Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [88]
Because the Whole Foods burrata, made by the Gioia company of Southern California, cost $12 for a dumpling the size of a peach, I wondered if I could hack it. The answer is yes. But it was no walk in the park.
Make it or buy it? Both.
Hassle: You bet it’s a hassle, and it provides many opportunities for frustration and failure.
Cost comparison: To make this burrata costs about $10.00. To buy an equivalent amount at a supermarket you’ll pay between $18.00 and $34.00.
1. Start by preparing the recipe for mozzarella, up through step 6. This is the point at which you find yourself with a sieve full of soft mozzarella curd and a pot of almost-boiling-hot whey. Proceed as follows:
2. Divide the curd into three portions and drop one portion into a medium bowl. Pour ½ cup heavy cream into the bowl, perhaps more, and with your fingers, shred and mash the curd. This is going to be the filling and you want the mixture as soft, homogeneous, and milky as you can get it. Salt to taste. The filling is now ready. Set it aside.
3. Put on rubber gloves, squeeze the two remaining portions of mozzarella into rough balls, and drop them into the whey. Let them sit there a minute. Take one of the portions in your hands and stretch it like taffy. When it’s extremely plastic and pliable, stretch it very thin, into a square about 7 by 7 inches—or bigger if you can. In a way, it will resemble pizza crust. If it breaks, dip it into the hot whey and start again, or patch it the best you can. As soon as you have a skin of stretched mozzarella, place it on a clean surface and into the middle drop a good dollop—about half—of the creamy curd mixture. Now draw the skin up around the filling and twist and pinch the mozzarella at the top so you have a little sack. Visualize it in the shape of a sloppy Hershey’s kiss. Repeat with the remaining mozzarella curd.
4. Serve within the hour with salt, pepper, olive oil, and fresh tomatoes.
Makes 1 pound, 5 ounces
CAMEMBERT
To make Camembert, you don’t need special equipment except Camembert molds and cheese matting. Both can be bought (see Appendix) or improvised. I recommend improvising. For molds, you can use soup cans (preferably BPA-free) or PVC pipe from the hardware store sawed into 6-inch lengths. Ideally, your molds would have holes punched in the sides like a colander to allow maximum drainage of whey, but I have never had such holes and have made superlative cheeses. You need four molds, each 3 to 4 inches in diameter. If you are using soup cans, remove the bottoms and the tops, wash the cans well, then run them through the dishwasher.
Cheese matting can be any perforated surface that will elevate the cheese very slightly to allow the whey to drain. A sushi rolling mat is ideal, if you have one. I’ve used the plastic screen from our gutters which I cut into squares and sterilized, though I’ve since begun to suspect that gutter plastic is not “food grade.” The bottom of a plastic pint strawberry basket, also sterilized, is a better option.
Now you have the equipment, you need the ingredients. The four that you can’t buy at the supermarket: mesophilic culture, Penicillium candidum powder, calcium chloride, and liquid rennet. If you have a computer and a credit card, in five minutes you can order them all from a cheesemaking supply shop. These are cheap. Once these magical ingredients arrive, there is nothing standing between you and Camembert.
Make it or buy it? If you think this sounds fun—which it is—give it a try.
Hassle: Is fishing a hassle? Is golfing a hassle? Whittling? Cheesemaking is a hobby, an art, an obsession, and a pleasure, and if you don’t feel this way about it, you shouldn’t do it. Because it’s also definitely a hassle.
Cost comparison: This recipe makes 2½ pounds Camembert and costs about $9.00. To buy that much Rouge et Noir, a widely available brand of Camembert made in California, would cost you about $50.00. Even if you blow it, and lose your whole investment in this cheese, it