TVOROG The Russian word for what we call farmer cheese or pot cheese—a firm-textured small-curd fresh cheese with excellent flavor and little of the extraneous liquid that American cottage cheese often swims in. Salted and saltless versions are now produced, usually in half-pound cartons, by several American manufacturers for a diverse buyership of émigrés from the ex-Soviet bloc. Large Russian-American delis often sell it in bulk. It is the most consistently good commercial fresh cheese that I know; I prefer it in virtually any recipe calling for anything like cottage cheese, especially dishes such as blini, cheese-filled pastries, or noodle kugels. Don’t even think of making Russian Paskha without good tvorog. It is also perfectly delicious eaten by itself, but even better with a dollop of Russian-style sour cream.
ABOUT BRINED CHEESES
Some rough-and-ready cousin of the “Fresh White Cheese with Cultures” in this chapter was the first of all cheeses, allowing for such circumstances as the absence of cows’ milk, or of nice purified cultures to be added in measured amounts. Cheese made by a combination of culturing and renneting came later. But what came next was not cheese ripened or aged by the techniques later developed in northwestern Europe. Once fresh cheeses had become ubiquitous in the Diverse Sources Belt, people discovered the simplest means of preventing the onset of ripening: putting the cheese in brine. The modern example that most people know by name is Greek feta.
The curd structure of brined (also often called “pickled”) cheeses has more in common with that of fresh cheeses than those that have undergone prolonged, progressive changes through ripening and perhaps protracted aging. The main difference is in the degree to which the original casein gets rearranged. A good deal of the somewhat spongy original casein matrix remains in brined curd. Prompt salting and brining are what keep it from starting down the cascade of reactions known as ripening.
At the stage where a fresh cheese would be deemed ready for eating, brined cheese takes a detour. The curd is cut into slabs or chunks, salted, and left to firm up by releasing more whey for some hours or days before being put into a container with a brine solution of salt, water, and—usually though not always—some of the whey, which lightly acidifies the brine. In this state, it keeps for weeks or months, depending on the strength of the brine. When removed and desalted by soaking in fresh water, it can be nearly as close to the milky quality of the fresh curd as soaked salt codfish is to the character of fresh cod.
GETTING ORGANIZED FOR CHEESEMAKING
I never use any special equipment or ingredients from cheesemaking-supply companies. These expenses may make sense if you’re working on a professional scale with dozens of gallons of milk at a time. But for one or two pounds (roughly two to four cups) of cheese, anybody can get equally good results with pretty ordinary kitchen resources and a little planning. (If you decide to explore fresh cheeses more zealously, see the Note on Shopping Sources.)
The only necessary ingredients are milk or a milk-cream mixture, a source of live lactic-acid bacteria to inoculate and culture the milk, and in three of the following five cheese recipes, an enzyme to help set up the curd.
Very fresh milk from a small dairy is always preferable, but supermarket milk will do. As for the inoculant, I use plain cultured buttermilk. You may need to try a few supermarkets before finding a brand with active cultures and without added salt or gums. My enzyme source is plain unflavored Junket brand rennet tablets, and here some people will have easier hunting than others. Some supermarket chains and specialty food shops still carry this once-common ingredient. If you strike out, I suggest asking the maker of Junket about local sources (Redco Foods, Inc., P.O. Box 879, Windsor, CT. 06095; or e-mail [email protected]). Vegetarians and kosher cooks please note: This rennet is an animal product. Luckily you have an excellent alternative in the rennetless cheese on this page.
The steps you will be going through in most cases are putting the milk in a nonreactive saucepan or other container, warming it to a suitable inoculation temperature (generally between about 85° and 100°F; I recommend an instant-reading thermometer), letting it incubate for a prescribed period of usually between 8 and 24 hours at (preferably warm) room temperature, and draining the whey from the curd. This last part of the procedure is the only one requiring much advance organization. For it you will need a colander or strainer set over a pan or bowl and lined with tight-woven cheesecloth—not the loose, flimsy supermarket article—or another good-sized piece of clean cotton cloth such as a large handkerchief or remnant of old bedsheet. The cloth must be large enough to line the colander with some overhang and to tie up into a bag for the final stage: hanging up to finish draining for an unpredictable interval of (usually) several hours. You will need something to hang it on, like the kitchen faucet (if you won’t be using it for a while) or a sturdy wooden spoon placed over a pail deep enough for the bag of curd not to touch the bottom. Remember that the curd will be in a messy, sloshy state when you actually start transferring it between the first vessel and the colander or getting the cloth bag hung up. You’ll thank yourself later if you can get as prepared as possible beforehand.
