It’s the first food you consume as a newborn, and you’ll continue to consume it, and its derivatives, throughout your life. Not surprising, really, considering the number of ways it is used as a result of its wonderfully diverse properties when processed. It’s milk, of course. It can be served in its liquid form cold or hot. Or it can be processed into homemade cheese, yoghurt, butter and buttermilk.

Many of these processes require the addition of heat, cultures and various other substances to achieve the desired result.

Sour milk

A true wonder food, with only one drawback. Don’t you just hate it when you come to make a cup of morning coffee, or pour milk on to your breakfast cereal or porridge, to find that it’s gone sour in the night? The natural reaction of many in this situation is to pour the soured milk down the drain and open another bottle.

Quick and easy homemade cheese

But: don’t pour sour milk down the drain, because it, too, is a usable resource. Rather, make a simple homemade cheese. Put the sour milk into a wide-mouthed container with a lid, and place it in a warm spot such as a sunny windowsill.

After 18 to 24 hours you will notice that the opaque white part of the milk, the solids or curd, has separated from the clear, light yellow fluid, the whey.

Line a large sieve with an oversized piece of muslin (called “melkdoek” in Afrikaans for good reason), and place it over a deep bowl. Now pour the curd and whey into the sieve and place the whole lot into the refrigerator for twelve hours. This will allow the curds to drain, (and will give you clear whey that you can use in your baking).

One useful hint is to tie the corners of your muslin together, and suspend the muslin and its contents over the bowl by passing a skewer through the loops made by the knots. This will free up your sieve for other uses, and will prevent the possibility of metal taint to the milk by prolonged contact with the sieve.

Add salt

Once all evidence of dripping whey has ceased empty the muslin into a bowl. Now slowly add salt, mixing it through the curds with a fork, until you have your own desired level of saltiness. Be careful not to over-salt it.

You now have plain clabbered cheese, very similar to bought smooth cottage cheese.

Add flavouring

Make it infinitely more interesting by adding a flavour of your choice. Good choices are freshly ground black pepper, caraway seeds, paprika (sparingly) or dried mixed herbs.

You can also opt for a sweet version by adding chopped dried cranberries or seedless raisins, or a strongly flavoured dried fruit such as finely chopped dried apricots.

Spoon this mixture into a shallow container or ramekin and sprinkle a little of your flavouring on the top to give it a “professional” look.

Clabbered cheese stores well in the fridge, for about as long as bought soft cheeses will.

Milk solids

You can use any milk for your homemade cheese, and the volume of cheese you get will be directly proportionate to the ratio of milk solids versus whey in the milk. Thus, high-fat milks, such as from Jersey cows, will yield more solids, and therefore cheese, than lower-fat milk from, for example, Friesians.

This observation applies equally to any cheese, or butter, you might care to make.

You can, of course, make your own clabbered cheese without having sour milk to start with, simply by allowing a container of fresh milk to go sour before you start.

And you can increase the volume of solids that will drain out by adding fresh pouring cream to your milk before souring it.

Image: Curds and Whey, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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