kahvijuusto
Oct. 6th, 2012 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaWhen I was a child we would made occasional trips to my mother's home town, Ewen Michigan, to visit family. If we were very lucky one of her aunts would bring some "juusto" to a family gathering, and I would feast on more than my fair share of the world's best cheese. It is also the world's most fun cheese: It Squeaks! There is nothing much nicer than chewing a bite of juusto and listening to it squeak against your teeth while enjoying its wonderful flavour.
When I got older one of my cousins got me a copy of the recipe, as made my my mother's Aunt Sally.
*************************
Juusto recipe from Aunt Sally
8 qt. rich whole milk
½ rennet tablet, soak in ½ t water
3 t cornstarch
2 t salt
1 t sugar
warm milk to lukewarm
remove from heat
test on inside of wrist
if too hot thickening agent will be destroyed
add dissolved tablet and stir well
add rest of ingredients and put kettle back on stove
heat again stirring constantly till slightly more than lukewarm
test again
remove from heat and press with hands till water comes to top
drain off water place on platter mold and press out all the water
place cheese on baking tin add salt to each side, and broil on both sides
makes small cheese.
**************************
I made it a few times over the years, but haven't made it since I lived in Tasmania. Since moving to Sweden I have managed to enjoy it a few times anyway, because at some markets there is a Finnish woman who has blocks of it for sale, where is it marketed as kaffe ost ("Coffee Cheese", which is also the literal translation of the actual Finnish name for it, kahvijuusto; it is only my family which uses the Finnish word for all cheeses, juusto, for just this type). I bought five packets of it at Midsummer and put four of them in the freezer to save for special occasions. Just before mom arrived for her visit last month I got a packet out and it was thawed and ready to enjoy when she got here (and she really appreciated that welcome!).
While we were visiting cousins in Finland the table at the formal "coffee" gathering had it in addition to lots of yummy home made baked goods, and I ate more than my fair share. After mom's week in Finland she had me pull out another package from the freezer, and we enjoyed that over her last couple of days here.
Despite thus getting the craving filled lots recently, I still wanted to make some. I recall having issues making it from normal store-bought milk, since homogenization makes it harder to get the milk fats to separate from the whey. Therefore, when I discovered that one can buy "gammaldags mjölk"(old fashioned milk; not homogenized--it is labeled with a warning advising us to "remember to shake before pouring") I resolved that the next time I actually had time I would make some again. I picked up some liquid rennet at a drug store a few weeks back and waited for the schedule to clear a little.
Today is the first day with no special adventures on the calender for over a month--we went somewhere and did something for all of the last five weekends. To celebrate I stayed home and made cheese.
Complication #1, I didn't actually look at the recipe before picking up the "gammaldags mjölk" at the grocery store, so I only bought one container, which was 2 liters of milk. Google says that the 8 qt of the recipe is about the same as 7.5 liters, so this means that I had enough to do batch slightly smaller than 1/3 size.
Google also helpfully let me know that 1/2 of a rennet tablet is about 1/2 of a teaspoon of rennet, which means that for this much cheese I should need about 1/2 of 1/3 if a teaspoon.
I set my milk on the stove and turned on the burner, then I got out some fabric suitable as a cheese cloth and measured out the other ingredients and got them ready (combining the tablespoon of cornstarch with the not much salt and even less sugar in one bowl, and adding some of the still cold milk from the pot to it to dissolve the cornstarch, and in another tiny bowl diluting the little bit of rennet with a bit of water. By that time the milk was warm, so I took it off of heat and mixed in the other ingredients, and put the pot back on the burner for a little bit.
However, I soon suspected that I had let it get too hot in the first place, as nothing seemed to be happening. So I took it back off of the heat and left it to cool for a while. While waiting I started a bread sponge (one cup flour, some yeast, and enough water to make a thick paste) and did a few useful things around the house.