The most complex recipe in this chapter, “Fresh White Cheese with Cultures and Rennet,” involves an additional stage of cutting the incubated curd into cubes and gradually heating it to a temperature high enough to firm it up by expelling whey more efficiently. The extra equipment you will need is described in the recipe. For the last stage of the two cream-cheese recipes, a weight of several pounds (another whey-expelling measure) is helpful.
FRESH WHITE CHEESE: KINDERGARTEN VERSION
Here is cheese for the scientifically challenged. In somewhat telescoped form, it illustrates the stages of curd formation and draining explained above. I originally came across it in several American-published Russian cookbooks as a resourceful substitute for tvorog, the beloved Russian pot or farmer cheese. Though it’s a little tougher than fresh cheese made by more orthodox methods, the flavor is good.
The reason this is easier to make than other fresh cheeses is that you have a head start on the task of precipitating the casein from the whey. It’s already been incompletely precipitated by the lactic-acid bacteria added to the milk at the manufacturing plant to make cultured buttermilk. Just heating it speeds up the process enough for better curd formation. Other fresh cheeses require you to add the bacteria yourself, and rest on a much more cautious application of heat that leaves the curd more tender and delicate. Still, the general principle is the same.
YIELD: About 1 cup cheese and 3 cups sour whey per starting quart of buttermilk. (See Uses of Whey.)
Go buy a cardboard carton—two, if you’re game—of cultured buttermilk. It should be made without salt or gummy stabilizers, and preferably should have a milkfat content of at least 1.5 percent. Place the unopened carton(s) in a deep pan such as a stockpot or asparagus steamer and add enough cold water to come close to the top of the cartons. Bring the water to a full boil over high heat. Remove the pot from the heat and let the whole thing cool to room temperature.
Read the directions on this page for preparing a cloth-lined colander set over a saucepan or other vessel, tying the cloth into a bag, and hanging it up to drain. Open the carton(s) and dump the contents into the colander, then proceed with the tying-up and draining stages. When the whey stops dripping, turn out the drained curd into a bowl and briefly work it with a wooden spoon. Work in a pinch or two of salt and a dash of cream, if desired. Store in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for three to four days, and use in any way you would use commercial cottage or pot cheese.
FRESH WHITE CHEESE WITH CULTURES
This version of fresh cheese is somewhat more complicated than the preceding one but has no real hurdles as long as the inoculated milk doesn’t get bumped or jounced while incubating. The recipe calls for skim milk not because whole milk won’t work but in order to eliminate one variable during a first effort. Later you can try the whole-milk version (this page). But this cheese actually is one thing th
at I prefer made with skim milk.
To repeat my inevitable mantra, the flavor will be best if you look for very fresh milk, without added milk solids, from a small dairy that does batch pasteurizing. But freshness really is more crucial with the second essential ingredient: a mixture of several different mesophilic starter bacteria. As explained earlier, my preferred source of these organisms is simply a little cultured buttermilk of at least 1.5 percent milkfat content. If it has been sitting around long enough in the store or your refrigerator to lose a lot of the original bacterial activity, the milk either will take longer to curdle or may scarcely curdle at all. Read labels and don’t buy anything that lacks the magic words “live cultures,” or that contains gums and salt. If you can find cultured buttermilk at a local farmers’ market, snap it up at once and use it that day or the next.
The recipe can be halved if a gallon of milk sounds intimidating, but don’t try to cut it beyond that.
YIELD: About 4-plus cups cheese and 11 to 12 cups slightly soured whey per starting gallon of milk. (Expect wide variation. See Uses of Whey.)
