Jump to content

zoramargolis


zoramargolis

Recommended Posts

Show of hands... how many of you: actually set the table... with or without a Teen at hand... each night for dinner? Or, have an odd assortment of plates, napkins, placemats and jelly jars serve as your set table? Or, stand over the sink eating dinner? Or, curl up on the couch with a bowl of whatever (it doesn't have to be bowl-food... it could be steak and mashed potatoes: you don't balance a bowl the same way you balance a plate)?

I also like how V-T's portobello is served on its own plate; she's a part of the family dining experience while having her culinary restrictions fully incorporated into the dinner, rather than ignored or pushed to the side.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Show of hands... how many of you: actually set the table... with or without a Teen at hand... each night for dinner? Or, have an odd assortment of plates, napkins, placemats and jelly jars serve as your set table? Or, stand over the sink eating dinner? Or, curl up on the couch with a bowl of whatever (it doesn't have to be bowl-food... it could be steak and mashed potatoes: you don't balance a bowl the same way you balance a plate)?
We only eat at the table--either in the dining room or the kitchen. I used to be pretty regular about setting the table when we ate in the dining room, but now that we eat most meals in the kitchen (unless we have guests), it only gets pre-set about half the time. I frequently need the table space to hold stuff as I'm working, so getting complete place settings down in advance becomes a bit tricky.

It's a fairly small table but big enough for two of us, two place settings, and a few serving dishes. The placemats stay out all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Show of hands... how many of you: actually set the table... with or without a Teen at hand... each night for dinner? Or, have an odd assortment of plates, napkins, placemats and jelly jars serve as your set table? Or, stand over the sink eating dinner? Or, curl up on the couch with a bowl of whatever (it doesn't have to be bowl-food... it could be steak and mashed potatoes: you don't balance a bowl the same way you balance a plate)?

Dinner is often the only time we ever sit together, look at each other and talk together as a family. Once in a while, when there is a television program on that she really wants to see, or a movie she is engrossed in, V-t will ask permission to eat dinner in front of the television. She has friends whose families always eat dinner while watching separate televisions. Rather than being horrified by this, I'm guessing that this may represent a collective defense system--they may be avoiding conflict that way. Family meals are not always a pleasant, peaceful time in some homes--they can be flashpoints. When Veggie-teen is not home for dinner, Jonathan and I sometimes eat dinner on t.v. snack tables, in front of the t.v. We spend plenty of time together, since we both work at home. And sometimes it's relaxing to eat dinner while watching a movie or The Simpsons, or Law and Order or Seinfeld re-runs, our go-to compromise choices, since I don't like watching sports and Jonathan doesn't like the Food Network. We used to watch the news, but these days it makes me lose my appetite.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We only eat at the table--either in the dining room or the kitchen. I used to be pretty regular about setting the table when we ate in the dining room, but now that we eat most meals in the kitchen (unless we have guests), it only gets pre-set about half the time. I frequently need the table space to hold stuff as I'm working, so getting complete place settings down in advance becomes a bit tricky.
Similar situation here. Our house has what's called an LDK: one room running the (short) length of the house with a sink and cooktop space at one end with room for a fridge next to the sink (the "K"), and the rest of the space is for living ("L") and dining ("D") furniture and activities. There's not much workspace, so I end up using the D table to hold prepped items while I work on the other table. Azami's usually helping me shuffle things around or mixing drinks, and then we get everything on the table at once...sometimes. ;)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

in our building's renovation, dining rooms, and even dining areas, were penciled out -- unless you want to add at least $500 onto your rent. if our children were still around, maybe it would have been worth it (we almost always ate dinner together at the table, until our schedules became a bit confusing during their teens). i find it difficult to concentrate on either the food or the television when eating in front of the television set, but i can't tell you how many meals we have eaten in front of rachel ray cooking 30-minute meals. the best thing about her program is that you don't have to pay the slightest bit of attention to it.

our cooking surfaces seem to be at least as limited and our kitchen at least as tight as zora's, and we do not have the luxury of a table you can work on. ours is big enough mostly for stacking bills and junk mail. (which reminds me that i am beginning to wonder why it is taking so long to receive our pitifully meager tax refund from the dc government.)