When I returned to the kitchen the milk had cooled back to something that probably better reflects what Aunt Sally was thinking of when she said "lukewarm", so I got the bottle of rennet and attempted to pour a tiny bit into the spoon. It came out faster than expected, so rather than getting something less than a 1/3 of a teaspoon I actually got probably more like a 1/2 of a teaspoon. Oops, but I tossed it into the pot anyway, stirred it id, added a bit more heat, but was paranoid about the possibility of too much heat a second time, so I took it back off the heat very soon after putting it there.
Then I left the room for a bit, and when I returned the pot was full of a thick whitish mass that jiggles if you shake it. Success. Possibly too much so, given how much extra rennet it got, but at least it was something. I had previously placed a metal colander in a very large metal bowl, and then draped thin loose weave cloth over it all. I have never in my life managed to get a result that matches Aunt Sally's description of "press with hands till water comes to top", so what I did instead was carefully slide the whole white mass out of the pot and into the cloth-lined colander. It was solid enough that it landed with the same side up as had been up in the pot, yet it would be easy to break it up (the texture is actually not too different from a package of "silky tofu" that I have seen for sale in the US and Australia--will hold together, unless you stir)
As soon as it was in the cloth I gathered up the edges and fastened them together with a clip and carefully held the bag of curds up while I poured the first separated whey into the bowl with the bread sponge--I think I got perhaps 1 to 2 cups of of liquid from that pouring. At that point![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lord_kjar rigged up a string to hang the bag from the door knobs of the kitchen cabinet such that it would drip into the underlying colander and bowl while I turned the bread sponge into bread dough and set a couple of tiny flat loves into the oven to bake straight away while the rest rises.
After I ate my fresh bread (yum) I squeezed more whey out of the hanging bag, put away the dishes I had washed earlier, squeezed more whey out of the bag, did a few more useful tasks around the house, and then squeezed more whey out of the bag. Eventually I decided I had removed enough and I carefully took down the bag, set it on a cutting board, opened it up and spread the cloth flat.
I then held the cutting board at an angle over the large whey-collecting bowl and carefully pressed the pile of curds into a flat round (perhaps 1 cm thick) while more whey ran back into the bowl. The bits of curds that had been at the top of the bag as I squeezed and twisted the bag were much drier than those lower down, so I picked them up and pressed them into the moister bits, so that the whole blob was more or less the same over all texture.
Then I took a couple of cake cooling racks, stacked them together such that one has bars going north-south and the other east-west, put a sheet of baking paper on top of it, poked holes in the paper so that liquid would be able to drain out of it, then set the three of them on top of the flat pile of curds, flipped them and the cutting board over at once, set the trays, paper, and curds onto a baking pan, removed the cloth and cutting board, and set the pan in the oven under the (preheated) broiling elements (grilling if you happen to be Australian, but I still maintain that you are wrong--to grill is to cook with a hot heat from underneath, and to broil is to cook with a hot heat from above. I am told that in Sweden the word grilla refers to cooking with a hot heat from either below or above).
As it warmed up more liquid separated out, so I opened the oven and used a knife to poke more holes in the paper at the points of water collection. After one attempt at doing this without a hotpad glove on I got smart and wore the glove. Soon after doing this I noticed how much liquid had accumulated in the pan, and decided that it would be better to get rid of it before it cooked onto the pan and became hard to clean. So I took the pan out of the oven, carefully used two sets of tongs to lift off the racks/paper/cheese in progress and then poured the whey from the bottom of the pan into the bowl with the rest of the whey (which I soon poured back into the seal-able plastic bottle the milk came it, to be used in more baking and as an addition to soups etc.) and then returned the cheese to the oven.
As soon as it got hot enough to start getting a few scattered brown spots on the upside I took it back out of the oven, set a fresh piece of baking paper on it, added another wire rack above that, flipped over the combined set of wire racks-paper-cheese-paper-rack, removed the now top layers of racks and paper, and put the bottom rack, paper, and cheese back into the oven.
It didn't take much longer for it to cook the second side--when it has a decent scattering of little brown spots on it, it is done. I transferred the cheese to a plate and set the plate in the fridge to cool while I made a quick pot of soup for dinner.
