Making cheese

Tonight I went over to my Russian friend Svet's house, as it was time to tend to the "tvorog" Russian cheese we started making Thursday night. It's actually been amazingly simple. We started by putting two gallons of whole milk and one-half gallon of buttermilk into a big kettle, and then left it out on the kitchen cabinet, covered, for at least twenty-four hours. In this case, we poured it up on Thursday night about 11 p.m. and then didn't tend to it again until noonish today, so that was about thirty-six hours.

Then, the milk, which looked pretty much like the consistency of commercial eggnog, got put in a preheated 350-degree oven for one hour. Then, the oven is turned off and then kettle was left inside to cool down. It was about tenish tonight when we got back from our shopping expedition, so I guess the baked milk cooled for about eight hours. Then, Svet took the kettle out of the oven and removed the cheese with a slotted spoon to a colander, where the cheese drained.

After gravity draining for maybe an hour, Svet served some tvorog in a bowl with a couple of big spoonfuls of black currant preserves, then stirred the tvorog and preserves together. It is actually quite good. The taste and texture are very reminiscent of ricotta cheese with that special buttermilk tang.

Here are some pictures of the cheesemaking process tonight:

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