1 gallon skim milk
½ cup cultured buttermilk
½ to ¾ teaspoon salt
A dash or two of cream, if desired
Read the directions on this page for preparing a cloth-lined colander set over a saucepan or other vessel, tying the cloth into a bag, and hanging it up to drain. Have the kitchen sink clear, to be used as a water bath.
Pour the milk into a 6-quart pot. Run hot water into the sink to a depth of several inches, set the pot in it, and test the temperature of the milk. Stir it gently, occasionally rechecking the temperature, until it reaches about 85° to 90°F. If you have to add more hot water or resort to heating some in a kettle, be sure not to splash it into the milk. And it’s better to warm the milk cautiously than find that you’ve suddenly gotten it much hotter than you meant to.
Remove the pot of milk from the sink, and set it in a warmish spot (things will proceed faster if the room is at 75° to 80°F) where it will not be disturbed for the next day. Shake up the carton of buttermilk in case the thicker part has settled; stir in ½ cup. Loosely cover the pot with a cloth, and go away and leave it. The inoculated milk must not be jostled, and the room temperature shouldn’t fluctuate wildly.
After about 12 hours, take a look at the milk, without moving or jiggling the pot, to see whether it has started to set in a curd. Most likely it won’t be well set until 18 to 24 hours after inoculation. You will know it’s ready when, as you cautiously test the edge with a small spoon, you see a bit of soft but definite curd break from the mass like a very tender custard.
Set the colander, with cloth lining in place, over a bowl to catch the whey. Very gently ladle the contents of the milk pan into the colander, carefully pouring in the last bit of whey and scraping out any clinging curd. Let the whey drain for 1 to 2 hours. When the surface is less flooded, gather up the corners of the cloth and shift the weight around a little to encourage more draining. Tie the corners into a bag and hang it up to drain until the whey has stopped dripping. This will take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours. If you get discouraged, you can hasten things by putting the bag in a strainer over a bowl and weighting it with something like a heavy can set on a plate. When it gets to soft-cheese consistency, turn the curd out into a mixing bowl and work it smooth with a wooden spoon. Work in about ½ to ¾ teaspoon of salt (less for a half-sized batch). You can also add a very little cream if you like, but I prefer it without. It will keep in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for four to seven days.
Call it anything you like, from cottage cheese to fromage blanc to Schmierkäse; names for cheeses of this ilk are notoriously unsystematic and imprecise in every language. By all means mix it with any seasonings you like—green herbs, scallions, horseradish, blue cheese, chutney, minced celery or olives, pickled jalapeños, salmon caviar, or anything else that occurs to you—before serving it to guests in the form of a spread (it’s great on open-faced sandwiches). Or put the unadorned cheese on the table and eat it with apple butter or prune lekvar. The nineteenth-century cookbook author Mary Lincoln reports that it “is delicious with warm gingerbread.”
You are now primed to understand the main factors that make any fresh cheese tick. A little practice with this version will equip you to go on to another “cottage cheese” made with just two added factors: rennet and a little more heat.
FRESH WHITE CHEESE WITH CULTURES AND RENNET
For makers of aged cheeses, renneting is a complex business involving many factors. Those of us interested only in making small batches of fresh cheese have only a few things to keep in mind. First of all, rennet and lactic-acid fermentation reinforce each other’s action; second, renneted curd is profoundly affected by temperature. Curd produced by culturing alone is more forgiving of heat. But if you slap a pot of renneted milk on the stove and rapidly heat it above 120°F, the result will be as fresh and tender as boiled rubber. Thus you need to do more advance thinking than for other kinds of fresh cheese, and plan on spending an hour or more at the stove during the heating stage. The advantage is that with a little practice you will be able to better manipulate such factors as degree of firmness or softness, sourness or blandness, than with culturing alone.
