Anna's Adventures in Cheesemaking - Mozzarella

I’m not going to lie, this cheese is slightly less easy. However, it is well worth the effort and special ingredients, as it is so delicious, and doesn’t take too much time. And it’s very versatile! Salads, pasta dishes/bakes, Melanzane Parmigiano, paninis, pizza, and “Suppli al telephono” arancini risotto balls (http://www.manusmenu.com/suppli-al-telefono my idea of heaven). The best part is that it tastes like lovely fresh high quality mozzarella, but at a fraction of the cost. Even better if you make it with unhomogenised milk, or particularly high fat milk. The cheapest kind of rennet is actually vegetarian rennet, so I use that.

Don't be put off by the citric acid or the rennet, you can get them on Amazon, in health food stores, and in Lakeland too I think. I'd like to note here that I have what my friends have affectionately termed 'asbestos hands' meaning they can take a lot of heat, so this recipe was fine for me. However it does involve handling very hot cheese, so I've included several precautions for the more heat sensitive of us to follow to help protect from burnt hands. Anyway, it's so much fun making mozzarella, so don't let me put you off!

Equipment:

• Medium/Large non reactive saucepan
• Sieve
• Cooking thermometer (necessary)
• Chopping board
• Large bowl for iced water + rubber or latex gloves (optional for those who don’t have heat proof hands like me)

Ingredients

• 2 litres full fat milk (use very high fat if you can get it)
• ½ tsp Rennet
• 2 tsp citric acid
• 2 ½ tbsp salt (This is not a typo, but don’t worry, it doesn’t all go in the cheese)
• Ice (optional, again for those without heat proof hands)

Method

1. Dissolve the citric acid in 60ml of cold water. Add to the milk. Heat the milk to 30 C, stirring continuously, it should begin to curdle slightly.
2. Dissolve the rennet in 1 tablespoon of water and add to the saucepan. Heat to 39 C, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and leave to separate from 15 minutes.
3. Scoop the curds out of the pan with a slotted spoon or spatula and place them in the sieve. They should be sort of gelatinous and clump together. Squeeze out a bit of moisture with your hands, but not too much.
4. Add the salt to the whey still in the pan, and heat to between 80 and 90 C.
5. Prepare a bowl of iced water.
6. Cut or break the curds into pieces about 3cm by 3cm or smaller. Gently lower the first ball into the hot water. Leave it in for about a minute, then remove with a slotted spoon and place onto the chopping board. You can now dip your gloved hands into the iced water whenever they get too hot. Work the cheese, folding it over on itself once or twice. On this first go it might fall apart a bit, but just gently squeeze it into a rough ball.
7. Place the curds back in the water to heat up again for about half a minute, then repeat, taking it out and folding over a few times, then squeezing into a ball and returning to the water. The water should be on the heat, staying roughly between 80 and 90 C throughout.
8.  Repeat this for a maximum of 5 times. If you over work it, the cheese will become hard and tear more, so be careful. It should be sort of smooth when you are done. Set aside and repeat with all the other lumps of cheese, to make small balls of mozzarella.
9. Store in salty water or wrapped in clingfilm until ready to use. 

I hope you give this a go, its surprisingly easy and very much worth it! Comment with any questions or to tell me how it went. The next cheese I'm hoping to make is brie, so look out for a post on that some time soon!

Have fun!

Beating the January Blues

Bored after the Christmas holidays? Have the January blues laid you low? If you’re like me and desperate to recapture some of that Christmas pizzazz and sparkle, then do I have the over-the-top, festive pudding for you!

As we all know Christmas dinner is but a warm up for the main marathon event that is dessert. If your family is anything like mine then at least half of the dinner table will swear blind that they’ve never liked Christmas pudding, they never will and will never eat one morsel. Every year this leaves you with a dilemma – what can I make that is fantastic enough to fill the flaming void left by Christmas pudding? This year Mary Berry descended like a primetime Christmas miracle and revealed to mine eyes the fabulous “Rosace a l’ Orange”.

This is a great recipe to try if you want to practice some French patisserie, and everyone does. Every time the Great British Bakers whip up a quick creme pat I go a little bit green! The flip side of this is of course that if anything goes wrong then you have all the key ingredients for a great trifle! 

For the full recipe please follow this link 

The star of this desert is the orange, so make sure you choose a really nice and fresh one - it makes up the majority of the decoration as well as the majority of the taste. If you don't have a mandolin (I didn't) then choose a really sharp knife, if it's dull don't struggle on, sharpen it. You need really thin slices, both to get the most out of your orange and to help with the candying later.  