at least we don't eat our meals sitting on the floor, which i believe they do up and down the hall. (we agreed to locate in the "david lynch" wing of our building, with no sunshine, no direct views of the outside, a loud exhaust fan beneath our bedroom window, a carpet beetle infestation through our screen windows every spring and poor lost souls wandering around, some of whom barely know they have a name -- in exchange for a small concession in the rent.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This morning, while I was drinking coffee and transferring the strained goat yogurt into a container

dscn3118pb9.jpg I had the pleasure of listening to Ruth Reichl being interviewed on NPR about food memoirs she recommends for summer reading. I appreciated her comments about food writers whose focus on food is a way of exploring their humanity and their relationships with the world and other people, as MFK Fischer did, and Barbara Kingsolver does, and a writer like Nigel Slater, who has a magical ability to conjure with words the sheer sensuality of food and the all that goes into preparing and eating it. I felt reassured that the pleasure I experience with all that goes into the preparation of meals, and eating, thinking and writing about food isn’t a completely frivolous pursuit.

I’d had a vague plan to make salade Nicoise one night this week, and today seemed a good day to make it. I had a sack of nice new potatoes, and some green beans I’d parcooked last Saturday and hadn’t used all of. I hardboiled some eggs—I only had fresh ones, which meant they would be a bitch to peel, but oh, well. I knew I’d get complaints if I served salade Nicoise without hardboiled eggs.

dscn3119sf2.jpg

There’s not a lot of advance prep involved in this particular composed salad, but Jonathan asked me this morning what I was going to do with the black raspberries I'd bought on Sunday. And Veggie-teen had put in a request a few days ago, for me to make biscuits, which she likes to split and toast and eat with apricot or cherry preserves the day after I’ve made them for strawberry shortcake. I thought I’d make black raspberry shortcakes, but 1/2 pint of black raspberries wasn’t going to make a generous shortcake dessert for the three of us. When I was out with the dog yesterday, I noticed that the wineberries were starting to ripen in the patch out behind the house. dscn3121kf9.jpg

In another week or ten days, there’ll be lots of ripe ones. There’s another big patch near my house, but picking them requires gearing up with thick jeans, boots and a long-sleeve shirt and plenty of bug spray, to deal with the thorns, the poison ivy and the mosquitos that are associated with the process. They’re almost not worth it. The berries are beautiful little crimson jewels, but they don’t have much flavor. Mixing some in with the black raspberries would give them the benefit of the blackcaps’ intense flavor, and provide more fruit for the shortcakes.

dscn3124qn9.jpg

Then I cooked them down with sugar, lemon zest and a little bit of water.

dscn3125qq0.jpg

I had to run up to Safeway to get some whipping cream, and while I was there, I bought a red pepper for the salade Nicoise, which I roasted on the stovetop.

dscn3128gx7.jpg

I made buttermilk biscuit dough with a little sugar in it, rolled it out and cut it

dscn3129mk1.jpg

and baked the biscuits. Not anywhere as beautiful as Heather’s, but they’ll do the job.

dscn3130cq7.jpg

The salade Nicoise had olive oil packed tuna on a bed of greens lightly dressed with vinaigrette, green beans, new potatoes, tomato, roasted pepper, hard-cooked egg (hard to peel, just as I expected). Kalamata olives stood in for Nicoise olives on the plate.dscn3131az5.jpg

We drank a chilled 2005 Muga rose´ which was ideal.

The mixed bramble-berry shortcake with whipped cream was amazing—black raspberries, when they are cooked with some sugar have such an intense perfumed dark berry essence. I used to think that boysenberries were the most delicious berry. I’m not so sure now. I think black raspberries might be better, even when they are stretched with some wineberries.

dscn3132qg0.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had an appointment in “downtown” Vienna this morning, so I went into the Whole Foods store while I was there. They had the non-ultrapasteurized goat milk that I use to make chevre, and I picked up some hamburger rolls for tonight. I had taken a pound of Costco-purchased organic ground beef out of the freezer a few days ago, and it was about at the “use it or lose it” stage. Veggie-teen has plans with friends and won’t be home for dinner tonight. When she’s here on a burger or steak night, she gets a Morning Star Farms veggie burger with some cheese, or I’ll grill a Portobello or some flavored tofu, which she tends to drown in barbq sauce.