After dinner I enjoyed some really yummy cheese for desert. Yes, it squeaks exactly as it should, and tastes even better than the stuff I bought at the market. Yum!
If any of you decide to try Aunt Sally's recipe please let me know how it goes for you (and if it is convenient to let me taste it, I would love to do so).
When I got older one of my cousins got me a copy of the recipe, as made my my mother's Aunt Sally.
*************************
Juusto recipe from Aunt Sally
8 qt. rich whole milk
½ rennet tablet, soak in ½ t water
3 t cornstarch
2 t salt
1 t sugar
warm milk to lukewarm
remove from heat
test on inside of wrist
if too hot thickening agent will be destroyed
add dissolved tablet and stir well
add rest of ingredients and put kettle back on stove
heat again stirring constantly till slightly more than lukewarm
test again
remove from heat and press with hands till water comes to top
drain off water place on platter mold and press out all the water
place cheese on baking tin add salt to each side, and broil on both sides
makes small cheese.
**************************
I made it a few times over the years, but haven't made it since I lived in Tasmania. Since moving to Sweden I have managed to enjoy it a few times anyway, because at some markets there is a Finnish woman who has blocks of it for sale, where is it marketed as kaffe ost ("Coffee Cheese", which is also the literal translation of the actual Finnish name for it, kahvijuusto; it is only my family which uses the Finnish word for all cheeses, juusto, for just this type). I bought five packets of it at Midsummer and put four of them in the freezer to save for special occasions. Just before mom arrived for her visit last month I got a packet out and it was thawed and ready to enjoy when she got here (and she really appreciated that welcome!).
While we were visiting cousins in Finland the table at the formal "coffee" gathering had it in addition to lots of yummy home made baked goods, and I ate more than my fair share. After mom's week in Finland she had me pull out another package from the freezer, and we enjoyed that over her last couple of days here.
Despite thus getting the craving filled lots recently, I still wanted to make some. I recall having issues making it from normal store-bought milk, since homogenization makes it harder to get the milk fats to separate from the whey. Therefore, when I discovered that one can buy "gammaldags mjölk"(old fashioned milk; not homogenized--it is labeled with a warning advising us to "remember to shake before pouring") I resolved that the next time I actually had time I would make some again. I picked up some liquid rennet at a drug store a few weeks back and waited for the schedule to clear a little.
Today is the first day with no special adventures on the calender for over a month--we went somewhere and did something for all of the last five weekends. To celebrate I stayed home and made cheese.
Complication #1, I didn't actually look at the recipe before picking up the "gammaldags mjölk" at the grocery store, so I only bought one container, which was 2 liters of milk. Google says that the 8 qt of the recipe is about the same as 7.5 liters, so this means that I had enough to do batch slightly smaller than 1/3 size.
Google also helpfully let me know that 1/2 of a rennet tablet is about 1/2 of a teaspoon of rennet, which means that for this much cheese I should need about 1/2 of 1/3 if a teaspoon.
I set my milk on the stove and turned on the burner, then I got out some fabric suitable as a cheese cloth and measured out the other ingredients and got them ready (combining the tablespoon of cornstarch with the not much salt and even less sugar in one bowl, and adding some of the still cold milk from the pot to it to dissolve the cornstarch, and in another tiny bowl diluting the little bit of rennet with a bit of water. By that time the milk was warm, so I took it off of heat and mixed in the other ingredients, and put the pot back on the burner for a little bit.
However, I soon suspected that I had let it get too hot in the first place, as nothing seemed to be happening. So I took it back off of the heat and left it to cool for a while. While waiting I started a bread sponge (one cup flour, some yeast, and enough water to make a thick paste) and did a few useful things around the house.
When I returned to the kitchen the milk had cooled back to something that probably better reflects what Aunt Sally was thinking of when she said "lukewarm", so I got the bottle of rennet and attempted to pour a tiny bit into the spoon. It came out faster than expected, so rather than getting something less than a 1/3 of a teaspoon I actually got probably more like a 1/2 of a teaspoon. Oops, but I tossed it into the pot anyway, stirred it id, added a bit more heat, but was paranoid about the possibility of too much heat a second time, so I took it back off the heat very soon after putting it there.
