September 1st Round-Up! What we Forged in the August Heat..

Yeah, it has been hot! But that does not stop our intrepid Forgers - just look at what everyone made this month - great forging!

August

Ap269 made some glorious cultured butter and fell madly in love with fresh buttermilk.

And she also made some homemade cottage cheese with Tuscan herbs, yum!

And, on a roll, Ap269 also made some delicate Brousse - and check out the delicious potato cakes on her post!

Poppyseed took a break from her peach-fest to make creamy yogurt cheese. Beautiful!

My partner in crime, Heather, made three delicious variations of the cultured butter.

Elizabeth made yogurt cheese to go with her delicious grape pie and it is making me very hungry.

Try, try, again - Ree made some gorgeous feta!

Lexi made garlic bread with her homemade cultured butter!

Foodycat delighted us with fresh cultured butter on homemade cherry and buttermilk scones.

I (Natashya) loved the whole cultured butter making experience!

Rebecca made homemade cultured butter, and came up with inventive ways to agitate the cream!

Veena made some delicious oregano cultured butter for her daughter.

Thanks, everyone, for forging with us, can't wait for September's challenge!

*A note*

It occurs to us Forging Fromage Folk that now that we have the super-handy-way-cool-linky-with-photo .. that the monthly round-up is a little redundant. Let's let the linky do the work for us, so we can spend more time drinking eating forging!

September '10...What did you FORGE this month?

This is the spot to link up any current or past FORGES!!!

Current Cheesy Challenges:

Cheddar

Colby

Ricotta Salata (and in turn, Ricotta!)

Remember, we always welcome your links to any of the things we've forged in the past. For a list, check out the sidebar! 

Please link back to either the posted challenge you've completed or to the Forging Fromage main page.  We have buttons on the sidebar if you'd like to add one of those to your post or your sidebar.  Don't be shy...join in at any time!

Please be sure to leave a comment after adding your link, so that we know you've linked up.  

Linky will be open until the last day of the month 11:59 pm Eastern time!

CHEESE ON!

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ap269 - Ricotta and Ricotta Bread Fresh cultured butter and buttermilk Ricotta Salata (& Ricotta) Birth of a Cheesemaker! Forging Ricotta Salata At A Moderate life ap269 - Ricotta Salata ap269 - Mascarpone Natashya's Fresh Ricotta - Herbed! Sailing the Seas of Cheese Natashya's Ricotta Salata Rebecca's Ricotta Salata

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Rounding up the CHEESE ...forged in July!

Hello Forgers!!!  I don't know about you, but July seemed to fly by for me....zooooom!  We had three current challenges on the board, and of course forging any of the past cheesy challenges is always encouraged!  I am so excited to welcome a new forger to the line-up this month, too!  Let's not waste any more time...I'm excited to share all of the wonderful cheesiness we forged in July!

First up we have Andreas from Delta Kitchen forging Yogurt Cheese!  He strained his yogurt overnight and then stirred in a bunch of finely chopped chives to spread on his Whey Bread (which he made with the whey that resulted from making the yogurt cheese!!)...a perfect food for a summer day!

Next up is ap269 from Family & Food & Other Things...a first time forger (with us) this month...welcome!  She forged both one of our past challenges and one of our current ones.  First up she brings us her Paneer, saying "I’ve never heard of Paneer before – it is a fresh cheese common in South Asian cuisine. This cheese was really easy to make. It reminded me a lot of making tofu. You just curdle heated milk with lemon juice or other food acid."  And I, for one, am totally intrigued by the idea of making my own tofu...hmmm.

Ap269 also brings us her Yogurt Cheese this month and then "used the yogurt cheese for making muhammara which is a roasted red bell pepper & walnut dip".  YUM!  She then served it up with some homemade Turkish flatbread.

Next up we have Alicia of Foodycat, who brought us both Yogurt Cheese AND Gouda...rolled into one fantastic, cheesy post!  FC started off by saying "Now, yoghurt cheese, or labneh, is just about as easy as a cheese can get. You take a pot of yoghurt, drain it until it is really thick and then eat it. Seriously, that is all there is to it. No cultures, no thermometers, no weights. Just a bit of time and a bit of gravity."  So true!  She then proceeded to use it in a salad, marinate it, use it to stuff things...top things...you name it!