I bought a some white corn at Safeway yesterday, which was on sale for seven ears for 97 cents. It was nice looking and fresh, so it must have been some sort of loss leader. I don’t recall ever seeing it that cheap there before. Jonathan prefers corn “off-the-cob”— instead of grilling the corn and removing the kernels afterward, I decided to make creamed corn, sometimes referred to as “fresh corn polenta” when served with something more elegant than a hamburger. I can’t recall where or when I got this tool, but it simultaneously removes and shreds the kernels from the cob. I used to use a knife and then puree the corn, but this is easier.

dscn3133ng3.jpg

The corn puree gets cooked on low heat with some butter and a bit of salt and sugar while I do the rest.

dscn3142gt7.jpg

It does stick to the bottom of the pan if it isn’t stirred regularly. Actually, that can be very tasty, as the sugar in the corn caramelizes, but that’s a risky strategy, since it also can get burnt and rendered inedible, and the pan is a bitch to clean afterwards. The voice of bitter experience speaking here. ;) By the way, heating some water with baking soda in a pan with burned-on food in it, and then letting it sit for a while, works like magic. Also, judicious amounts of Bartender’s Friend cleanser afterward. :)

The ground beef smelled fine, when I cut open the plastic packaging. I added ketchup and Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper and some grated Vidalia onion.Then used Mother Nature’s mixing spoon to moosh it up and form the patties.

dscn3137ph0.jpg

I usually make three out of the pound of beef, even though it’s only the two of us eating the burgers. 1/3 pound makes the ideal sized burger. The third one’ll get eaten for lunch the next day, or maybe bits of it go into Penny’s kibble for a couple of days– she’s our Australian Shepherd, who’s always happy to help take care of leftovers or gristly bits that get left on plates.

I didn’t use all of the new potatoes I cooked yesterday when I made salade Nicoise, so I cut each in half, drizzled on a little olive oil and some of my spice rub. The foil package gets heated on the grill. dscn3138jl1.jpg

I wrapped some golden beets in foil, to roast in the residual heat of the charcoal.

dscn3139ot9.jpg

Whenever I grill, I try to maximize the use of the charcoal, if at all possible, and cook something that I will use in a future meal —like red peppers or poblano chiles. Of course, you have to remember that you left them on the grill after you took off the steak or fish or chicken. Many’s the time I’ve removed a pepper-shaped lump of carbon from the Weber kettle, late at night or the next day. :P

I sliced an onion for the grill and pre-cooked it for a couple of minutes in the microwave. That way, it's sure to be nice and soft along with the charring on the grill. If I don’t do that, I’ll get complaints that the onion is too crunchy. The rest of the condiments got assembled. We’ve been eating the pickles I made last week. They came out nice and crisp, and just salty and garlic-y enough.

dscn3141hb4.jpg

The ol’ Weber kettle with the burgers, onions, potato package and beets. I used Cowboy charcoal, for a quick, hot fire. I use Kingsford briquettes for longer, slower cooking, like when I'm roasting a whole chicken.

dscn3143hh2.jpg

I didn’t put the foil package of potatoes directly over the charcoal, which was a mistake, because they weren’t hot enough when the burgers came off the grill. I ended up putting the potatoes into a frying pan on high heat for a couple of minutes to brown and crisp them up.

This was a dinner-in-front-of-the-tv night. dscn3145yy6.jpg

Sometimes we drink beer with burgers, but I also am fond of red wine with grilled meat. I opened a 2003 Louis M. Martini Napa Valley Cabernet, which was bold and full-bodied, with soft tannins and just a hint of leather that comes with a bit of age. Really nice wine. We often don’t drink a whole bottle, and then I’ll put in a vacu-vin stopper. This one got finished, though. The hot sauce was for the burgers...

dscn3146ds4.jpg

After I cleaned up the dinner dishes, I started some chevre with the goat milk I bought this morning. My last package of starter culture—I need to remember to order more. The milk gets heated to 86 degrees f. and then the starter culture is sprinkled on.

dscn3148xr6.jpg

The covered pot sits for 12 hours. Tomorrow, I’ll drain the curds for six hours, and then finish the cheese.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can’t recall where or when I got this tool, but it simultaneously removes and shreds the kernels from the cob. I used to use a knife and then puree the corn, but this is easier.

What is this called? And, can you provide another picture of it? It looks like a long, wooden olive tray; I can't figure out how it works.

I wrapped some golden beets in foil, to roast in the residual heat of the charcoal.

You wrapped the beets along with the tops; how do you use the roasted beet tops?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What is this called? And, can you provide another picture of it? It looks like a long, wooden olive tray; I can't figure out how it works.

You wrapped the beets along with the tops; how do you use the roasted beet tops?