Before you begin, read through the directions on this page for preparing a cloth-lined colander set over a saucepan or other vessel, tying the cloth into a bag, and hanging it up to drain. But this time you will also have to get together some extra equipment: a pot large enough to hold the one containing the milk, a sturdy rack to set the (heavy) milk pot on inside the larger one, a long thin-bladed knife or metal spatula, a heat deflector such as a Flame Tamer, a stirring implement (wooden spoon or rubber spatula) long enough to reach the bottom of the milk pot, and an instant-reading thermometer, preferably one with a long probe.
You had better try out the rack arrangement beforehand. The top rims of the smaller and larger pots should be at least roughly level. If you don’t have a rack high and strong enough for the purpose, use a few empty cans with tops and bottoms removed. Or try my improvised “rack” for setting a 6-quart Dutch oven inside a 12-quart one: two 5-pan sets of 3-x-5-inch disposable aluminum loaf pans from the supermarket, left stacked for extra strength. Use a screwdriver to punch about a dozen holes through the bottoms of each set, and put them in the larger pot, upside down. Luckily they can be endlessly reused for this purpose.
Look when possible for fresh skim milk made without added milk solids, as well as very fresh buttermilk with live cultures. As with the preceding fresh cheese version (this page), the recipe can be halved.
YIELD: About 4 cups cheese, 12 cups faintly soured whey. (See Uses of Whey.)
1 gallon skim milk
½ cup cultured buttermilk
¼ plain Junket brand rennet tablet (see this page)
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
A dash or two of cream, if desired
Get together all the equipment listed above. Have the kitchen sink clear for use as a water bath.
Pour the milk into a 6-quart pot, run hot water into the sink to a depth of several inches, and set the pot in it. Stir the milk gently, occasionally rechecking the temperature and carefully adding hot water if necessary, until it reaches about 85° to 90°F. Carefully remove the pot. Shake up the buttermilk before measuring. Crush the piece of rennet tablet in a few spoonfuls of water in a cup, making sure it dissolves thoroughly. Stir the buttermilk and rennet into the milk, then go away and leave the lightly covered pot completely undisturbed in a warm spot (preferably at a temperature of 75° to 80°F).
In about 10 to 12 hours the milk will show the first sign of the difference between fresh cheese curdled by lactic fermentation alone and that with a combination of culture and rennet: more rapid curd formation, with clearer separation of whey. This may be hard to judge without jostling the milk. As gently as possible, test it by slipping a thin knife blade just under the surface. When the curd seems almost to “unzip”
in a clean cut revealing fairly clear-looking whey, it’s ready. The texture will be slightly firmer than that of simply cultured curd.
Now for the most delicate part of the operation, which will take at least an hour: First, set the larger pot on a Flame Tamer or other heat deflector over a stove burner and put your rack arrangement in it.
Next, use your knife or spatula to very carefully cut straight down through the curd at roughly ⅓- to ½-inch intervals. (Don’t worry about mathematical precision.) Make a second set of cuts at right angles to the first. Holding the blade at a forty-five-degree angle to the vertical cuts, make a third set of cuts, this time oblique—an inexact but good enough home equivalent of professional curd-cutting with wire “cheese harps” that do both vertical and horizontal cutting. The aim is to encourage still more curd-whey separation.
Now carefully set the pot of curd on the rack and even more carefully pour enough lukewarm water into the larger pot to come most of the way up the sides of the smaller one (leave a few inches of leeway). This is your equivalent of an industrial-scale water jacket. Turn on the heat, keeping it fairly low, and begin checking the water temperature, which has to rise slowly rather than rapidly. Be aware that once it starts heating you may have trouble slowing it down. When it gets above about 100°F, turn your attention to the milk pot.
You must now bring the curd from about room temperature (say, 75°F) to roughly 108°F at the rate of only two or three degrees every five minutes—thirty-some degrees in about an hour. Begin testing the temperature in different parts of the pot. Every few minutes, carefully stir the curd with a long spoon or spatula. The object is not to agitate or mix the contents of the pot but to let the whey circulate as freely as possible around the pieces of cut curd, evening out their temperature and making the curd firmer by promoting more whey loss. As the casein matrix knits together more firmly, it will literally squeeze out more and more moisture. The longer you continue, the more whey in proportion to curd you will see in the kettle.
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