There are, however, a few fresh cheeses that you can make at home using things you already have.  Yogurt cheese is perhaps the easiest, but it won’t be satisfying if you’re curious to see how milk transforms into cheese, because you make it simply by draining yogurt in a cheesecloth until it becomes thick and spreadable.

But panir (or paneer) is dead easy, and gives you the magic of watching curds form out of milk.  It was the first cheese I ever made from scratch, and I was entranced by how liquid milk could suddenly turn solid.  (That’s half the reason I keep making cheese, honestly: it’s magic.)  Panir is a fresh Indian cheese with a mild (but tasty) flavor, and you’ve probably encountered it in Indian restaurants.  It doesn’t melt.  You can make it hard or soft, but if you want to use it in Indian-style dishes, you’ll want it solid enough that you can cube it and it’ll hold together.

You already have everything you need to make panir.  The only “specialized” equipment is a finely-woven cheese cloth (called butter muslin), but you can use a clean, thin kitchen towel if need be.

It takes just a few minutes to make the curds, and a couple hours to drain.  Then you can use it to make palak panir, like I did, or any number of other dishes.  (No recipe for the palak panir, sadly, because I made it at the end of a very long day, and I don’t remember clearly how much I used of anything.  I’ll figure it out and share it with you, I promise.)

Note that you can double this recipe; mine made enough for 4 servings or more.  You can store it in the fridge for a few days, but not longer than that.

Fresh Panir

• 1/2 gallon of milk (whole or skim, but whole will give you a better yield and flavor)
• 1/4 cup vinegar or lemon juice

In a large pot on the stove, bring the milk gently to a boil.  Stir occasionally so the bottom doesn’t burn.

Once it boils, remove the milk from the heat and drizzle the lemon or vinegar over the surface.  Stir well.  You should almost immediately see the milk separate, forming thick curds and thin, yellowish whey.

Let the curds sit about 5 minutes to let the vinegar do its work.  Put a colander in the sink and line it with your cheesecloth or towel, and carefully empty the pot into the colander (don’t lose any curds!).

Give the curds a good rinse with water to get rid of any lingering lemon or vinegar flavor.  Then form them into a patty, wrap it in the cheesecloth, and put a weight on top of it to help it drain.  A large can works great for this; so does a bowl of water.

Let it drain for a couple hours, then unwrap it and it’s ready to eat!  Or, you can store it in the fridge for a couple days.

I was pretty excited to see that New England Cheesemaking has started a blog, and that they featured my post on burrata!  I thought that was about the coolest thing that could happen to me this month, blogging-wise.

So imagine me jumping up and down (…just a little) when Jim Wallace, Ricki’s “tech person”, wrote a followup to my post and offered some advice on how to shape the cheese.  I had read that burrata was traditionally wrapped in leaves (though I’ve always seen it in plastic on the rare occasions when I find it in stores).  I thought the leaves were probably for appearance, or maybe helped to keep it from drying out.  Jim suggests that they’re also helpful in forming and filling the burrata.

I will have to try this next time I make it – and perhaps use it as an excuse to make it sooner, rather than later!

Pasta with spinach sauce and crumbled Roquefort

I was actually planning on making it this week before I read this article, which isn’t surprising considering how often I eat pasta, but it still felt as though they read my mind.  I like this dish because it feels fancy, but takes no more time to prepare than just cooking pasta.  I even bought special cheese for it, because I was feeling adventuresome.  I bought Roquefort, partly because I’ve never had it and partly because it may soon be unavailable in this country, thanks to ex-President Bush and his bizarre last-minute trade laws.  This one does seem ludicrous even by his usual twisted standards.  I understand promoting American products in a bad economy, but how does taxing a cheese that can only be made in one little village in France going to help?  What did that cheese ever do to him?

The cheese was delicious, and well worth the adventure.  This is one of those cases where, for me, paying extra for the good stuff makes a real difference.  It was strong, but creamy and not sharp.  It was very rich!  In its place, you could use any sort of gorgonzola or a mild blue cheese.  Or, you could use a generous helping of parmesan for a different twist on the same.

Pasta with Spinach Sauce

• 1/2 lb pasta (shells are good)
• 1 lb of frozen chopped spinach
• 2 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• Crumbled Roquefort or gorgonzola, or grated parmesan (as much or as little as you like)

1. Start the pasta cooking.
2. While it cooks, mince the garlic and saute in olive oil over low heat until it starts to brown.
3. Add lemon juice and spinach; stir over medium heat until the spinach melts and cooks.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. When the pasta is done, drain and toss with sauce.  Stir in cheese, or sprinkle it over top.

This is comfort food at its best.  It’s not a dish for calorie-counting types.  Just acknowledge that it’s terrible for you, and that it’s delicious and you’re going to eat it anyway.  This concoction is so rich, cheesy, and creamy that I’d suggest serving it with plenty of veggies on the side to balance it out.  Or, saute some veggies and stir them in.  I usually go just for the classic, but this week I added some finely-chopped mushrooms and seitan, and it made a nice counterpoint to the heaviness of the cheese, and made the dish feel like a whole meal and not just an indulgence.