Here's the corn shredding tool.

http://www.leemfgco.com/corn.asp**

I actually didn't roast the beet tops--just left a bit of stem on when I cut them off. Golden beet tops are thick and fleshy and not good to eat, unlike red beet greens, which can be cooked and eaten just like chard, when they are young. Beets and chard are in the same family--cousins, as it were. When the beets get larger, the tops wither and aren't fit for anything but the compost heap. When you see beets for sale without attached greens, it's because the tops were too far gone.

**edited to add: I just scrolled down below the wooden corn cutter, and saw the amazing Rube Goldberg corn shucker/creamer contraption utilizing an electric drill! Hello! Ferment Everything: are you there?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After I cleaned up the dinner dishes, I started some chevre with the goat milk I bought this morning. My last package of starter culture—I need to remember to order more. The milk gets heated to 86 degrees f. and then the starter culture is sprinkled on.
I am curious about your cheese-making.

I'm fairly new to making yogurt. I've been following instructions that advise heating the milk to 185 F then letting it cool to around 110-120 F before adding the starter which I do after transferring the liquid to sterilized jars. I then use either some of my own leftover yogurt or a small container of plain yogurt as a starter.

1) Is the lower temperature (86 F) standard for making cheese vs. yogurt? Advisable for goat vs cow milk?

2) Is your starter rennet or.....? Is there a way to use "leftovers" from an earlier batch of homemade chevre when you're making cheese instead of yogurt?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am curious about your cheese-making.

I'm fairly new to making yogurt. I've been following instructions that advise heating the milk to 185 F then letting it cool to around 110-120 F before adding the starter which I do after transferring the liquid to sterilized jars. I then use either some of my own leftover yogurt or a small container of plain yogurt as a starter.

1) Is the lower temperature (86 F) standard for making cheese vs. yogurt? Advisable for goat vs cow milk?

2) Is your starter rennet or.....? Is there a way to use "leftovers" from an earlier batch of homemade chevre when you're making cheese instead of yogurt?

Making fresh chevre is kind of a combination of yogurt-making and cheese-making. I get little packages of powder, which are a combination of bacterial culture and rennet, from The New England Cheesemaking Company. Their address is www.cheesemaking.com (I couldn't get the link option to work)

The 86 degree temperature is because I am following their instructions. I have made it the same way with cow's milk, which makes "queso fresco"--which doesn't quite have the character of fresh goat cheese. I don't see how it would be possible to use the cheese to make a new batch, as you can do with yogurt. It wouldn't have the rennet, which separates the curd from the whey, a step that is not involved in yogurt-making. The chevre starter culture isn't very expensive. I make two half-gallon batches out of each little packet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

dscn3160xe1.jpgPenny and I went for a two mile walk in Battery Kemble Park early this morning.

The wineberries are abundant and ripening, but this year I’m passing them by. There’s a different bramble berry, some type of blackberry, that is even more abundant.

dscn3153sr5.jpg It’ll be a few weeks before there enough ripe ones to pick, but I saw that the occasional early ripened one is a deep black-purple color. I hope that means they'll have more flavor.

I managed not to forget the roasted beets on the bbq or turn them into nubs of carbon last night.

dscn3167dn9.jpg

Perfect for a salad, with some of the chevre I started. The curd formation always seems magical to me. Last night, it was slightly warm milk, and this morning it was this…

dscn3166kd0.jpgIt hung in the cloth and drained for six hours. Then I mixed in fleur du sel, fennel pollen and lavender flowers dscn3171uz4.jpg

I rolled it into logs, using the plastic wrap technique that Michel Richard describes for making sous vide sausage.

dscn3173sg9.jpg

For a treat, I warmed some medjool dates and stuffed them with a little bit of the cheese.

dscn3174bh8.jpg The combination of the lightly chewy, sweet-salty-creamy textures and flavors with the whisper of anise from the fennel and the lavender always makes me have the thought: “This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

We’re going to see “Ratatouille” later tonight, so I wanted to make a fairly simple supper. Not very much left of the various items I bought at the market last Sunday, but there was still a big bunch of basil in water by my sink, and the stems were starting to get funky. Put it all together, it spelled pasta al P-E-S-T-O. The roasted golden beet and goat cheese salad for a first course to provide us with some veg. No lettuce left, however, and I needed to get the secret ingredient for the pesto.