Then I left the room for a bit, and when I returned the pot was full of a thick whitish mass that jiggles if you shake it. Success. Possibly too much so, given how much extra rennet it got, but at least it was something. I had previously placed a metal colander in a very large metal bowl, and then draped thin loose weave cloth over it all. I have never in my life managed to get a result that matches Aunt Sally's description of "press with hands till water comes to top", so what I did instead was carefully slide the whole white mass out of the pot and into the cloth-lined colander. It was solid enough that it landed with the same side up as had been up in the pot, yet it would be easy to break it up (the texture is actually not too different from a package of "silky tofu" that I have seen for sale in the US and Australia--will hold together, unless you stir)
As soon as it was in the cloth I gathered up the edges and fastened them together with a clip and carefully held the bag of curds up while I poured the first separated whey into the bowl with the bread sponge--I think I got perhaps 1 to 2 cups of of liquid from that pouring. At that point
lord_kjar rigged up a string to hang the bag from the door knobs of the kitchen cabinet such that it would drip into the underlying colander and bowl while I turned the bread sponge into bread dough and set a couple of tiny flat loves into the oven to bake straight away while the rest rises.After I ate my fresh bread (yum) I squeezed more whey out of the hanging bag, put away the dishes I had washed earlier, squeezed more whey out of the bag, did a few more useful tasks around the house, and then squeezed more whey out of the bag. Eventually I decided I had removed enough and I carefully took down the bag, set it on a cutting board, opened it up and spread the cloth flat.
I then held the cutting board at an angle over the large whey-collecting bowl and carefully pressed the pile of curds into a flat round (perhaps 1 cm thick) while more whey ran back into the bowl. The bits of curds that had been at the top of the bag as I squeezed and twisted the bag were much drier than those lower down, so I picked them up and pressed them into the moister bits, so that the whole blob was more or less the same over all texture.
Then I took a couple of cake cooling racks, stacked them together such that one has bars going north-south and the other east-west, put a sheet of baking paper on top of it, poked holes in the paper so that liquid would be able to drain out of it, then set the three of them on top of the flat pile of curds, flipped them and the cutting board over at once, set the trays, paper, and curds onto a baking pan, removed the cloth and cutting board, and set the pan in the oven under the (preheated) broiling elements (grilling if you happen to be Australian, but I still maintain that you are wrong--to grill is to cook with a hot heat from underneath, and to broil is to cook with a hot heat from above. I am told that in Sweden the word grilla refers to cooking with a hot heat from either below or above).
As it warmed up more liquid separated out, so I opened the oven and used a knife to poke more holes in the paper at the points of water collection. After one attempt at doing this without a hotpad glove on I got smart and wore the glove. Soon after doing this I noticed how much liquid had accumulated in the pan, and decided that it would be better to get rid of it before it cooked onto the pan and became hard to clean. So I took the pan out of the oven, carefully used two sets of tongs to lift off the racks/paper/cheese in progress and then poured the whey from the bottom of the pan into the bowl with the rest of the whey (which I soon poured back into the seal-able plastic bottle the milk came it, to be used in more baking and as an addition to soups etc.) and then returned the cheese to the oven.
As soon as it got hot enough to start getting a few scattered brown spots on the upside I took it back out of the oven, set a fresh piece of baking paper on it, added another wire rack above that, flipped over the combined set of wire racks-paper-cheese-paper-rack, removed the now top layers of racks and paper, and put the bottom rack, paper, and cheese back into the oven.
It didn't take much longer for it to cook the second side--when it has a decent scattering of little brown spots on it, it is done. I transferred the cheese to a plate and set the plate in the fridge to cool while I made a quick pot of soup for dinner.
After dinner I enjoyed some really yummy cheese for desert. Yes, it squeaks exactly as it should, and tastes even better than the stuff I bought at the market. Yum!
If any of you decide to try Aunt Sally's recipe please let me know how it goes for you (and if it is convenient to let me taste it, I would love to do so).
