Halloumi - the real story

I think it's time I tell the real story of how the halloumi in my last blog post was made.

Step one - I woke up about half an hour later than usual, on my day off, planning to make cheese. "Should take about three hours start to finish". Did morning barn chores and made sure I had all the ingredients.

Made the kid breakfast. Started to make a cup of coffee. Good thing I didn't get far.

Phone alarm - oh, yeah, fasting blood test day. Starting with a cholesterol test seems like a bad omen for cheese making but what the heck. I hurry off to the lab.

Severe caffeine withdrawal. Fasting blood tests always do this to me. One hour coffee break.




Phone alarm goes off - oh, yeah, I was going to help recharter the scout pack today. Two hour meeting. Meet three great dogs, a parrot and the fabulous woman who cares for them and who wants to do a lot of paperwork to help scouts! Bless her heart. Rechartering is well in hand.

I return home and eat the last of the homemade crusty bread. You are not supposed to start bread and make cheese on the same day but I sometimes do anyway. This is a day when I do. The kitchen is warm, and I open the back door.

Meggie, the goat, who is normally very calm, is all of a sudden very loud. I go back to check. She's in heat! She's looking around for a male goat, and freaking out because there aren't any. She is so needy. Lightning is not in heat, but she's needy too.

Meggie and Lightening hoping for some attention

I tear myself away from the needy goats and go inside. Start to warm up milk. It is now 11:30. Check facebook. Oh, everyone is all worked up about some election thing. Get involved. Milk is over-warm. Add a little cool milk and hope that's an OK strategy.

Add calcium chloride and rennet. Eat lunch while the cheese sets. Cut curd right after lunch. Stir. Phone call from work. There are just one or two things I have to do today - they just won't wait till two days from now when I'm back in the office.

Meggie won't stop crying. I go out and check on her. She's fine.


Oh, my the ducks are cute.


Pikachu, the new drake, is such a sweety.

Their water is filthy. Gross. I throw it out and clean all the bowls. Actually, every one's food dish is overdue for a scrub. I gather them all and bring them inside.


The curds have sat at least fifteen minutes too long. I hope this is OK. It's actually going to be closer to thirty minutes too long because I need to clean up after being out in the duck mess.

It is close to two. The kid gets home from school; Fridays are early release day. He is making a costume for Halloween. He says he won't need any help.

I put the curds in a bag to press. Get a weight and - the phone rings, and the name that flashes up is my uncle. He never calls. OMG, maybe someone died!!! No - it's a planning call for a family event. In the long gaps between phone calls, I always forget what a kind gentleman my uncle is. So considerate and mannered. Always fun to chat with. Meanwhile, the curd is sitting there. This is probably not a problem.

Actually, my kid does need help with his costume. He accidentally glued the wrong side of everything. We become a gluey mess. Luckily, I know how to get glue off my hands. You rub them in dirt and it peels right off. Then of course you wash.

I return and put weight on the curd. I decide (randomly) to season all my cast iron, since I happen to be in the kitchen anyway. Heat up all my iron pans. The weight falls off the cheese, about half the whey is spilled on the counter and floor.

Kid needs help with his costume. This time he wants to paint the body and needs help turning the basement into a painting studio.

I clean up the floor. Take out iron pan to oil. Burn hand. I shape the bread loaves, since the oven's already hot.

It is now five o'clock. I check the recipe. I had somehow thought the cheese took a total of 45 minutes press time. Wrong. 6 hours. I realize I will be up till midnight at best.

There is a Halloween party at the school in one hour. The costume is not ready. Briefly we debate whether it can be painted and dry - which is patently ridiculous, but in light of my inability to self-schedule, I am cutting my kid a lot of slack in his own plan-making. We mutually decide not to paint it. It is too late to bake the bread. I turn off the oven and we run out the door.

I preemptively decide the cheese can press for two hours before the event and four hours after we come home, instead of three and three.