What’s that, you say? Did she say that she’s about to reveal a secret? :P Yes, dear readers, I am opening my bag of tricks here for all to see and adopt as their own. I have practically nothing to hide—just don’t try to peek over my shoulder when I step on the scale! ;)

V-t and I went to Georgetown today, so that she could shop for new jeans and I could exercise the parental prerogative – she picks the clothes and I provide the plastic. I zipped in to Dean and Deluca and bought what I needed while she zipped into some Levi's across the street. :)

For years I struggled with the dilemma of pesto turning an unappetizing brown on the plate and in the serving bowl. At a chef demo at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market once, I asked Alice Waters how to avoid it—she said that the cause was making it in the Cuisinart. I should make it in a mortar. Wrong. I tried adding parsley, oceans of olive oil. Nothing seemed to work, until I included some…ta-da!! cooked fresh spinach leaves. It’s the oxalic acid in the spinach, I suppose that prevents the basil from oxidizing. It really works. No need to hurry up and eat it before it starts looking yucky. I steamed some spinach in the microwave, squeezed all of the water out and added it to the Cuisinart after I’d ground together the parmesan, pine nuts and garlic. The spinach, basil and olive oil got processed a couple of minutes before the pasta was ready to take out of the water, for the most intense pesto flavor. You don’t taste the spinach, with all the garlic and basil flavor going on.

dscn3177sp5.jpg

The golden beets were plated on a bed of lightly dressed spinach leaves, with some orange.

dscn3175qa9.jpg

MORE BELOW:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MORE:

This is the last installment of my blog. I really enjoyed doing it—I finally learned how to use the digital camera, for one thing. And it made me focus more intently on the decisions I made about what to cook and my process of food preparation. I suppose there’s an element of the tautology about scientific scrutiny at work here—that the act of observation inevitably effects the phenomenon being observed—and perhaps we would have eaten different things this week if you hadn’t been “watching.” But I think it’s been a pretty fair representation of what I do in the kitchen on a regular basis. My kitchen has always been a place where I feel energized and creative, and it has been a lot of fun having you all looking in on me this week. With the pasta, we had a nice little inexpensive white wine from Austria, Meinklang, that was very clean and refreshing. And I raised the glass in one hand, and the camera in the other, to wish all of you “A Salud!” dscn3182nb6.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MORE:

This is the last installment of my blog. I really enjoyed doing it—I finally learned how to use the digital camera, for one thing. And it made me focus more intently on the decisions I made about what to cook and my process of food preparation. I suppose there’s an element of the tautology about scientific scrutiny at work here—that the act of observation inevitably effects the phenomenon being observed—and perhaps we would have eaten different things this week if you hadn’t been “watching.” But I think it’s been a pretty fair representation of what I do in the kitchen on a regular basis. My kitchen has always been a place where I feel energized and creative, and it has been a lot of fun having you all looking in on me this week. With the pasta, we had a nice little inexpensive white wine from Austria, Meinklang, that was very clean and refreshing. And I raised the glass in one hand, and the camera in the other, to wish all of you “A Salud!” dscn3182nb6.jpg

Bravo, Zora! Thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you Zora. This has been a wonderful blog. Before you sign off, can you tell me if you use or prefer muslin to cheesecloth in your cheesemaking. I have been inspired to try the ricotta, then the chevre. I believe I saw you mention muslin upthread.

Thanks again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Legant has requested that I inform you that the blog will be open for questions and comments for another couple of days--'til Tuesday, maybe? An then it will be locked--available to read, only. Another blog is being planned for end-of-summer.

Before you sign off, can you tell me if you use or prefer muslin to cheesecloth in your cheesemaking. I have been inspired to try the ricotta, then the chevre. I believe I saw you mention muslin upthread.

What is sold in plastic packages marked "cheesecloth" is not actually what cheesemakers use--wrapping roulades of meat before they are braised is pretty much all I use it for anymore. When I started making chevre, I bought a book from the New England Cheesemakers Supply, and based on the recommendation in that book, I bought a pack of plain white muslin towels--at Sur la Table, as I recall. I use those for straining curds and also they're great for straining stock--it gets out all the fine particulate matter, and you get crystal clear stock. After straining stock, I bleach the towel I used, because the onion skins and carrots leave it stained a brownish color. But the towels have lots of other uses--like drying crystal wine glasses and anything silver. They leave no lint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the tip about adding the spinach to pesto, Zora. One thing I had noticed is that when I freeze fresh pesto, it tends to stay greener longer once it's defrosted than fresh pesto does. I guess that's because the oxidization has been interrupted by the freezing? I'm not sure.

