Tuesday, February 01, 2005

TV Cooking Tips #2: homemade cottage cheese

I found this recipe for Broccoli and Cornmeal Upside-down Cake on Nicole’s website The Baking Sheet (actually it came from Chocolate and Zuccini originally), and wanted to give it a try. I had everything except for the cottage cheese, and what do you know? Peacock chose today to run out of it. I was sure Kinokuniya would have it, but didn’t feel like walking the extra 500m there, plus I had always wanted to try out what Sanbei did on one of the episodes of “10,000yen for a month” 一万円生活: turning milk into cottage cheese by adding vinegar into boiling milk.

Since I didn’t take notes when I watched the show, the only thing I could remember was 400ml of milk. So I poured 400ml of milk into a small saucepan and brought it to a gentle boil. Then, with blind faith, I added one tablespoonful of rice vinegar, and waited.

Nothing seemed to be happening, so I added another, and instantly the milk started to curdle and I had white bits floating up and down in the boiling liquid, now clear. After draining and rinsing with water really well, I had ---- homemade cottage cheese!


400ml of low fat milk plus 2 tbsp of vinegar yielded 1/3 cup of cottage cheese.

Oh yeah, the upside-down cake was not bad either.


Served with pork chop with bluecheese gravy

7 comments:

Unknown said...

It tasted just like cottage cheese. I used lowfat milk, so I expect full fat milk would make even better cheese? I also think it's a great idea if you only need a little bit of it. Supermarkets sell it in such a big tub that I am forced to eat it for days on end after I used what I needed for cooking.

Not sure how Anna liked the broccoli cake, but Jason wasn't too crazy about it. Then again, he only likes broccoli cooked one way: stir-fried.

Unknown said...

Sorry, forgot to address your vinegar question. I don't think Sanbei mentioned what kind of vinegar, so I assumed it's the most common Japanese vinegar. I guess any white vinegar will do.

Jessica "Su Good Sweets" said...

Wow, what a great idea! I'll have to try this. Definitely more economical than buying a whole tub of cheese and figuring out what to do with it.

Nic said...

I'm glad that the cake worked out for you - I can't believe you made the cottage cheese yourself. Cheese making (actually yogurt making, too) seems so incredible. I'm definately going to try it myself.

bilbo said...

thought i'll share this with you. Essentially, anything that will lower the pH of the milk will do. So vinegar, lime juice , yogurt, use what you have available . And if you tie up the curdled milk in cheesecloth and hang it for a couple of hrs. the cheese will get firm and you will have in ur hands a batch of authentic indian cottage cheese. we call it paneer :P
You could use it to make some indian dishes.
Have fun.

Unknown said...

Only use skim milk. The fat in whole milk will NOT end up in the curds, it will go out with the whey.

GyanAnand Baba said...

that last bit Bob said about using skim milk is the real master chef tip. thanks. Logically too its right, cause its the protein we need to flocculate. But wisdom goes out the window. No?
WRITE THIS DOWN. NOW!
- szar