It’s not hard to prepare, and since it’s based on a pretty standard bechamel sauce (with extra cheese) it’s a useful technique to add to your skill set if you’ve never done it.  You can use any kind of cheese you want, or a combination – hard cheeses work best, and cheddar is the classic, but I like to mix up whatever I have on hand.  Be creative!

Another note – don’t skimp.  No low-fat cheeses, margarine, or anything like that.  If you’re going to make macaroni and cheese from scratch, make sure it’s the real thing.  If the “mac and cheese” you’re used to comes from a brightly-colored box (and I confess that I keep some of that stuff on hand, for long days), prepare to be blown away.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

• 1 tb. butter
• 1 tb. flour
• 1 c. milk
• 1-2 c. grated cheese (cheddar or blend of your favorites)
• 1/2 lb. pasta
• any desired seasonings or add-ins (completely optional)

1. Set oven to 350.
2. Start the pasta cooking.  It can cook while you make the sauce – just drain and set aside when it’s done.
3. Heat up the milk on the stove or in the microwave until it’s quite warm.  This will make it easier to stir into the sauce without lumps.
4. Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan.  Once it’s melted, stir in the flour and cook gently, stirring often, until it begins to brown a little.  Careful not to let it burn!
5. Add the milk and stir well.  Raise the heat to medium and bring the mixture towards – but not to – boiling.
6. As the sauce gets hot, gradually add the cheese, stirring until it’s melted into the sauce.  As it approaches the boiling point, it will suddenly thicken.  Be careful not to boil it, because the cheese will begin to clump unpleasantly.
7. Combine the sauce and cooked pasta, along with any additions, in a baking dish.  Any large enough dish will do – the wider it is, the greater the crispy-top-to-creamy-inside ratio.  I sometimes add the pasta to the sauce a bit at a time just to make sure I haven’t made more pasta than the sauce can hold.  Follow your own instincts about what cheese-to-pasta ratio you want, but make sure the pasta gets well coated.
8. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the top just begins to brown.  Enjoy!

My expeditions in cheesemaking taught me that mozzarella is easy to make at home.  Having finally worked out some of the variables in mozzarella making (for instance, using local milk if at all possible), tonight I made a second attempt at burrata, and this time it was a hit!  My cheese was creamy and rich, and the flavor just right.  The assembly is a little tricky (I admit I haven’t quite worked it out yet, as you’ll see from the pictures), but I’m thrilled to know that this delicacy can be made at home, any time I want.  (Fortunately for my health, it’s involved enough that I won’t want to make it all the time, because I could eat it any day.)

For the record, burrata fits perfectly into a meal that is for me quintisential summer: sliced tomatoes and mozzarella over pasta, with fresh basil and olive oil.

To make it, I followed Ricki Carroll’s great 30-Minute Mozzarella recipe, which you can make at home with just a few special ingredients (citric acid and rennet) which you can buy from www.cheesemaking.com individually or as a kit.  (If you never even knew you could make cheese at home, and you’re intrigued, try it out.  It’s fun and not as hard as you’d expect.)  I made just a couple tweaks to turn her recipe into burrata:

• After the first or second time kneading the curds, when they start to come together, separate out about a third of them.  Make sure you’ve drained off all the whey, then break them into small pieces with your fingers, and add enough cream to make a wet, thick filling.  Stir it all together with a little salt, and set aside.
• Keep heating/kneading the rest of the cheese until it’s hot and stretchy.  Break off a small handful and stretch it carefully into a thin square.  You’ll have to work a bit quickly, because it cools off fast and loses its stretch.  Add a spoonful of filling in the middle of the square, then fold the edges over to seal the burrata.  Try not to let any filling leak out as you’re sealing it, because the cream interferes with the seal – on its own, the mozzarella shell will stick to itself and form a good seal.  I found this kind of tricky, and haven’t worked out a satisfactory technique for forming the balls. Burrata that I’ve seen has been practically bursting with filling, and I have no idea how to get that much inside without it falling apart.  Let me know if you do!
• Keep going, reheating the cheese as needed to keep it stretchy, until you’ve used all the filling.  Frequent reheating makes the process a lot easier.
• Once your burrata are made, the shell dries out quickly, so if you aren’t eating them immediately, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate them.  They don’t keep long, so eat them within just a few days, the sooner the better.

Exhibit 1: Ice cream sandwich with fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies (from the classic Toll House recipe) and organic vanilla ice cream (unfortunately not homemade)

Exhibit 2: Homemade creme fraiche with local strawberries

1. My first attempt at making yogurt!  I’ve been planning to do this for a while, and finally got to it since we had an abundance of milk.  It’s surprisingly easy.  I used my favorite farmer’s market yogurt as a starter.  I love foods that live forever: yogurt is like sourdough in that, theoretically, you could keep making yogurt from the same initial cultures, using a few tablespoons from each batch to start the next, and could keep going forever and ever.  In practice, you’d eventually have a batch go bad, and then the chain is broken.  And the yogurt wouldn’t necessarily be the same each time; a different kind of milk, slightly different temperatures, and so forth would affect the end result.  But you’d have a dynasty of helpful little bacteria, a yogurt kingdom of sorts.  I like that.