As you can see we went through most of our knives trying to find one that was sharp enough. 

Once you've sliced your orange, make a sugar syrup (see recipe).

Then place the orange slices in the hot syrup and then leave them there - for as long as humanly possible. Mine was in the syrup for a long as Mary Berry recommended but I think I should have left them in there longer. Don't get me wrong the slices were definitely saturated, but for me they lacked a certain something.

While your orange slices are having a sugar bath make your creme patisserie. I've always been slightly in awe of this, anything with a French name automatically jumps up three places in my estimation. If you're like me then prepare for a slight disappointment because this is basically just custard. I know right I felt so betrayed. But on the flip side, it's not nearly as hard to make as you might imagine - as long as you stick exactly to the measurement and timings then you will not go wrong.

This is my finished creme pat. To this day, custard or not, I'm still proud.

 Whereas creme pat is much easier than I expected, the perfect genoise sponge still eludes me. If your not sure exactly what a genoise is, it's basically a sponge made with no raising agent. Any rise you get comes from the air you manage to whisk into the mixture. I first tried to make this about two years ago, I followed a Paul Hollywood recipe to the letter and  for all my effort was rewarded with two cake-y pancakes (the perfect fodder for a trifle). Mary Berry got me closer to the perfect sponge, but there were still problems! I really struggle with mixing in the flour into my egg and sugar mix (if you look carefully at the cake below you will see little spots of flour. I know.) The only thing I can suggest if you don't fancy a genoise faff is to just make a normal sponge - no one will know, and crucially no one will really care. That's what I'm going to do next time. 

 In case this is all getting a bit much, here's a picture of a Christmas dog.

Now the fun bit, the assembly! Find a suitably sized bowl and line it liberally with cling film - being careful to keep the film as flat as possible (you don't want the imprint of the film on the pudding) Then retrieve your orange slices, and arrange them as prettily as possible. Remember, this is what everyone is going to see - make sure they will be suitably impressed, you worked hard damn it! Slice your genoise in half (again being careful) 

Then layer everything! I forgot to keep some candid orange back for my middle layer, so I just used some fresh chopped up orange - but I think that a mix of fresh and candied would be interesting, so maybe try that? 

Lastly, leave your creation in the fridge.  I would leave it in there overnight, plus a couple more hours - I was really dubious of the creme pat actually setting, but as you will see below I was pleasantly surprised.  then hopefully you will have a suitably fancy French desert! I apologise for the quality (or lack of of the below photos - it was Christmas day).

 It's a really nice desert to eat on its own - a nice light alternative to Christmas pudding. But it also a great accompaniment for a chocolate tart - you can never go wrong with the chocolate orange combo!  

Anna's Adventures in Cheese-Making: Paneer

Slow Food member Anna has been busy discovering the art of cheese-making. Here in her new column she shares the first leg of her adventure, starting with the Indian cheese, Paneer!
If you would like to contribute to our blog, email lp315@exeter.ac.uk :)

As an ardent cheese lover and part-time vegetarian, I often wish I had an unlimited amount of cheese. It makes delicious meals, great snacks and even, in the case of paneer, a decent replacement for tofu. Recently an Indian friend of mine told me just how easy it is to make paneer and so began my cheese revolution. I now eat, breathe, and sleep cheese, and find it very hard not to completely bore everyone I know by going on and on about my cheesy exploits. It’s just so much fun!

The simplest most basic cheese to make is paneer, also known as queso fresco or curd cheese. It is lovely in curries, stir fries, or made into spicy kebabs. Here’s a link to my favourite paneer curry, mutter paneer http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/matar-paneer/. It really is easy-peasy (groan at the awful pun)! The only annoying thing is the time it takes, as it’s not ready to use until it’s been squished overnight. The whey can be reserved for use in making bread (which I tried, really adds a lot of flavour) or in meat stocks.

Now, on to the cheese!

Equipment:

Medium/Large non reactive saucepan

Colander

Cheesecloth/muslin

Large bowl

Cooking thermometer (optional)

Oven dish

Ingredients:

2 litres full fat milk,

1 lemon, squeezed

Salt, around ½ tsp

Method

• Heat the milk in the saucepan until it just comes to the boil (should be around 90 C if you are using the thermometer), stirring occasionally.
  
