Homemade Yogurt

After making 30-minute mozzarella last summer, I was sure that Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking could lead me through any dairy magic I dared. All the hard cheeses still seem a bit too involved for my liking; but yogurt was so obvious I couldn't ignore it.

At least once a week, I bring home a quart of non-fat plain yogurt, in a plastic quart container. These are very handy for storage; but now I have a life-time supply. Sure, they are recyclable; but do I have to keep generating more?

My first attempt at yogurt gave me enough anxiety that I consulted the book and bought a commercial starter (YoGourmet packets, from the grocery store). The instructions didn't match exactly, but were close enough to let me know where the wiggle room lies. In short:

• Heat a quart of milk on the stove to 180 degree Fahrenheit.


• Let it cool to between 105 - 115 degrees.


• Mix in the starter.


• Pour into a Pyrex quart measuring cup.


• Keep warm (incubate at about 110 degrees), covered, for 4 - 6 hours.


• Chill, covered, in the fridge.

Notes:
You can use a couple tablespoons yogurt as your starter, instead of buying it.
My milk thermometer is a little espresso temp stick; any thermometer for liquids will do.
On my first batch, I incubated in the oven, which over-heated the yogurt. Tasted great - don't know if the heat killed the active cultures, though.
On the second batch, I wrapped the container in towels and kept in an unheated microwave. Maintained about 100 degrees, and tasted great. Set up fine, not quite so firm.
My whole milk batch was really rich, creamy and high-calorie.
My 2% fat milk batch was tangier, and a little thinner.
I used Pyrex for heat resistance and insulation. Other materials are probably fine, too.
* Good, fresh milk really helps. I use Clover, because it is local to me and humane-certified. Never, ever use ultra-high pasteurized - everything good has been cooked out.

Home-made Mozzarella

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle made cheese-making sound like so much fun, I bought a copy of Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making, got even more inspired, and ordered a variety of basic supplies. (My version of the $64 tomato? Could be.)

The bonus prize nobody mentioned is that making cheese is magic - true alchemy! 30-minute mozzarella seemed the best recipe to start with - quick, pretty simple, and yielding a key ingredient for our favorite summer dish (caprese). We read the instructions and also visited YouTube, looking for demos. The best one we found was about 5 minutes, not too polished, and was the only we could find using the microwave method for a small batch.

We expected the point where the hot curds turn into a shiny ball of cheese that you can stretch like taffy, roll into little balls, or even tie into a knot to be the highlight - but no. The coolest part was painstakingly heating the pot of milk (nice, fresh Clover milk from happy pastured cows not far from our home) and seeing the conversion of liquid into curds and whey. It's nearly indescribable - so I plan to make my own short video. Then no one will be able to resist being able to witness this revelation for themselves (or at least, if they resist, they'll know what they missed).

A Greener Sunset Weekend

Sunset Magazine hosts a Celebration Weekend each year at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. We attended today for the second time. As usual, there were tours of the test kitchen, access to the beautifully landscaped grounds, tented stages with seating for lectures and demonstrations, dozens of vendor booths, and more than enough sunshine.

This year, a discernibly deeper green tinge permeated the event, both driving and responding to consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products and services. In addition to Sunset's standard practices such as discounts for transit riders, bicyclists, and shuttle users, notable new green elements included:

Healthier food samples. No instant pudding this year - Kraft's high fiber snack bars, cereals, crackers and even cheeses (an 'active' line, with probiotic fiber added); Safeway's salads, carrots with cucumber feta dip, and a light dessert of chocolate bits with fresh fruit made return visitors of many happy grazers.

On-site food waste collection. Most samples were served on paper (napkins, cups, trays) or with compostable plastic (the corn starch forks). Well-distributed throughout the grounds were clusters of clearly marked receptacles, one for recyclable bottles and cans, one for trash, and one for compost. Eyeballing the contents, it appeared that visitors got it.

A stronger emphasis on succulents, drought tolerant species, and native plants, both at the lecture stages and the demonstration gardens.

An "eco-lounge" stage, with speakers on topics such as What is a Carbon Footprint?, Compost, Solar 101, and Eating Locally.

More vendors of specifically green products and services, such as Ecofabulous, Terrapass, Solar City, and Branch (sustainable design). Most of them had booths in the far corner by the eco-lounge; but a few were sprinkled throughout the more traditional vendor areas(eg, Numi Tea and Akeena Solar).

Sponsor Chrysler worked hard at marketing its vehicles as green, exhibiting a new hybrid, a flex-fuel vehicle, and a concept car (electric with a fuel cell backup) in addition to its regular minivan and sedans.

Sunset offered an organic cotton T-shirt and a bamboo fiber cap, both as contest prizes and as event merchandise (at a large discount, comparing the event price to comparable retailers).

City chickens in the demonstration garden pecked happily in the dirt, with a sign previewing their appearance in the August magazine article, "The One-Block Feast."

My favorite green feature, however, was not new or newly packaged as eco-friendly. The California Artisan Cheese Guild provides a free tasting gallery each year with samples from some of the finest small cheesemakers of the region. Today's selection included Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese's Serena (as nutty and intense as a Dutch beemster); Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company's Original Blue; Cypress Grove Chevre; and Harley Farms goat cheeses. Nothing says sustainability to me like the best of the Slow Food movement.