   My yogurt came out tangy and good.  It was a bit watery, and separated while it set, so I poured off some of the liquid and when I stirred up the rest, it had about the right consistency.  It’s not as smooth as store yogurt, but neither was the parent batch.

   So, when I bring my homemade yogurt to work to eat for breakfast with the granola I made last week, does that make me the biggest hippie ever?

2. Dinner was meant to be bread, cheese, and something to round it out.  But the rounding-out turned out to steal the show.  I invented a new sauce: combine mustard, yogurt, and a little salt and pepper.  That’s it.  It sounds weird, and I was worried as I made it that it would be gross, but it was actually quite tasty.  The mustard I used had a hint of maple to it (it’s part of my last haul from Stonewall Kitchen, last time I was in New England), so that contributed to the good flavor, but I think any good mustard (or even not-so-good) would work fine.  I served it over seitan.  The only trick is not to heat the sauce too much, or the yogurt will separate out.
3. Finally, dessert.  I was good this time, and used the strawberries while they were still at their peak.  Strawberry cobbler, following my parents’ recipe.  Yum!

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In other news, the burrata was not what I hoped for.  It was clearly headed in the right direction, but needs more work.  Really, I think it needs more cream.  (Doesn’t everything?)  I’m optimistic about attempt number 2.

Dinner was the first order of business, since I was hungry.  We had about half a loaf of good tomato basil bread left over from when we had visitors.  This bread is from Panera — I had more than enough going on last week without baking bread.  But it was very good bread, and following in the theme of my pancake post, I made the bread into savory french toast.  It’s not a stretch, since french toast is less sweet than pancakes to begin with.  I added a little salt and basil to the batter, in place of the vanilla and pinch of sugar I would normally use.  It fried up beautifully.

Less happy was the asparagus we got this weekend; it was the dregs when we got it, and it was old, tough, and not too flavorful.  I sauted it with olive oil and a little white wine, which didn’t improve it much. I’m not sure how to improve on this in the future.  I’ve read that roasting is a good treatment for old asparagus.  I suspect that any dish where it is chopped up and cooked with other things would improve it, if only by helping it blend in.  So there’s a lesson: if your vegetables are past their prime, don’t try to let them carry their own flavor.  They need to be dressed up.  Unfortunately, given the hour and my hunger, a fancier experiment wasn’t really in the cards.

Over the weekend, I had planned to make cheese, but it didn’t come out right; the upshot was that I had a container of soon-to-spoil cream in the fridge, and needed to do something with it.  We came up with two somethings.  First, I made my attempt at burrata.  This is what I planned to make this weekend, and why I originally bought the cream.  Burrata is an artisan cheese that’s a variant on mozzarella, where the cheese is stretched into a ball and filled with curds and cream.  I’ve only had it once, and that was past its prime.  The thing about burrata, and why you’ll rarely see it in stores, is that it should be eaten within 2 or 3 days of when it’s made.  That doesn’t fit in well with American food production, where long storage times are key.  Since nearly all burrata is made in Italy, the timeline  for getting it from the cheesemaker to your plate is tight.  If you ever see it in a store, snap it up.  It’s worth it.

Despite the difficulty of finding burrata in stores and restaurants, the concept seems pretty simple if you know how to make mozzarella.  You just make the cheese, stretch it out into thin bags, fill with extra curds, top with cream, and seal.  That’s what I tried to do tonight.  I think my cheese-stretching technique needs some work, so my burrata won’t be elegant, but I’m crossing my fingers that it will be tasty.  If it worked well, I’ll have to perfect my technique next time.  I will report tomorrow.

The final use for the cream was making profiteroles.  This is one of Nathan’s specialties — he often makes it for special occassions, and it takes enough time, effort, and richness that we rarely make it for ourselves.  But cream has to be used up, right? What better use than whipped cream and chocolate sauce over buttery puff pastries?

It is indeed spring: this is the second week there have been greens at the market, and this week we even got asparagus! There’s also a new vendor selling artisan goat cheese, so I splurged on a tangy cheese ripened in ash. Very classy, and very good. It made me aware of cheese as a singular entity; this was “a cheese” in a way that slices of american cheese, or even wedges of Jarlsberg off the wheel, are not. It was satisfying to have in my hand a little ball of cheese, rind intact, and know that it’s spent its entire life evolving towards this state.

I’m not such a locavore that I measure how much of my food is locally produced; I just try to buy locally when I can. But today, my lunch was 100% local: fresh baked rosemary Italian bread, artisan ash-ripened goat cheese, and asparagus that was probably picked yesterday. The asparagus was sauted in olive oil until tender (I know olive oil isn’t local, but it’s a small, essential piece of the meal). Good bread, cheese, and veggies makes a simple and delicious lunch, something that feels rustic and elegant at the same time. It’s a combination that is as old as civilization (which perhaps began with the invention of bread, cheese, and agriculture) and yet will never grow old. It was really tasty, and a great counterpoint to a rainy day.