Herbs and Cheese On My Toast (Farmer's Cheese Recipe)
@naturalmedicine is doing a hhHHherb challenge this week! Well, I have a quick one.
I made cheese a couple weeks ago with the raw milk I've been drinking, and it was fun to open up my steem feed to this post from @blessed-girl being resteemed by @naturalmedicine. I guess it kinda inspired me to take a couple pics of one of my recent favorite snacks.
It's nothing fancy really. The cheese was made by letting raw milk set in a jar on the counter for about four days, then straining out the solids with cheese cloth and letting them drip out the whey. That simple.
It came out a little full flavored, likely due to how long I let it sit and ferment. But a little basil does a good job balancing it out.
That's what it looks like. Kinda weird, but it's good. Refreshingly bitter. It was a slight paradigm shift, eating milk solids from milk that was left on the counter for way longer than industrial milk should be handled that way. But this isn't an industrialized product. This is natural raw milk, as it was intended by nature to be made. No pasteurization, no other ingredients, no real processing. It's really fun making that shift and trusting the older way of doing things in the process of breaking from industry one little bit at a time. Kind of a thrill.
The total yield was about a quart of cheese (and three quarts of whey) from a gallon of milk. I think it's around two pounds of cheese for $4. An excellent value, as a six ounce package of cheese from the store is around $3.50. Almost five times the food, and higher quality, for a few more cents! Reading sources online, the cheese will keep for a month in the fridge. It's not gonna last that long. And the whey for six months. Now I need to find ways to start using the whey.
So here's the recipe:
- Make toast.
- Butter the toast (optional, but butter is awesome)
- Add cheese to taste
- Add basil to taste (I like a lot)
I don't measure things. I just go with proportions that seem right. I like a lot of basil. When I was a kid, we regularly had sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese with basil. This cheese and basil really takes me back to that. Next year I won't slack on the herb growing. It'll be awesome to grow my own basil and use fresh basil.
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Nate.
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You were right. The longer you leave it once it has gone to curds and whey, the stronger the flavor. I usually don't do longer than 24 hrs, but that's with a kefir grain to make it change.
This post has 3 other flavors that were popular in my cheese:
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@goldenoakfarm/making-kefir-for-health
Ooh, how does the kefir grain affect the taste? I found an online group with people sharing starter cultures for kefir, boosh, etc. 24 hours is crazy fast!
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The whey in kefir makes it tart/sour. I don't care for that, so I make cheese and the whey is removed. There's still a flavor, but it blends well with various mixes, like the 3 I posted.
If getting grains from other people, try and get a large (will fill a teaspoon with 1 solid grain) one verses lots of tiny ones.
Farmer cheese is delicious! I'm glad you're making it. You can use the whey to make ricotta, although I usually give it to the chickens. They love it and it gives them a little extra calcium to strengthen their egg shells.
Chiggins! How do you give it to them? In their water? In their food?
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I just put a pan out in their yard. They love it and will drink all of it if I can keep the damn dogs away long enough.
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Hello, thanks for mentioning me, I like your publication, the cheese was very good, I have never managed to do it.
Today I published about goat cheese and some of its properties.
You’ve been visited by @riverflows on behalf of Natural Medicine!
Remember Fawlty Towers? I always think baaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllll!!! Anyway, if you don't, ignore. I love the way you make a herb post by making a cheese toast and bunging some 'erb on it. Now you're talking. I love basil - mine did awesome this year and I'm gonna plant heaps more. Heaps more. Basil 4 Eva.
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@riverflows, I've never seen it, but that's how I say it too. Muy be a collective subconscious thing.
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Oh my, you havent seen it? They only did one season but its totally British iconic. You MUST watch it. Its very funny.
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Isn't fresh raw milk grand! You should get some kefir grains to throw into it and you can easily make all kinds of cheese plus you get that tangy probiotic drink which you can add different flavors to, ginger, cranberry.
For the whey I would add it to my soups.