It's a great party. I was signed up to run the bouncy house from 6:15 to 7:30 but when I got there, they switched me to 7:30 - 8:30. I lose my voice. We have fun. A guy who lives in the neighborhood has his driveway blocked in by an inconsiderate parent. While we wait for them to move their car, we chat and i get to know another member of my community. A plane flies low over the dark, misty parking lot as we head home. It's later than I expected.

I need to learn how to take nigh time pictures! This was pretty cool in real life.

We come home and I flip cheese, replace weight and go take care of the animals. Eat dinner. It is now a bit after ten. Put kid to bed. Reshape the forgotten bread dough and heat the oven. Sometimes bread is OK when you do this. Ask me how I know.


I can't decide whether to nap or stay up while the cheese poaches for an hour and then cools for 45 minutes before being brined. But if I nap, I will forget to take the bread out and that will definitely ruin it.

I decide to stay up and write blog where I totally fake this ideal cheese making experience. It isn't totally fake because I have made halloumi before and had it go as smoothly as all that. Seriously, there have been times. But today was not one of them. And as I was writing, David said something about a very famous athlete who lied about steroid use, and I heard myself say "Well, there had to be a moment when he knew he had used steroids, and he knew he was lying. And that's wrong".

Then I knew I had to sit down and write a retraction of the "oh, I'm such a perfect urban farmer, here's this epic cheese making day I just had in my perfectly coordinated home" story. I did have a great day, and in a very fragmented way, I accomplished quite a bit. But it was not idyllic, it was real. And, to spare you any undue distress, let me add that the halloumi actually turned out great. That is the real reason it's my favorite cheese. It is very forgiving. It seems to know about days that get out of hand.

Shared on : cheesepalooza, Simple Lives Thursday

Halloumi

As promised, a follow up to making stuffed grape leaves, is making halloumi cheese.

Halloumi is a specialty of hot weather climates. It is relatively quick to make, and spectacular to eat. Making it requires few specialty items, and it stores well. It is mild, salty, squeaky and most notably, it fries in a pan, creating a crispy gold crust and a soft, slightly melty interior that doesn't ooze out into a gooey mess.

2 day's worth of milk

I made this cheese as part of the Cheesepalooza challenge, using the recipe from Mary Karlin's Artisan Cheese Making at Home. I modified it slightly by not using a mold, because so many friends have asked for a cheese they can make without buying any new equipment. I don't give her verbatim recipe, but rather walk you through the steps as I took them.

You will need three slightly unusual items - rennet, calcium chloride, and cheesecloth or a strainer bag - for this recipe. The first two can be purchased at home beer making shops or online at cheese making sites. Or if you are nearby, I'll give you some rennet to play with. I want more cheese makers!

Cheesecloth is available at grocery stores, usually in the kitchen utensils area. I used a mesh bag designed for produce, available at many grocery stores. Note on salt - use uniodized or it will turn weird colors.

Milk, rennet, and water to dilute

My  Halloumi recipe instructs to mold the cheese in a special press, but I used a bag instead. The shape was less perfect, but I want to make a cheese you can set out and do with minimal equipment, right now.

You really should use a dairy thermometer, too. But I include general temperatures in case you don't have one. After successfully making this cheese, treat yourself to a thermometer so you can try more challenging recipes.

Recipe:

1 gallons milk
1/2 t calcium chloride (optional)
1/2 t liquid rennet
1/2 c cool, filtered or aged water, divided (you can leave tap water out overnight and use that)


Scrub your hands and all the equipment.

Heat the milk to 30C/86F. I do this by putting glass jars of milk in a sink full of warm water. When it is nearly warm enough, I pour it into a large, stainless pot, which I keep in the water bath. If you don't have a thermometer, place a drop of the milk on your wrist. It should feel neither warm nor cold, but perhaps slightly cool. Cow's milk would be heated to 90 F, but goat's milk requires slightly lower temperatures.


Add the calcium chloride mixed into 1/4 cup of the water, and mix for 1 minute

Add the rennet to the water and swirl to mix. Then begin stirring the milk, and as you stir, add the rennet mixture. Stir as above -  1 minute, then stop. Cover the pot and leave it.

