Friday 3 January 2014

Queso Blanco!

by Oscar 


Today I made some cheese.

Ingredients 

4 pints of full fat milk
3/4 teaspoon citric acid 
3/4 teaspoon salt

1 muslin
1 thermometer
colander
big pot
spoons

First of all I made the citric acid solution with 25ml of boiled water. Then I heated all of the milk and stirred it so it didn't burn. I clipped the thermometer onto the pan and waited until it got to 185 F. Then I added the citric acid solution and stirred it until the curds and whey separated. The acid makes the protein tangle up to make the curds and the whey was the watery stuff left behind. I  I poured the mixture into a muslin cloth over a colander. I squeezed the bag of curds to get of the liquid out. I then hung it over the kitchen tap to make sure all the liquid dripped out. 



After an hour it was ready to eat. BUT we needed crackers! 

While we waited I made some savory crackers.

Ingredients 
100g butter
1 egg
100g self raising flour
grated cheese

I used mums electric mixer to mix the egg and butter. I love using this machine it's fun. Then I added the flour and mixed it. I grated then added some cheese and made little balls of mixture. I baked them for 15 minutes. Mum made me use half of the mixture for mine and she added chopped sun dried tomatoes to her mixture.Mum's was really wet though and we weren't sure it was going to work.


TASTING! 

Our queso blanco was really plain. It did not taste of anything at all. Next time I will add some herbs maybe rosemary.  

The biscuits were really cheesy and delicious. I ate three straight from the oven. Next time I would push the shapes flatter as they were more like lumps than biscuits.