Cooking The Books

Cheese Curds and Two Things To Do With Them - Poutine and Wisconsin Fried Cheese Curds

Poutine - the Canadian national dish of fresh cut fries, cheese curds and gravy - gained a soft spot in my heart when I lived in British Columbia for a few months back in my mid-20s. The combination of textures and flavours bathed in a meaty, salty gravy is comfort food at its finest, perfect after a day out snowboarding in -47 deg C when your body is yearning for calories.  With this recent cold spell I have been hankering after this heart attack on a plate but have been held back by the availability of cheese curds.  Whilst some people use mozzarella it just doesn't have the right texture, it's too soft and stringy and lacks the squeak of fresh cheddar curds which stand up to the gravy and chip heat far better.  Unlike in Canada though the option of buying them doesn't exist in the UK and so I looked around on the web to see if I could make them.  Whilst a little trickier than paneer making - the only cheese making I'd ever done - it looked bearable and I'm always happy to be in the kitchen learning something new.  When ebay showed rennet was both easy and cheap to get hold of the last obstacle was gone. 

As with anything cheese related the first stage was to coagulate the milk with my newly acquired rennet.  When making paneer, as you're probably aware, you add something acidic to milk and it curdles.  When I've done this you end up with lots of small particles in the milk which then come together when you strain them out and hang in muslin.  The first thing I noticed with rennet though was how the milk set into one huge lump, like a bowlful of soft tofu. To get this to something usable you have to first cut the curds then heat them up very gradually - 8 degrees over 30-40 minutes, a thermometer is a must.  This heating process seems to squeeze whey from the curds, moving them from the softest tofu to slightly rubbery lumps floating in a saucepanful of whey.  Once strained if you were making cheese this is where you'd start to salt it and press it into rounds, but for me - and you if you give it a go - this is when they were ready.

For a first attempt I was more than happy. It's a fairly involved process, obviously, but if you like being in the kitchen then it's not too much of a chore.  The poutine was a delight, the curds rich and with the tell-tale squeak on the teeth and the chips, using the thermometer again to get the saucepan of oil to the right temperature, crisp without and fluffy within.  Even the packet gravy (half chicken and half beef to mimic the traditional veal) didn't let it down. 

After making it I still had some curds left so turned to Google to see what other uses I could find for them.  There wasn't much out there but one thing that did pop up was fried cheese curds, specifically Wisconsin fried cheese curds.  I like niche recipes and you can't get much more niche than that.  I'm a big believer in battering and deep frying improving almost anything and here the bland curds and spicy coating are proof of that theory.  The curds stand up to the heat well leaving crisp nuggets with a delectable chew.  Another win.

Cheese Curds

Makes about 350gr (I think)

1.5 litres unhomogenized full fat milk (Sainsbury sell it)

NB unhomogneized milk is important as normal milk does not coagulate properly

2TB live yoghurt

Scant 1/4 ts rennet in 2 TB of water

1/2 ts salt.

Method

Warm the milk to 20C then add the yoghurt and leave for an hour.  This reduces the acidity (which I believe helps with the setting) and adds some flavour.

Warm the milk to 30C then add the rennet and leave to set, it should be fairly solid within 15 - 30 minutes.

Now you need to cut the curds, I used a palette knife and went for about 1.5cm squares.  You can see this in the first curd photo of the post, up there on the left.

The next stage is the trickiest, you need to gradually heat the milk to 40C over the course of 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally with your hand (I found it pretty hard not to break the large lumps of curd when doing this).  Even using the lowest flame on the smallest gas ring the temperature still rises quicker than required so I put the saucepan in a larger saucepan of water to slow the heating down.  I still couldn't leave it on a small flame though and turned it on and off every couple of minutes to get a suitably slow rise.  The second curd photo up there on the right is halfway through the process and you can see the yellowish whey coming out.

Once you're at 40C the curds and whey will be properly separated so ladle out as much of the whey as you can (rumour has it it makes a fine buttermilk subsituture when baking but I just poured it down the sink) then drain the curds through muslin and leave over the sink for half an hour.

