Adventures in Cheese Making

Really this post should be titled “cheese” making, because I don’t think Moosewood’s recipe for “Yogurt Cheese” qualifies as real cheese. But it’s still exciting to consider myself a cheesemaker! I was kind of hoping that there would be a cool name for a person who makes cheese (like how a person who makes shoes is a cobbler or a person who makes barrels is a cooper), but according to Wikipedia you’re just called a cheesemaker.

It's a highly refined process. 

            But anyway, “Yogurt Cheese” is basically a cream cheese like substance made by straining yogurt to get rid of the excess moisture. You wrap up a pile of plain yogurt in cheesecloth (whole other adventure to even find cheesecloth) and set it in a colander in the sink with something heavy on top and just let the moisture press out of it for several hours. I left mine draining overnight. Then you just refrigerate until you’re ready to serve. Moosewood has several sandwich ideas (some with the yogurt cheese and some without) so I chose to have that for my lunch today. I spread the yogurt cheese on some whole wheat bread and topped it with a bit of olive oil and oregano and then some freshly sliced cucumbers. It was really good actually!

            It’s kind of hard to describe the flavor of the yogurt cheese. I feel more comfortable explaining what it doesn’t taste like, which is unfortunately cheese. It’s not bad, but it’s not really anything else. You can kind of trick yourself into thinking that you’re eating cream cheese. But really it feels more like filler than anything else. Moosewood has more suggestions on herbs to pair it with in the sandwich, but oregano was the only one I had on hand this morning. More herbs would probably make the sandwich more interesting or maybe mixing it with olive oil instead of just drizzling some on top.

            I have some yogurt cheese leftover as well as most of the container of yogurt in case I want to make more, so I’ll try a couple other options to see if I can create something less blah. You should probably spread the cheese a bit thicker than I did as well. It’s not quite the same consistency as cream cheese and doesn’t spread easily so I didn’t quite get as much on the sandwich as I anticipated. But this was a yummy and filling lunch that I would definitely make again! 13 recipes in 17 days! 228 in 348 to go!