(first things first: chosen by that trusty random number generator, the winner of the lost art of real cooking is melissa – who commented on july 12th. congrats melissa! enjoy!)
all of your comments were so inspiring to me! so great to hear about all your pilgrim ways! upon reading through them i had two thoughts:
1. i am not alone.
2. what the hell do they need me for?
then i thought i better step up my game, break out the big cheese…
tigress in a dairy? stranger things have happened.
ahem.
some of you may remember my trip to turkey last summer. i fell in love with the country, it’s people and their way of eating. feta is a very common type of cheese in that part of the world, eaten in many ways.
upon arriving home from turkey last summer i set out to learn how to make it. we’ve been eating it regularly ever since. although it’s slightly more involved than say, homemade yogurt, it’s not all that difficult. and as with anything homemade, once you get the hang of it you can tweak it until you get exactly what your taste buds are looking for.
i cannot begin any discussion about home cheese making without first paying homage to madame fromage – ricki carroll, whom i was lucky enough to take a cheese making workshop with about 3 years ago. her book
feta is a salty cheese traditionally made with sheep or goats milk. store-bought pasteurized goat’s milk is what is needed for this feta recipe, and it should be fairly easy to find, at least at your local co-op or organic grocer, if not your local farmer or farmer’s market.
homemade feta
adapted from home cheesemaking
1 gallon pasteurized whole goat’s milk
1 packet direct set (DS) mesophilic starter
1/2 teaspoon liquid rennet or 1/4 vegetable rennet tablet
2 tablespoons cheese salt or sea salt (must be fine grained & contain no iodine)
thermometer
slotted spoon or flat ladle
fine meshed cheese cloth or butter muslin
yield – 1 pound
1. place milk in a large stainless steel pot. heat to 86 degrees. this is how you do it:
fill the sink with hot water – hopefully in line to the top of the milk, or as close as you can to it.
place the pot in the water with a thermometer and let sit until 86 degrees.
2. once milk reaches 86 degrees, take the pot out of the sink and add the packet of mesophilic starter. stir to combine, cover and let sit for 1 hour.
3. dilute either 1/2 teaspoon of liquid rennet or 1/4 rennet tablet in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water. (do not measure this over the milk please! i don’t want you to learn the hard way). add this to the milk and stir in an up and down motion, like this:
do this for approximately 3 minutes.
4. cover the milk. reheat the water in sink and place pot back in. bring the milk temperature back to 86 degrees. keep it at 86 degrees for 1 hour. to keep the milk at 86 degrees for one hour you will need to periodically adjust the water by adding hot and/or cold to adjust the temperature.
if you are like me, you probably won’t be able to keep it at exactly 86 degreesfor one hour. it will be fluctuating, and you will be dancing with the water, your sink, and the pot.
that’s ok.
put on some good music.
the goal is to let it set for that hour, so if you find that the temperature is too high, and it is not coming down fast enough when you add cold water to the sink, lift it out of the sink for a bit, but do it gently. inside the pot magic is happening; the whey is separating and the milk is starting to coagulate!
5. after one hour take the top off and:
happy dance!
6. now you get to cut the curds. you can do this with a curd cutter, or a regular old knife. you want to try and cut the curds into 1/2 inch cubes. if the set is a bit soft and you feel like it will crumble (this batch set soft) you can go a bit bigger on the cubes. start by slicing one way, and then the other. like a tic tac toe grid.
after you’ve cut the grid, you need to cut down. to do this start in the center pointing toward one side of the pot. angle 1/2 inch down and cut across the pot and all the way to the end. then go down 1 inch and do the same, then 1 1/2 inches down and do the same. once you’ve cut one side all the way down to the bottom, start in the middle all over again toward the other side of the pot.
yes, i’m available for questions.
7. stir the curds very gently for 20 minutes.
8. place cheesecloth in a colander and pour curds & whey over. lift the cheesecloth up and tie the ends in a knot. hang over the sink to drain for 4 hours.
