Little Miss Muffet 1901
Hey – where are the curds and whey?
If this looks suspiciously like cottage cheese – well, that’s half the story. Cottage cheese is the curds drained of the whey, with a little milk mixed in to keep it sweet.
Once upon a time, in my ‘I’m probably gonna be a hippy when I grow up’ days, I got a hot off the presses book club edition of:
and I baked the breads, and I tried the yogurts (failures, every one – and every other ones I ever tried), I also searched up and down and all around for rennet tablets so I could make some cheeses.The only rennet tablets I could find were these:
Junket Rennet Custard – so good!
But Junket Rennet Custard is not going to make cheese, although it is so, so good to eat.
If I’d only known ….well, sooooo many things. The health food didn’t didn’t yet carry rennet, but the hardware and farm supply store probably still did, back in those days.
And then I went to work in the seventeenth century, so to speak.
We used herbs to make cheese
Maidshair or Ladies Bedstraw can act as a rennet
There are lots of curds and whey in the past.
Amid the sausages and the dead chickens and the veal head and tripe and assorted other offal – a bowl of curds! Whey is never far behind
And then I learned about Ricki Carrol, or the Cheese Queen
and since then I’ve made ricotta (milk with buttermilk – fast and easy) :how to make ricotta
and I’ve made soft curds with lemon juice…because you don’t always have rennet in the house : how to make soft curds with lemon juice
And I got some floursack towels to use instead of cheesecloth... because you can bleach and re-use these over and over again
And now a dairy meditative moment: dripping whey
Curds and Whey would be a great name for a rock band….
Lots of clicking – Links galore!
