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Jul. 12th, 2018 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynnote to self: next time you go to Haymarket to buy Jersey cow cream for lactic experiments, if they don't have the cream in stock at the Trustees of Reservations, just let things wait. the Siena Farms people have cream from Jerseys, but they charge like twice as much baseline, and you get a 10% discount at Trustees.
that being said, hi, everyone, I made mozzarella for the first time in a dog's age the other day, although it's not the greatest mozz ever- one of the containers of milk was already precipitating clumps of milkfat by the time I got it home, although it didn't smell off or taste bad, and the curds didn't come together as firmly as I'd like as a result. decent enough cheese for the moment, though, and I'll be having more of it at lunch today.
and this morning, I made butter. the cream sat overnight in a sterilized jar in the microwave, with a packet of mesophilic starter in it to hopefully result in cultured butter and something resembling cultured buttermilk. I didn't smell anything especially sour this morning when I opened the jar, but my nose barely works these days anyway. I can officially call this ninja butter, because rather than shaking it for half an hour by hand or using the Kitchenaid, I poured the cream into the mix container of my Ninja-brand food... process... blender thingy (I don't remember if it calls itself a food processor or a blender or what) and ran the engine for a while. I did wind up shaking it for a bit by hand because I was afraid the noise would wake somebody up, but the machine did most of the agitating work, so- ninja butter. Strained the resultant blob through cheesecloth in a strainer and kept the liquid, since that's actual buttermilk, then spent some time folding and kneading the rest under changes of tap water until I got mostly clear stuff in the bowl, since that's how you get rid of the unprecipitated buttermilk before things go rancid. There is now about... I don't know, a fist-sized, fist-and-a-half-sized, amount of butter in a bowl in my fridge and I'd have to look at the jar to tell you how much buttermilk I have.
I'll photograph it tonight if I can but I was in no position to photograph the process this time around.
that being said, hi, everyone, I made mozzarella for the first time in a dog's age the other day, although it's not the greatest mozz ever- one of the containers of milk was already precipitating clumps of milkfat by the time I got it home, although it didn't smell off or taste bad, and the curds didn't come together as firmly as I'd like as a result. decent enough cheese for the moment, though, and I'll be having more of it at lunch today.
and this morning, I made butter. the cream sat overnight in a sterilized jar in the microwave, with a packet of mesophilic starter in it to hopefully result in cultured butter and something resembling cultured buttermilk. I didn't smell anything especially sour this morning when I opened the jar, but my nose barely works these days anyway. I can officially call this ninja butter, because rather than shaking it for half an hour by hand or using the Kitchenaid, I poured the cream into the mix container of my Ninja-brand food... process... blender thingy (I don't remember if it calls itself a food processor or a blender or what) and ran the engine for a while. I did wind up shaking it for a bit by hand because I was afraid the noise would wake somebody up, but the machine did most of the agitating work, so- ninja butter. Strained the resultant blob through cheesecloth in a strainer and kept the liquid, since that's actual buttermilk, then spent some time folding and kneading the rest under changes of tap water until I got mostly clear stuff in the bowl, since that's how you get rid of the unprecipitated buttermilk before things go rancid. There is now about... I don't know, a fist-sized, fist-and-a-half-sized, amount of butter in a bowl in my fridge and I'd have to look at the jar to tell you how much buttermilk I have.
I'll photograph it tonight if I can but I was in no position to photograph the process this time around.
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Date: 2018-07-13 06:42 pm (UTC)