Sprinkle the salt on and mix through and your curds are ready to use.

Poutine

Per person

1 baking potato

75gr cheese curds

100-150ml gravy (I use 2 parts chicken Bisto Best and 1 parts beef Bisto Best)

Method

Cuts the chips to 1cm thick, I left the skins on but do as you please, then wash well and dry. 

Heat the oil to 120C then fry the chips for 7-8 minutes until tender and cooked through.

Remove from the oil then heat it to 190C before adding the par-cooked chips again, cooking till golden brown and crispy - about 3-4 minutes.

Wisconsin Fried Cheese Curds

200gr cheese curds

Batter

1 egg

50gr plain flour

1/4ts chili powder

Pinch dried thyme

1/4 ts garlic powder

1/4 ts white pepper

Scant 1/2 ts salt

3 TB milk

Coating

Flour

Method

Make the batter then dip the curds (break larger lumps down to 2cm odd) in it to coat.  Take the battered curds and cover well in flour then spread on a plate and put in freezer for 20 minutes.

Heat some oil to 190C and then deep-fry for 1-2 minutes until golden.

Enjoy, with your fingers and something cold to wash them down.

Sea Salt Fudge

I recently bought a new kitchen thermometer so I could have a go at making some cheese.  I'd started to a do a bit of reading on the subject and it turns out temperature is a very important part of the process, how you heat the milk and then the curds playing a vital role in what the finished product is like, what cheese it turns into basically.  My first attempts have been promising but as yet not worthy of a blog post, I have been using the thermometer to publishable effect though with this fudge. 

When working with sugar, for making caramels and other sweet delights, as you boil away liquid evaporates and as this happens the temperature within your saucepan slowly rises.  As with the curds how far you take it alters the finished product, what you will be left with once it has cooled.  Around 108C-118C will give you a soft finish, perfect for candied fruit, take it to 118C-120C and you enter the soft ball stage and this is where you want to be for fudge.  Beyond that you've got firm ball, soft crack, hard crack and caramel but I've not been brave enough to push it that far yet.

Sea salt sweets have been pretty fashionable for a while now and one of my favourites is a sea salt fudge from Borough Market.  I've no idea how expensive it is but I'm pretty sure it's way more than this costs, although once you see what goes into it you might like your consumption to be limited by price - this is not a health food.  It is seriously moreish, rich and sweet but with the salt acting as a savoury balance, not to mention flavour enhancer.  I could have eaten this all very quickly (and there's probably 650gr of it when ready) but I thought I'd save the arteries and so took it into the office to slowly kill off a few colleagues instead.  It didn't last long there.

Sea Salt Fudge Recipe

300ml Double Cream

360gr Caster Sugar

35gr Unsalted Butter

2/3ts sea salt flakes + 1/2ts sea salt flakes for topping

2ts water

1 ts vanilla extract

Method

If after seeing those ingredients you still want to make it, read on.

First off prepare the loaf tin (a standard size) which the fudge will cool in.  If it's metal then oil the tin and lay a sheet of greaseproof paper across the middle so you can pull the fudge out.  If it's silicone then just give it a light oiling, you can pop this stuff out of silicone very easily.

Place the cream, sugar, butter, water and the 2/3 ts of salt into a saucepan and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and simmer, stirring pretty much constantly so it doesn't stick, until the temperature reaches 118 C - this will take anywhere from 15-25 minutes.  I noticed that as mine reached that required temp it started to get a lot thicker and come 118 C I had to continuously stir very quickly to stop it boiling over.  If you don't have a thermometer then you can determine if you are the correct temperature - the aforementioned soft ball stage - by dropping some of the mixture into a small bowl of very cold water, the resultant ball will be soft and squidgy when you are at the right temperature.

Take off the heat, add the vanilla essence and beat the mixture for a couple of minutes with your wooden spoon until it goes paler in colour.  Pour into the prepared loaf tin, quickly smooth the surface then leave to cool at room temperature, after it has firmed up a little you can sprinkle the remaining salt on top.

Once cool remove from the loaf tin and cut into 2.5cm squares.