Cooking With Hanzipan

So. I spotted this 1/2 gallon of homogenized whole milk at Twelve Mile the other day and thought “Ah hah!” and immediately started dreaming of homemade ice cream and butter. It wasn’t until after I got it home that I realized ice cream and butter want heavy cream + whole milk. Darn. The milk was threatening to expire while I spotted this cheese recipe on Little House in the Suburbs (which is a great little blog to peruse through). It sounded good, easy and it was guaranteed to take this expired milk off of my hands and out of the fridge.

The cheese turned out…. well…. it’s cheese. I added salt and some agave to it to give it some sweetness. Dad described it as those little crumbles in cottage cheese without any of the liquid. That’s pretty accurate. I think that it even takes away some of the moisture in your mouth when you eat it it’s that dry. Oh well… live and learn, right? It was totally worth it for the experience.

After I added the vinegar and it was a-curddalin’. The dry cheese ball now resting peacefully in the fridge. I wonder if it would be good melted?

1/2 Gallon Whole Milk (Goat or Cow)
1/4 cup white vinegar or 1/4 cup Lemon juice
Salt to taste

1. Put milk into stainless steel pot and heat over medium until between 190 and 200 degrees.

2. Slowly stir in vinegar or lemon. Remove from heat and allow to curdle and cool until it’s not too hot to touch.

3. Pour cheese into cloth lined bowl. Pull together the 4 corners of cloth and twist around a spoon. Hang dripping cheese for a few hours.

4. Salt to taste and check consistency. I like a fairly hard cheese, so I hang it in the fridge overnight. That’s about the max.

5. Untie, (add any garlic or herbs or more salt, if you like) place in airtight container, and chill. Depending on how long you hung it, it should be about 12-16 oz of cheese.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

I’m glad I only did a small handful! Any more and they would have turned into the Hulk and busted their way out of the jar.

Bob’s Red Mill. Check it out if you don’t know about this company. I love their 5 and 10 grain blends so when I spotted their Baking Book on sale at Powell’s this weekend I snapped it up. It’s two whole pounds of healthy, grain-based recipes. I don’t have many of their fancy flours (chickpea, soy, amaranth flour, etc.) but I do have whole wheat, unbleached all purpose and some almond meal I dug up from the depths of the pantry.

It was moderately difficult to find a recipe that just called for these goodies and didn’t throw in a fancy curve ball at the end like malted barley flour. One of these days I’ll get my hands on all of these, one at a time and experiment, but not today.

Finally I found a cracker recipe that seemed fairly simple in both the baking process and the ingredients list. These turned out to be something along the lines of really really flat biscuits (which is also exactly what they look like). I have a feeling that homemade crackers will tend to be more on the chewy side than I like, and this was one of them. Even though about 1/3 the dry ingredients was almond meal they don’t taste like it, just whole wheaty. So, if you’re looking for a chewy cracker with a whole wheaty taste… this is it! They taste great with some cream cheese, jam or hummus on top and they’re really good warm from the oven.

Almond Flatbread Crackers

from Bob’s Red Mill

1/3 c. almond meal
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda
2 T. softened, unsalted butter
1/3 c. plain yogurt or sour cream

Preheat to 400. Mix together dry ingredients in a medium/large bowl. Mix together butter and yogurt/sour cream and then combine with dry ingredients. Knead dough for about 30 seconds and then seperate into 2 pieces. Roll each piece until very thin. Cut into squares or any shape you want (about 2 inches in size). Bake crackers on an ungreased baking sheet for 6 minutes, or until just beginning to brown. Cool on wire rack.