FC's gouda also turned out fabulously in the baby gouda mold that she purchased just for this challenge.  Despite challenges posed by weighting and wiping away mold, in the end she thought "It was really good. It was very pale in colour - South African gouda tends to be a lot yellower than mine turned out; I think they add annato colouring - but the texture was a perfect sliceable, fine-grained hard cheese, and the flavour was just spot on. Very gratifying!" Nice.

Now, we have Rebecca of Grongar Blog who bringing us her Yogurt Cheese.  Rebecca used Goat Milk Yogurt (awesome!) to make her yogurt cheese and let it hang overnight tied onto the faucet in her sink.  "The resulting cheese was tangy and goaty, soft and spreadable, delicious spread on bread. It even made a respectable dip for tortilla chips. I imagine if I had added some onion, it would have almost made a home-made french onion potato chip dip!"  Sounds mighty tempting, if I do say so myself!

Rebecca's Gouda is nothing short of beautiful!  Seriously, I am super impressed with her wheel of cheese...I want to hang a picture of it in my kitchen!  She pressed it in a mold that she bought on eBay and then "or the next 25 days, we turned it daily, and rubbed all the surfaces with a salt water solution. From time to time, a tiny amount of blue/green mold appeared on the rind — just a few spots — but we rubbed that away with the salt water and the mold never progressed beyond that."  How exciting...and gratifying!

Next up is my cheesing-partner-in-crime, Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies and her Gouda.  A bit frustrated by the fact that she didn't have a flat-bottomed mold... "I realized the hard way that I really needed to start pressing my cheese in something with a flat bottom - because every time I had to flip this one over and re-press it, it got a little crumbly with the reshaping. Ultimately that gave mine a porous texture, and I would like to try it again with a different mould, but the flavour was mature and very tasty nonetheless" ...she did NOT let that stop her!  She forged on and made a major-tasty looking cheese...she added mustard seeds to hers...mmmmm.  And not one to be easily deterred...she went out and MADE w/ the help of her handy hubby herself some molds!! Be on the lookout for them in her Cheddar-ing post! 

And I (Heather) of girlichef am bringing up the rear with my Yogurt Cheese.  Okay, it may be simple...but I am completely enamoured by it!  It's like cream cheese...only tangier...it can be used in place of cream cheese (which I've actually made before, but probably won't again since this is the easiest thing on earth to make)...it's fabulous shmeared on a bagel or a sammie...YUM!  If you're wondering why I'm taking the easy road and sticking with the simple cheeses, it's because we're a bit low on funds right now since I'm not longer (regularly) working.  I haven't been able to replace my cultures, but I'll catch up one of these days and include those in future round-ups...that's the beauty of being able to link up any of the past challenges during any given month!!!  Oh. You weren't wondering.  Well, there ya go, anyway ;-)

Everybody did an absolutely amazing job...I am sooooo impressed!  Also, I want to thank everybody who forged this month for continuing to fuel my fire for Cheese, Glorious Cheese!!!  I look forward to seeing what everybody forges next month!  And if you are new here or haven't yet joined in...what are you waiting for!?  We'd love to forge with you!

***Natashya & I have decided to add a monthly post that will contain the LINKY for you to add your link from any cheese you forged during the current month.  It will follow this post later on today...and will always be accessible from the sidebar via one click!  Watch for Natashya's next challenge...coming soon!!

Feta Roundup!

Salty, pungeant, glorious....Feta!  A month ago, I proposed a challenge...a challenge to forge Feta.  Goat's milk feta was the original plan, but many places have extremely  highly-priced goats milk (like my place...Northern Indiana)...so in the end, whether the milk came from goats, cows, sheep...the important thing was turning into that tangy delight!  Feta had some fabulous results...let's take a look, shall we?

Let's begin with a Rebecca of GrongarBlog...this is her first month forging with us, and she knocked it out of the park!  She was able to use Goats milk...she rigged up an awesome draining contraption in her cool basement, and was met with success.  She says "After it was rinsed, the taste was great: mildly goaty, slightly salty. The texture was firm while still being creamy, and not at all “squeaky” like many store-bought fetas."  I think she's a natural...just look for yourself!

