ends of the plastic wrap so the entire log is wrapped well, then get out some thin twine or, as I used, dental floss. You’d probably be better off to not use mint flavored, though. Cut 5″ pieces and tie off the log into uniform spheres. The curd strands will have enough pressure now to form solid balls.
Put your strand of cheesy pearl goodness into a large bowl and place it in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight. Unwrap, cut between the balls if necessary, and enjoy.
Honesty time: Mine wasn’t that great. It was a little too much the consistency of one of those hi-bounce balls you get in a grocery store vending machine. But other than that, it was fantastic. :/
If they’d turned out better, they would have done well in my marinade, the juices from some spicy roasted grapes (you read that right) I made the same evening. That would have all come together into something fab, even if I don’t know just what.
Despite my difficulties, the process was actually pretty fun. As with most cooking experiences, you may have to screw it up at least once before you can make it really fantastic. I’ll definitely do it again.
House-Made Cheese and Bubble Gum Pink Ravioli
Our finished plate of pink pasta, with lemon cheese filling, strawberry and white chocolate sauces.
In Garde Manger class, we’ve been studying cheeses and making a few of them ourselves.
There’s something about this that makes me giddy. I told several people, “It’s like, making food. From nothing.”
Last week, our group made a fresh (meaning unaged) lemon cheese, and our homework assignment was to develop a dessert recipe to prepare the next week. We decided to make a dessert lasagna, using a strawberry puree (tomato sauce), chopped chocolate (ground beef) and the cheese. There was some fiddling around with gluten-free options for my sake, but the supplies for such things are low at the school. So we decided to go with phyllo dough, making it more of a napoleon.
This week, the chef turned us loose to create our goodies. We made the napoleon, as pictured above. The sauce was particularly fun…I got creative (er, bossy) with my group and added balsamic vinegar and red wine to some strawberry puree and sugar, and cooked it down. De.LISH.
So, long story short, we present our napoleon to the chef, and she loves it. We think we’re done. We mention that the original idea was using real pasta, and she says…”Okay, make me one like that.” Oooookayyy…
No problem, actually. This class is fun because we get to play and make stuff up on the fly, even if the beginning is a prompt from the instructor. One of my group partners is quite adept at making pasta, so he whipped up a quick batch, adding some red food coloring as the instructor requested.
We decide on making raviolis, filling them with the lemon cheese and dressing them with two sauces, the strawberry and a white chocolate sauce. While Pasta-Guy and I have done this, the other two students hadn’t, so much of the rest of their class was spent playing and filling. PG and I boiled the pasta and finished the sauces and the plate, which turned out pretty nice, considering its impromptu provenance.
It was also a fanTAStic week in Food IV. And that is saying a lot. Things are looking up; I may know how to cook after all. More on that later.
Happy cooking!
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At the Market — Daley Dairy and Honeysuckle Lane Raw Milk Cheese
*Put on your Golden Girls hats and follow me, here…*
Picture it: Sicily, 1943. I was walking down the streets with your father, and we decided to stop by our favorite little café for a sandwich. Louis had been in there all morning baking the most amazing bread that had sun-dried tomatoes and basil, and…. oh, the cheese. It was the most amazing, tangy, fresh, creamy cheese you ever had. We asked if Louis would just grill the two together, and he obliged. It was heaven on a plate! Crispy, creamy, snappy…unlike any nasty, processed old grilled cheese you let my grandchildren eat today. Then Louis stepped to the side a bit, and we saw his assistant behind the counter — a cow named Bessie! She mooed loudly. Louis said she was asking how we liked the cheese, as she had tried extra hard that day…
Mom, you’re making that up!
Why, yes, I was making that up, but it was based on reality. The bread was made last week by Shane Henderson at Argenta Market (profile on them another day), and the amazing cheese was made by the Daley family of Daley Dairy, makers of Honeysuckle Lane Raw Milk Cheese in Rosebud. And yes, the sandwich was real. And it was amazing.
As I have said earlier, I’m using the Argenta Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market to learn more about whole foods and add more of them to my diet. This past Saturday, I added white cheddar raw milk cheese to my repertoire, purchased from Daley Dairy’s tent.
Happy, grass-fed, pastured cows are the milk-makers at Daley Dairy.
When I purchased the cheese, it didn’t even dawn on me what “raw milk” meant. But after a bit of research on the dairy’s website and elsewhere, I have learned that it basically means the cheese is not pasteurized. As Ray Daley, Jr. states on the farm’s website:
We all grew up hearing that “pasturized” was a great thing. And it is. But sometimes, there are better ways.
Pasteurization kills the potentially harmful bacteria in milk, but it also kills the good bacteria, those that help with digestion and even some that kill other bad bugs. It also reduces vitamin content and other goodies such as CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), which contributes to lean muscle development.
This is a huge battle between the naysayers and those who claim significant health benefits from using raw milk, one that I won’t get into right this minute. As a new user, I can’t really speak to the subject with expertise. But it is generally accepted that cheese made from raw milk is safe, under very specific conditions as outlined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Raw Milk Cheese Association defines the product simply:
Cheese produced from milk that, prior to setting the curd, has not been heated above the temperature of the milk (104°F, 40°C) at the time of milking and that the cheese produced from that milk shall be aged for 60 days or longer at a temperature of not less than 35°F (2°C) in accordance with US FDA regulations.
All that to say, Daley Dairy’s cheese is safe, for several reasons:
- The cows are grass-fed and pastured, meaning they are much less susceptible to disease and do not require all the antibiotics given stall-raised cows. Their diet also makes milk that is safer and more stable.
- The dairy only sells semi-firm cheeses (colby and cheddars), which are very stable when properly treated.
Putting the 60-day chill on cheese at Daley Dairy.
- They vacuum-pack the cheeses immediately and age them in cold storage for at least 60 days.
Want to know more? There’s a very nice article here on Serious Eats on the subject. Or you can read more on safety and “raw benefits” at the Daley’s website.
All that talk about safety has gotten me away from the subject at hand. This cheese is just darn tasty! It has a slightly different crumb, so to speak, than your average cheese; an excellent mix of firmness and creaminess. And I really enjoyed the tang brought from the cultured raw milk (good bacteria that wasn’t killed) and the vegetable rennet used to create the cheese. Hubby and I had a hankering the other day for a good ol’ grilled cheese sandwich, and we had a little of the aforementioned bread left over. Grill pan + butter + amazing, locally made bread + equally amazing, locally made cheese = WOW!
As hubby would say, dip that in your tomato soup and eat it.
Game time! How about a quiz?