Thanks for doing the blog. It was quite interesting to read/view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There’s a different bramble berry, some type of blackberry, that is even more abundant. It’ll be a few weeks before there enough ripe ones to pick, but I saw that the occasional early ripened one is a deep black-purple color. I hope that means they'll have more flavor.

Thanks for doing this blog, Zora! I'm curious how you know that these new berries are edible. I discovered wineberries on the Capital Crescent trail a couple of years ago. They grow plentifully along many sections of the trial, but I'd always had no idea whether they were edible or not. It wasn't until I talked to an old man that was picking them that I found out you could actually eat them (as you mention, though, they are awfully sour and don't have a whole lot of flavor compared to other berries). I see other berries growing around DC too, but how do you identify which ones are edible?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Zora: I was just curious about the process and the components of the chevre's starter, 'tis all. The only time I tried to make cheese--marscapone--it was a failure. Thanks for answering my questions,

and for the inspiration for this morning's purchases--the black raspberries were gorgeous today--

for including foraging at the very end of a week that incorporates all the types of food-gathering found in Omnivore's Dilemma (except for fast-food franchises)

AND, finally, for an entertaining, exemplary launch of DR food blogs!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm curious how you know that these new berries are edible. <snip> I see other berries growing around DC too, but how do you identify which ones are edible?

It's a combination of received wisdom from others – the way you learned about the wineberries - and I consult my native plant "field guides," and trial and error--the brambles in question have a leaf that looks just like other blackberry leaves, and the berry itself has the distinctive form of others in the edible brambleberry family. I'll taste a little bit of one and spit it out without swallowing. If it is bitter, it's usually a sign that it's not good to eat--and I rinse my mouth with water. There are little red berries around my yard that look very much like wild strawberries that we use to get in Vermont. But they aren't edible--heard that one from my MIL. She told me about the wineberries when we moved here. Jonathan clued me in about mulberries, a long time ago. I'm thinking about taking a guided wild food walk that ol' ironstomach wrote about, to learn more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oops--I forgot! Where in the world did you find fennel pollen!!!!???

I bought it at Surfas, a chef's supply in Los Angeles. But you can order it online from them/ www.surfas.com. It's expensive, but I've used it so sparingly, that I still have lots in the package I got more than a year ago. It's in a tiny ziplock pouch inside a metal canister. I keep it in the refrigerator. It's powerful stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The expensive Italian pollen that started the trend is gathered from wild fennel.

Wild fennel grows all over the place in California. It never occured to me to gather the pollen when I lived there, though. There were acres of it in the Ballona Wetlands, near where we lived, and which was one of Jonathan's favorite places to go birding. There was a type of snail that we would see there, feeding on the fennel, and I always had it in the back of my mind to gather and cook some--they'd probably be pretty tasty. I never did it, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had an appointment in “downtown” Vienna this morning, so I went into the Whole Foods store while I was there. They had the non-ultrapasteurized goat milk that I use to make chevre

Have you ever used the powdered/canned goat milk they sell in the TPSS Co-op to make your chevre? In my reading about cheese making I often see references to making certain cheeses with powdered (cows) milk. I haven't tried this myself, but from what I have read, it seems to give good results. Do you think you could do the same thing with goat's milk/cheese?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't imagine that you could make delicious cheese from canned or powdered milk. For one thing, those milks are processed using high temperatures, and the best cheeses are made from unpasteurized milk, which hasn't been heated at all. Many cheeses are made with milk that has been heated or brought to a brief boil before adding rennet to form the curds, but canned milk is superheated or even cooked for a long time to evaporate it. This inevitably has an effect on the flavor. Some cheeses might have powdered milk added, maybe to boost the protein level or for some reason that I cannot fathom. Every source I have consulted recommends against the use of "ultrapasteurized" milk for making cheese. And ultrapasteurized milk is heated to a higher temperature and held there for a longer time than milk that has simply been subjected to the ordinary pasteurization process.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some cheeses might have powdered milk added, maybe to boost the protein level or for some reason that I cannot fathom.
Since you mention that cheese-making and making yogurt are somewhat related, I wonder if it might serve as a thickening agent. I was skeptical about references to its use, preferring to keep things "pure" when making yogurt since that was my reason for switching in the first place. However, I now add a tiny amount and swear by the effect. (I'm not sure why powdered milk is used in baking, but imagine there are other desirable properties.)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...