rennet trouble
Dec. 23rd, 2004 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frualeydisEverything has proceeded fairly smoothly in this year's christmas preparations. It's really wonderful for my stress level not to work the weeks before christmas, work outside home I mean, work i do more than enough. Or rather had proceeded rather smoothly until tonight. In Sweden we celebrate christmas on christmas eve so today is the day before christmas, the so-called "stay-up-evening", probably called so due to the fact that you cook and clean until late (at least if you're a woman) and then when you're finally finished you sit down and have some newly cooked ham and relax.
Well, the ham was finished around seven-eight and there's never any trouble with that, but then I was going to make cheesecake. Swedish cheesecake is nothing like american cheesecake, it's made from cheese-mass, much like cottage cheese, thick cream, eggs, sugar and ground almonds mixed together baked in an oven for an hour and served warm with whipped cream and strawberry jam. This is the first time I've tried making cheesecake, you really don't have to because you can buy it in any food store. But I like making things the old fashioned way. So my husband went to the pharmacy two days ago and bought rennet. Rennet, for those who don't know, is an enzyme extracted from calves' stomachs and is what makes milk curdle so you can make cheese. But either the rennet was spoilt because we missed that it should be stored in the refrigerator or the milk was to warm when we added the rennet because it just wouldn't curdle, nothing happened.
Shit, I thought, that was it and here I stand with 4 decilitres of full cream mixed together with eggs and sugar already and all that almond ground. Then I got the idea that I could heat the milk again and see if I could make it curdle by adding lemon juice, like I do when I make paneer, Indian cheese. And to my great happiness it worked. But since I had used 4 litres of milk I had to add an awful lot of lemon. I actually ran out of lemon before the whey turned green which it should so possibly I got too little cheese out of it, if the milk wasn't curdled and separated wholly. The cake should be finished just after midnight so then we will know.
So now we're waiting and drinking tea and listening to Händel on the radio and Maja is playing with her play phone.
Well, the ham was finished around seven-eight and there's never any trouble with that, but then I was going to make cheesecake. Swedish cheesecake is nothing like american cheesecake, it's made from cheese-mass, much like cottage cheese, thick cream, eggs, sugar and ground almonds mixed together baked in an oven for an hour and served warm with whipped cream and strawberry jam. This is the first time I've tried making cheesecake, you really don't have to because you can buy it in any food store. But I like making things the old fashioned way. So my husband went to the pharmacy two days ago and bought rennet. Rennet, for those who don't know, is an enzyme extracted from calves' stomachs and is what makes milk curdle so you can make cheese. But either the rennet was spoilt because we missed that it should be stored in the refrigerator or the milk was to warm when we added the rennet because it just wouldn't curdle, nothing happened.
Shit, I thought, that was it and here I stand with 4 decilitres of full cream mixed together with eggs and sugar already and all that almond ground. Then I got the idea that I could heat the milk again and see if I could make it curdle by adding lemon juice, like I do when I make paneer, Indian cheese. And to my great happiness it worked. But since I had used 4 litres of milk I had to add an awful lot of lemon. I actually ran out of lemon before the whey turned green which it should so possibly I got too little cheese out of it, if the milk wasn't curdled and separated wholly. The cake should be finished just after midnight so then we will know.
So now we're waiting and drinking tea and listening to Händel on the radio and Maja is playing with her play phone.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-23 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-24 01:30 am (UTC)Now I'm going to start on a something that is special for my province. Or rather; it's very common food, but to eat it on christmas is typical for Västergötland, the province I'm from (and where we live). It's brown beans (looks a lot like kidney beans but light brown) cooked and seasoned with syrup and vinegar.
Eva