• Remove from the heat and immediately begin adding lemon juice, teaspoon at a time. When the curds begin to separate from the whey, stop. This means you can see little white lumps clumping together.
  
• Leave the pan for 15 minutes to fully separate. This should look like a slightly yellowy/green-ish clear liquid, with white solids floating in it. If it hasn’t separated, try heating it back up and adding a tablespoon of yoghurt, the natural acidity of which can help sometimes.
  
• Place the muslin cheesecloth over the colander, and place this over a large bowl. Use two sheets if you have them. Strain the contents of the saucepan into the muslin-lined colander, add salt, then bring all the corners of the muslin together and tie the top, to form a “bag” for the cheese. Hang this either from the tap in your sink, or from a wooden spoon over the large bowl.
  
• Allow to drain for 20 minutes. Then place the muslin bag in the oven dish, and place a weight on top. I use the pan I used earlier filled with water, or the colander with another bowl of water inside. Leave in the fridge overnight.

And that's it! Let me know if you give it a go and how it turns out!

Winter Warmers: Veggie Soup at the Slow Food Cookery Class

Here at Slow Food on Campus Exeter, we've really been feeling the cold weather lately. It may be March and the evenings may be getting longer but things certainly aren't warming up quite yet.

And in our opinion, there's no better way to warm the soul than a good bowl of fresh, homemade soup. It'll heat you up, inside and out, all the better better to keep you going this winter in our chilly student houses!

So that's exactly what we got up to at our last cookery class...

Step 1: The Ingredients.

We buy ours from The Real Food Store in Exeter (click for link).  This means all our ingredients are fresh and local - and covered in mud! The first task was to roll our sleeves up and get stuck in at the sinks.

Step 2: The Demonstration

Charli from Slow Food on Campus took us through a demonstration of her Mum's parsnip and ginger soup. The theme of the evening was chop the ends off and slice the vegetables up - nice and simple!

Step 3: Get stuck in!

After a short demonstration, everybody was ready to get started. It was only 6:30pm but stomachs were already beginning to rumble...

The cookery classes are quite relaxed and informal; everybody hangs out and has a bit of a chat whilst they work. It's nice to come with friends or it's a really good way to meet new (food-obsessed) people on campus.

Our second soup of the evening was a cauliflower and apple recipe brought along by the society's president, Bethan. 

After a similar, quick demonstration, we were ready to go again and before long it was time to put the knives away and get cooking!

The ingredients went in the pot and the heat was turned up. There was nothing left to do but wait.

Now, what's a good soup without anything to dip into it?

The second part of the class revolved around a brilliant way to turn old, stale bread into a delicious treat.

First, we crushed our garlic into some butter...

And then we mashed it up!

And where's the best place to put garlic butter?

Right

in the middle

of a delicious baguette.

And conveniently, everything was ready at just about the same time (thanks to the handy chef on site who blitzed our soups for us once the veg had cooked - thank you!)

We were really, really, really hungry by this point.

Luckily, the cooking classes also come with a taster session tacked on the end.

Which essentially means "one giant rugby scrum free-for-all to see who can eat the most".

I'm ashamed to admit that I positioned myself right at the end of the table so that I could make a quick getaway back to the kitchen for more soup!

But it really was so delicious - both soups were real winners with everybody there and when we voted at the end, the parsnip soup only won by a couple of extra votes!

Despite our efforts, there were plenty of leftovers. I learnt my most important lesson that evening; always take a tupperware to the cookery classes.

Nevertheless, after much mess, I managed to pour a portion into my water bottle.

A great success!

If you want to recreate the class' winner at home, here's the recipe:

Parsnip and Ginger Soup
Feeds 6-8

• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 medium onions
• 800g parsnip
• A thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger (we find it's best to add a little more than this!)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
• Veggie or chicken stock (we used veggie)
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 sprigs of fresh coriander

1. Peel (where necessary) and roughly chop the carrots, onions, parsnip, ginger, celery and garlic
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium heat in a large pan
3. Put the chopped veg in the pan and stir with a wooden spoon for 10 minutes - the carrots should have softened a little and the onion should be turning golden 
4. Make the stock up with 1.8 litres of boiling water and pour it in
5. Bring to the boil
6. Stir and let it simmer for 10 minutes with the pot lid askew
7. Season with salt and pepper to taste
8. Garnish with fresh coriander

Ta da! A wonderfully simple and insanely delicious recipe for these chilly winter evenings! Enjoy!

P.s don't forget to buy local where you can!