My new job is mostly why I have reawakened the creative bug. For a long time I worked in the food service industry and then I moved to the corporate world. Restaurants and coffee shops were so stressful and a source of constant dissatisfaction for me. Then the corporate world...well, if you've ever worked in a high-rise in an office for a top executive, you know. It's great at first because everything's so professional and clean and perfect, but it gets old. Trust me.
Anyway, rambling about my past professions doesn't get to why I am creating this blog. I want to be creative! I want to teach myself and learn better cooking techniques and discover new foods. So, here I go.
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My first cooking adventure of the summer (back in July) was homemade mozzarella cheese. I have always wanted to try it, and when I stumbled upon an article on the internet about how easy it really is to make, I just had to try. It was mostly a success. I never did figure out how to get the salt to actually stay in the cheese because the whey just kept washing it away, and the cheese was very squeaky like curds you would buy in a dairy. But all-in-all it was a great success and a fun project.
I started out with the three things you need to make mozzarella: vegetable rennet (vegetarian enzyme that causes the milk to curdle), citric acid, and raw milk. I found the raw milk at Whole Foods and the only store that carried the rennet was out so I ended up ordering it from the New England Cheese Making Supply Company--it was inexpensive.
The first step was to slowly bring the milk to a temperature of 95 degrees. Warm, but not hot. Then I had to dissolve the rennet (only 1/4 of a tablet for a gallon of milk) and wait until the milk was perfectly still. Once it had sat for 3 or 4 minutes, I can't remember exactly how long, the next step was to cut the curds.
I just cut it into one-inch cubes so it would be easy to spoon out of the pot. It was not hot enough to burn my hands, but just hot enough to be really uncomfortable. Anyway, the next step was to separate the curds from the whey.
This involved simply kneading the curds like bread--or however I could knead them. Then draining the whey into the sink, nuking the curds in the microwave for 2 minutes, and continuing to knead and drain until it began to form into a ball of cheese. I burned my fingers a little bit but I survived. :) It was crazy because the cheese ball would look like it was all curds and then after 2 minutes of sitting there all of a sudden all this whey would appear all around it! It never stopped. Haha. I guess that's why when you buy fresh mozzarella in the grocery store it usually has extra liquid around it.
And here is the end result! My mozzarella ball was a little rough looking because it was my first time, but it tasted just fine! A little bland because of my salting problem, and a little squeaky on the teeth, but all in all a success. I had so much fun trying something new and am thinking I'd like to try feta or goat cheese sometime.
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That was my first cooking adventure of the summer, and it won't be my last (though technically summer's almost over...it lasts until about October here in LA) :D
I will blog late about why I'm a vegetarian, so that all my readers (if I have any) can understand and better enjoy my vegetarian cooking posts. I am very excited because tonight is Provencal Stuffed Bell Peppers and Minestrone Soup with Pesto--straight out of my brand-new veg. cookbook. Stay tuned!
