Curds and Whey

My Ph.D educated scientific son and I have for years worked hard to find things we can do together that are of equal interest to both of us.  We golfed when he was younger, but my golfing skills generally threw him off his game.  While in California we would hike together, another occasion where I slowed him down.  The most enduring activity we have found is cooking together; in fact, this is something I am happily able to do with both sons.

The scientist has often brought chemical reactions (for lack of a better term) to my attention.  For a long time he had an active starter for sourdough bread that he shared.  I used it to the point I could eat no more sourdough and the starter died.  He has made homemade naan that is some of the best I have ever eaten.  And this last trip he introduced me to cheese making an activity I had up to that point never considered.  If you know of my origins you might find this hard to believe since cheese is one of the major food groups from where I was born.

 Rennet and citric acid were two items I was perfectly clueless about until he told me about them.  Rennet is an acid (the scientist tells me it is an enyzme not an acid) that can be either animal or plant based and when added to hot milk will curdle it.  He had rennet on hand and one evening while his wife was working we took a gallon of whole milk and converted it to about one half pound (or less) of cheese.  The end result was a very fresh cheese that reminded me of the Mexican cheese, queso fresco, and reminded my son of Greek saganaki.  It did squeak like saganaki so perhaps he was more correct in describing it.  Here's some photos of that process.

The rennet is doing its job here

Pressing out the whey

The final product

We so enjoyed making this first batch we decided to locate some citric acid (which is actually not all that easy to find) for an attempt at mozzarella.  Citric acid gives mozzarella its characteristic elasticity.  I had some extra low fat milk around and on Mother's Day we made a pretty good fresh mozzarella.  (I didn't distribute the salt very well so there were pockets of alternating too much or too little salt.)  Mom was with me and she too was taken by how easy cheese is to make.   (Sorry no pics of that effort.)  That cheese was very quickly used in a couple of caprese salads.

Back in British Columbia I found we had three cups of 1% milk nearing its expiry date.  Custard has been the go-to recipe in the past to use up this milk, even though the recipes call for whole milk.  But with cheese making now in my repertoire I thought I'd give it a shot this morning without the preciseness of my scientist son.  Only one problem, there is no rennet in the house.  After spending a brief amount of time on the internet it became clear lemon juice and/or white vinegar will work.   (If you are interested my favorite videos on this topic can be found here and here.)

Here's what I got in about 30 minutes:

What a contraption, but it worked great to get all the whey out of the cheese 

3 cups of milk yielded 2.5 cups of whey

And I created 2 ounces of cheese

I used a solution of 50% lemon juice and 50% vinegar to separate the curds from the whey.  Then before it cooled I added crushed garlic, salt, basil and oregano to the lightly lemon flavoured cheese.

As for the whey, in the past we threw it out.  Today I thought I'd do further research to see what to do with it.   One can drink it; the whey tastes something like a watery yogurt.  Apparently whey is full of protein and mine also has a slight taste of lemon.  There are other things one can do with it; just click here to see the list.  I think the martini using whey might be something I will have to try.*

Kids can get you doing things you never thought you would see yourself attempting.  I no longer golf or make sourdough bread, but this cheese making thing, I see it as a long-term activity.  I am so glad my sons share their epicurious adventures with me.  Next up will be a discussion about a French meal made just for Miss M with my younger son.

*I made the martini and rather liked it.  Even Paul found it to be an interesting change of pace.