Cookies Preferences
I hope by now you've read the blog about how I visited Lizze bi Kingdom dairy in Northern Lebanon and was taught by Elham how to make a few Arabic cheeses. The one I've always loved maybe the most is the baladi cheese, which translates to "of the country." Baladi is used to refer to several foods in Lebanon including imperfect looking but absolutely delicious tomatoes grown in the mountains, baladi honey is that which is retrieved from hives around the countryside. I think it sort of means anything that is sort of rustic, farm-grown, of the land.
Elham used a mixture of cow's and goat's milk during my visit and she used rennet tablets....however, vinegar is something you likely have on hand in your pantry and this is just an easier version to make. At the dairy we also used little plastic baskets with holes that allowed the water to drain from the cheese while it sat. It was salted liberally and then we eased the cheese out of its basket and sort of tapped it around in the air so as not to change its shape at all, turning it around before slipping it back into the basket again. You can use it after a couple of hours plain but I like to make it a bit more dense and form it into a shape like a brie wheel before decorating it.
4 L whole milk (you can choose cow or goat or a mix of the two), organic if you can
1/2 cup white vinegar (use a decent quality, not the stuff you clean with)
salt
Equipment:
kitchen thermometer
cheesecloth lined sieve
non-reactive (stainless steel or enamel lined) saucepan
To decorate:
pink peppercorns, crushed lightly with a mortar and pestle
lemon zest
edible flowers
smoked sea salt
whole leaves of herbs (like basil, thyme, zaatar, tarragon, chopped chives)
Bring the milk to room temperature and then set it in a non-reactive saucepan over medium heat and allow it to come to 35C/95F degrees before adding the vinegar. Remove from the heat and stir gently. You should start to see the curds separating from the yellowy whey mixture. Carefully scoop they curds into your cheesecloth lined sieve (and keep some of the whey on the side if you want to store the cheese for later you'll do so in this). Once all of the curds are in the cheesecloth carefully squeeze as much liquid as you can from the curds. I then wrap the cheesecloth around it and place it in a round mold with drainage holes and place a weight on top of it all. This then gets popped in the fridge overnight.
The next day, carefully unwrap your cheese and place it on a board. Decorate with the peppercorns, lemon zest, sea salt, flowers, and herbs. Serve with toasts and fruits and crackers.