Next up is my original cheesing partner-in-crime, Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies.  Natashya thought she'd have to forge using simply cows milk, "... but at the last minute hubs came home with a little of both. Goat's milk does make for lovely, tangy, and delicate cheese. Cow's milk is cheap. We compromised."  And with delicious results, I might add! Check it out...

Next up is Alicia of Foodycat.  She was also able to use goats milk for her feta, which "was a success"...brain-shaped and all wink, wink.  She says "I jumped the gun a bit - we ate the first half of the cheese a day early because I just couldn't resist. We had it in a Greek-ish salad of cucumber, tomato, avocado and red onion, dressed with oregano, basil, olive oil and white wine vinegar. It was delicious! Not too salty, not mushy, not too crumbly, with just the right hint of goaty tang."  Nice.  See....

And bringing it all home is me (Heather) of girlichef.  Now, although I proposed this challenge, I ran sorely behind.  As a matter of fact, I haven't even posted it yet because I'm in the midst of making it RIGHT THIS MINUTE!  *UPDATE~ Okay, even though I'm late to the party I like to make a fashionable entrance, I've finally linked up my Feta!  I, too, used cow milk because I wasn't ready to mortgage my house to obtain the goat milk.  I loved the final result...salty, tangy, feta-ey!!  Since I had a few people ahem who worked through the kinks before me, I used Natashya's adaptations to make mine.

 

Everybody did a fabulous job forging Feta this month...thanks so much for joining us, ladies!!  I'm looking forward to Natashya's soon-to-be-announced challenge...and don't forget, we're still working on forging Gouda!  Please feel free to forge with us...jump in!

Halloumi Round-Up!

We came, we saw, we halloumi-ed!
Three of us took the challenge this month, and what a challenge it was!

This cheese called for more ingenuity than the previous cheesy challenges - gaps in the recipe and the need to construct shaping, weighting, and draining methods at home meant that we were forced to think on our feet.

And think we did! Each of us came up with creative ways to form our halloumi and each of us had great success! Click on each name to read their full halloumi adventures on their blogsites.

Heather of Girlichef used foil-wrapped dumbbells to weight her cheese, and created a mould out of a colander for shaping.

And ended up with this beautiful fried halloumi with chili oil to share with her family.

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Foodycat also used barbell weights to press her halloumi, after a wild adventure procuring cheese making supplies. She also created this ingenious draining mat.

Her results were tender, salty halloumi - perfect for pairing with pasta.

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And over at Living in the Kitchen with Puppies, I frightened said puppies by creating a falling tower of bricks to press my cheese. After the first mishap the pups were ushered into the back bedrooms for their own safety. Cheese making can be dangerous business.

And I made some delicious fried halloumi with harissa and roasted red peppers. Yum!

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From reading their posts, I gather mine was dryer than Foodycat's or Girlichef's. I'm not sure why, but with cheese making results can vary.

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So, are you inspired to take a cheesy challenge? The next fabulous cheese dare will be posted tomorrow.

Stay cheesy!

Brousse Round-Up!

The verdict is in - we all had a good time making Brousse!

Three brave souls played with goat's and sheep's milk this month and created mild and delicate Brousse, perfect for pairing with stronger flavours to complement it.

Andreas of Delta Kitchen found some groovy new cheese moulds online,

and used his sheep's milk Brousse to make a delicious potato cake from a Nigel Slater recipe, which were like chunky rösti with a polenta crust and oozy cheese inside. Yum!

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Foodycat, from the blog of the same name, used her unique and trusty egg ring, bamboo steamer and cheesecloth contraption as a mould.

"Over a couple of days I ate it drizzled with truffle honey, on toast (with more honey), alongside pears poached in red wine with peppercorns and thyme, on wholewheat crackers with fig and fennel paste, and a sprinkling of red-wine infused salt, on crackers with chopped raw garlic and a sprinkling of Maldon salt."

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I made my Brousse, over at Living in the Kitchen with Puppies, in in my small coeur a la creme moulds, lined with cheesecloth.

I served it with lots of fresh herbs, which were very nice with the delicate goat's cheese, and a sprinkling of Maldon sea salt. I found the cheese, like all cheese, definitely needed salt - next time I'll add salt whether it is the recipe or not.

There we go - three great versions of this fun, delicate, and easy cheese.

Thanks everyone for participating!