9. after 4 hours untie the cloth and cut the cheese into approximately one inch cubes by first slicing, and then cubing. i am not very particular about this because i like the rustic look of uneven cubes, and when eaten i usually crumble it. that said for the proper aging and salting you will want it to be somewhat uniform. in a container, place a layer of cheese cubes, sprinkle with salt, another layer of cheese cubes, sprinkle with salt etc. cover and place in refrigerator to age. cheese will be ready to eat in 4-5 days.
the possibilities for serving feta are endless: on tomatoes, in bean and grain dishes, on it’s own with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of black pepper & fresh herbs – take that and smash it all over a thick slice of country bread, or a just warmed pita. in all manner of salads, egg dishes, & veggies of every persuasion. and my personal fave – served with big hunks of fresh summer melon and a shot of ground chili pepper. i think i can honestly say -
everything’s betta with feta!
 |
I am sooo trying this! Thanks
Nice! And may I just say that your photographs are beautiful? Thank you, I've been waiting for this, as you know. So: what about using raw goat's milk?
This is on my list!
two by the sea – do it!
julia – thanks! here is my take on the 'raw' issue: according to the usda, in order to use raw milk safely in a cheese it has to be aged 60 days. this is not the case in other countries, similar to the canning differences. because the milk for feta is heated only to 86 degrees it would be considered a raw milk cheese if using raw milk to start as it is not heated sufficiently enough to pasteurize. and of course, it's only aged for a few days. as with canning books following usda guidelines, i believe that all of the recipes in ricki's book will also.
if you have a great source for raw goats milk you could try pasteurizing it yourself before starting with the recipe. i am considering trying this with raw cows milk, for a cows milk version, since i have such a great source and get a few gallons weekly.
there is also a feta recipe on ricki's site that utilizes raw cows milk but the aging process is long and it must be aged at a temperature between 48-55 degrees i believe.
pam – great, put it at the top! you won't regret it!
Thank you – Thank you! I have always wanted to try this and your instruction and beautiful photographs really make it all come to life.
I can't wait to try this on my own!
Great post. I too have wanted to try feta for a while and have a good chance now that the dairy-free one in our household is away. What did you do with the whey? When I make ricotta, I save the whey and use it in soup (leek and potato for example).
I can't wait to give cheesemaking a shot. Thanks for the inspiration.
theresa – thanks! let me know how it goes if you do!
karen – i didn't keep this whey but that sounds like a great use for it. this week i am experimenting with using the whey from my homemade drained yogurt for fermenting beets. i will post about it if it comes out well.
mom – great! try it!
im so inspired!
My Word! Photographs are beautiful.
I had an amazing salad a few weeks ago with watermelon, feta, arugula, pine nuts and red wine vinegar. I've been dreaming about it since. I was in the store the other day looking at the feta thinking, 'I wonder if I can…'
I've done the Labneh and stovetop goat cheeses.
Can't wait to take the next step in my cheese making adventure. You make it look doable and fun.
Love it!
OMG!!! I'm trying this sis! I see that delicious humus in the photo as well. I've recently tried a version of feta made from cow & goats's milk. It's not as tart.
I just finished the last of my cow's milk feta AND signed up for a share of goat milk from a local farmer; I'm seeing a lot more feta in my future. Yum!
i have a silly question … when I buy feta at my local farmers market (it comes from Ardith Mae in PA) it's in a sort of brine bath. It doesn't seem your recipe uses this for storage or aging. Just dry salt.
You 'splain to me please?
I don't know much about makin' cheese which is why I buy the shizz from the folks at Ardith Mae (check out their goats! http://www.ardithmae.com) but I might try and I am curious.
i'm so glad you posted about cheesemaking! we just got goats this year and one is giving milk, so i've been doing a lot of experimenting – mostly yogurt, and now cheese.
have you checked out Fankhauser's Cheese Pages? if you google "fankhauser" you'll surely find it. i find his feta recipe to be a simpler process…and the flavor to be more feta-esque & crumbly than rikki's version – and the only culture needed is yogurt.
cheesemaking is so much fun – but the waiting to eat it is rough!