In 30 minutes, check your milk. It should have turned to curd - shiny, firm solids that, when you put a knife into them, break apart with clearish whey rising up. If it is still somewhat liquid, check again every 10 minutes until it gives a "clean break" as above. My whey is never the clear yellow color of cow's milk whey.


With a long knife or metal spatula, pointed straight down into the curd, cut the curd all the way through to the bottom, into a series of long strips 3/4" wide. Then rotate the pot and cut the strips into squares. Then angle the knife at 45 degrees and slide it through the squares, cutting all of them one layer at a time into diamonds. Rotate the pot 1/4 and do it again, repeating 3 times until you have cut all the curd in the pot.

Cutting curd into cubes with a long serrated knife

Wait 5 minutes. Then gently start heating the curds. Stir them gently, always lifting the ones at the bottom so they are evenly exposed to the heat. Stir and change the cooling water for hot, as the temperature gradually goes up to 104F/39C. This will feel warm on your wrist, but still not hot.

The curd pieces will shrink as you do this. They are losing whey, but keeping solids. They should all shrink at about the same speed. If not, stir carefully to bring the bigger, looser looking ones into more contact with the warmer parts of the pot.

Let the curds rest 10 minutes.

A bag of curds

Folded up and weirdly brain-like

Carefully drain the whey into a second pot, until it reaches the level of the curds. Then scoop the curds into a colander lined with cheesecloth, or into your mesh bag.

If you have a mold, transfer the curds after 15 minutes, and press under 8 # for 3 hours, then flip and press again at 8 # for another 3 hours.



Or do like I did and use either a mesh bag, or a bag made by tying up the corners of cheesecloth.


Let it drain for 10 minutes, then open the ball and retie it, doing your best to minimize wrinkles in the cloth. Place the bag in the colander, and cover it with a small plate and place the pot of whey on top of it as a weight.

After 3 hours remove the pot of whey from on top of the curds, unwrap them, and re wrap to smooth out any creases. Place the curd mass back under the weight for 3 more hours.

After a total of 6 hours heating time, unwrap the curds. Place the whey in a pot and heat to  87C/190F. If you don't have a thermometer, heat it until simmer bubbles begin to form. Lower the heat to maintain the temperature without boiling over.

Now flatter and cut into quarters

Unwrap  the curd ball and cut it into quarters. Gently lower the quarters into the hot whey. Trust an experienced lady here, you do not want to splash! Maintain the temperature in the pot for 30 minutes. At the start of this time, the curd will sink. By the end it should float.

Plunge curd into hot whey

Remove the cheese (let's stop calling it curd now) and let it cool in the colander for 45 minutes.

Then place it in brine, made by mixing 1 gallon water with 26 ounces salt - conveniently, most salt you buy comes in just that size. let the cheese soak for at least 5 days to get good and salty. An hour before use, you may soak it in plain water to remove the excess salt.

To prepare for eating

Slice the cheese into 1/2" thick slices
Pat them dry and place on towels to get even drier for 10 or 15 minutes
Dust with flour on both sides
Heat skillet to medium high, and brush lightly with oil
Place cheese slices on skillet
Cook until you see the golden crust forming, then flip and cook an additional minute or two


Serve on top of a salad of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and arugula, as a starter to a meal of small dishes - stuffed grape leaves, lentil soup, crusty bread, and figs with honey for dessert.

Appearance: very white, dense, solid, slightly translucent, smooth, glossy
Nose (aroma): faint, milky, slightly cooked
Overall Taste:  mild - this cheese is more about texture than taste. A bit of goatiness though
Sweet to Salty: definitely salty
Mild (mellow) to Robust : mellow
Mouth Feel: squeaky, bouncy, jumpy, pert, lively. When cooked, crisp on the outside. 

Shared on: cheesepalooza, frugal days, sustainable ways, Gastronomical sovereignty