How to make Halloumi (and ricotta on the side)

Recently, people have become excited when they discover I know how to make Halloumi, so I thought I'd post the recipe, for which many thanks to the wonderful Pam at Canon Frome.

You need:

Some goats milk, ideally unpasturised and organic and taken from the animal with your own hand (ideally)
A thermometer
Some cheesecloth or muslin or similar thin clean material, about the size of a dishcloth
A colander
Two pans big enough for the volumes you're working with
Salt
Rennet - either veggie or non veggie (I think it comes from the stomach lining of an animal)
Some kind of hook about 2 or 3 feet above some kind of surface where you can leave things undisturbed for 24 hours.

So

Heat the milk to 35 degrees c. Ideally use a few litres, maybe 2 - 4 litres, of milk.

Mix a slosh of rennet with a bit of water in a mug, and add that to the milk when it reaches 35 degrees. Turn off the heat.

When you add the rennet, the milk separates into curds (thick yoghurty stuff) and whey (like milk with all the whiteness taken out of it).

Put your cloth in the colander and put the colander over a big bowl.

Pour the contents of your pan into it. The curds will stay in the cloth / colander, and the whey goes into the bowl.  Pick up the edges of the cloth and bring them in, twist them around so they form reasonably snugly around the curd, and tie a knot in them. Then move the whole shabang - curds-in-cloth, whey-in-bowl, colander in between - actually you can remove the colander now - to your hook, and hang the curds-in-cloth on your hook.

Remove a jug of the whey from the bowl, add a teaspoon or two of salt, and put it in the fridge.

Do something else for 24 hours.

The Next Day

Unwrap the curd and cut it into big chunks, each the size of a small block of halloumi.
Put the whey in a pan and heat it to 90 degrees. Then put the curd pieces in carefully and let it boil for 30 minutes. Don't let it go over 95 at all costs.

As it cooks, skim off the curd that comes to the surface and put it in cloth/colander/bowl. This is ricotta - 'twice cooked'.

After 30 mins, take the curd pieces out of the whey and put them on a rack to cool; cover them somehow for protection. Give the whey to your pigs or chickens.

When cool, put the the halloumi pieces in a dish and pour over the salty whey you put in the jug on the first day.

As you do all this, listen to something interesting on the radio / bbc iPlayer / a ted talk / sing / have a calm time

Don't bother doing it if you're in a hurry, spoils all the fun.

Eat and share.

Yummy!

The secret to a good soup

It's taken me thirty years but I've finally discovered it. Please ignore this if you were quicker on the button.

The secret to good soup is:

onion + potato + knorr vegetable stock cube

+ whatever else you want to put in the soup - extremely simple seems to work best

= delicious soup! Every time!

If you'd like more detail...

Chop and gently fry an onion. When it's soft add your potato, as much as seems reasonable. In a little bit, add the stock you've made with your stock cube/s, (I think the other flavours don't work half as well as vegetable), and put in the other vegetables when it makes sense. So, today, I rescued some dying artichokes from the bottom of the fridge and put them in with the potatoes. Last week, it was broccoli, so that went in about fifteen minutes after adding the stock, and then it simmered gently - (i hear that if you boil things too hard you kill all the nutrients and flavour - I'm told the issue is all about temperature much more than time) - for about five minutes more, then wizz it up and add salt and pepper (at any stage I think) and you're done.

O, a hand blender. That's the fourth magic ingredient.

onion + potato + knorr vegetable stock cube/s + hand blender = delicious soup from any old veg you've got.

Cool shower

I stayed at Dave's smallholding for a few days last week.

In the woofers' 'lodge' there was an aga (or was it a rayburn?) that Dave had set up in his own special way.

We lit a small wood fire in it each evening and shut the door. That provided us with enough heat for the whole night, and heated the water for three of our showers the next morning.

 pic from rich66

And now I'm thinking about slow casserole cooking, in a pot on top. So you could combine space heating, water heating and cooking fuel all in one small wood fire...

With the wood from pretty woodland nearby, in which you cut tress down and up when you have a bit of something to get out of your system, and in which you come with small children to plant trees

oo it's getting so idyllic it's oozing...

Late November Veg

I tend to think that food growing is mainly a summer thing.

At Canon Frome organic grow/milk/slaughter/bake-your-own community in Hereford, they have a chalk board in the dairy kitchen where they write up what food is ready to harvest. On November 24th, this was the list: [lost camera!!! :( ]

(most of it was growing outside with a tiny bit in a polytunnel)

Peppers

Parsley

Oriental leaves

Mouli (Japanese raddish)

Carrots

Chard

Celeriac

Beetroot

Bulb fennel

Spinach

Sorrel

Beet leaves

Chinese celery

Corn salad

Chervil

Coriander

Dill

Lettuce

Coriander

Tomatoes

Thyme

Tarragon

Turnip

Cabbage

Sprouts

Calabrese

Swede

Red cabbage

Rocket

Kohlrabi

Leeks

thanks to ann-eve and zotz for pictures

The Future of Farming

This BBC documentary is on youtube in 5 parts.

It's really interesting. It explores how our ways of farming aren't resilient to a carbon / oil constrained future. Basically concludes that lots of small scale permaculture is the answer, and eating less carbs and more nuts.