Home cook tries her hand at cheese

I don't know about you, but the recession has done nothing to curb my appetite for fancy cheese, just my ability to buy it. So I set out to make the stuff at home.

That explains why I soon found myself pouring curdled milk into an old pillowcase; dialing up the cheese-making equivalent of the Butterball Turkey hot line; and, eventually, eating some very good and some not-so-good cheese.

"You make a lot of bad cheese before you make good cheese," said Kate Dallam, owner of Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, Md.

I started with ricotta and saw that the recipe called for the cheese to drain in "butter muslin," a type of cheesecloth with a tighter-than-usual weave. The guy who sold me milk at the farmers market suggested using an old pillowcase instead. It worked fine, though it did take the cheese a little longer to drain.

I made several batches of ricotta, which involved heating a mixture of milk and buttermilk to 180 degrees, letting it sit and curdle, and then draining the curds from the whey. It was sweet and creamy, though not much cheaper than store bought. (Hand-dipped ricotta sells for $5.99 a pound; it cost $4 to make about 1 pound at home.)

I moved on to fresh mozzarella - and disaster. Followed by bigger disaster. Followed by cheese.

Delusions of cheese-making grandeur led me to seek out buffalo milk. But a local bison farmer told me the ornery animals raised for meat won't consent to milking. (In Italy, the more docile water buffalo provides the milk.)

Content with cow's milk, I went ahead with the recipe and managed to make what looked like a solid, spaghetti-pot-sized mass of tofu. That was mozzarella curd, and The Home Creamery instructed me to slice it up, heat it to release the whey, drain it, pour hot salted water on top and start stretching the curds like taffy. I was OK until I got to the hot water part. Instead of forming a shiny, stretchy mass, my curds crumbled.

What went wrong? I reached author Farrell-Kingsley by phone. Mozzarella is tricky, she said: "It's not difficult. But there are a lot of variables. I tell people, 'Don't give up, because when it does work, it's great."

Two things might have done in my first batch, Farrell-Kingsley speculated. First, she said, there's a typo in her recipe. The salted water is supposed to be 180 degrees. The book says 108 degrees.

I said I'd used "double-strength" rennet, an enzyme that causes milk to coagulate. Following directions on the label, I'd used half the amount called for in the recipe. Could that have been the problem? Maybe, she said. She suggested not cutting back next time.

My second batch: even worse. Instead of a solid, tofulike mass, the milk formed a spongy Frisbee in a pot of whey, presumably because of the extra rennet.

The third time wasn't quite a charm, but it was cheese.

I went back to halving the rennet. And, having consulted several recipes online, I cut the curd up more thoroughly to release more whey. Afterward, I had less trouble getting the curds to stretch, perhaps because the water was hotter.

The mass still wasn't perfectly smooth after 10 minutes of stretching, so I popped it in the microwave. The curds came out of the microwave hot, shiny and kneadable. I formed the blob into a ball, let it cool, then had a taste.

It was mozzarella, all right. Chewy, supermarket-y mozzarella. It was better later, melted on pizza, but not much better.

I'd make the ricotta again, and put the savings toward fresh mozzarella from the store. Whatever the store is charging, it's a steal.

Makes 3 to 4 cups, depending on how much is drained

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1 gallon whole non-homogenized milk

4 cups (1 quart) cultured whole-milk buttermilk

Salt

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1. Combine the milk and buttermilk in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and slowly heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reaches 180 degrees. Remove the pot from heat and let sit for 30 minutes to allow the curds to form. Do not stir or the ricotta will have a grainy, thin texture.

2. Line a colander with a double layer of butter muslin. Carefully pour or ladle the curds into the colander and let drain for an hour or two, depending on how dry you want your ricotta.

3. When the ricotta has drained, transfer it to a bowl and break up the curds by stirring. Add salt to taste.

4. Use right away or store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Note: Non-homogenized milk is available at health-food stores and at some farmers' markets, sometimes labeled as "cream top." It is not unpasteurized, "raw" milk, which can't be sold in many states. Non-homogenized means that the fat has not been blasted into tiny particles that stay evenly distributed in the milk. The blasted fat doesn't behave properly when the milk is turned into cheese.

Per serving (based on 12 quarter-cup servings): 112 calories, 7 grams protein, 3 grams carbohydrates, trace grams sugar, 8 grams fat, 31 milligrams cholesterol, 76 milligrams sodium, no dietary fiber.

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