Ossetian cheese and ricotta! Two dishes in one!
This summer our reader Nadezhda Kudiyarova from Kaliningrad, she traveled with her family through the republics of the North Caucasus and fell in love with North Ossetia.
I miss Ossetia so much that the other day I decided to make Ossetian cheese. I want as many people as possible to try this wonderful dish., says Nadezhda.
She also included video instructions along with the cheese recipe.
Ingredients for cooking: homemade milk, kefir, rennet, water.
- Heat 10 liters of yesterday's homemade milk to 32 degrees Celsius, add 60 grams of kefir, stir, and let sit for an hour. Then, dissolve 1 gram of Meito rennet (available on Ozon) in 20 ml of milk. Carefully pour in and stir gently, avoiding turbulence. Let sit for 40 minutes.
- Check the resulting curd for clean separation and cut it first into strips, wait 5 minutes, then into cubes, wait another 5 minutes. Then, over low heat, begin gently stirring (30–40 minutes), bringing the temperature to 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit). Let the grain settle to the bottom and transfer to a cheese mold.
- Turn over after 15 minutes, then after 30 minutes, and again after an hour and a half. Rub with salt and refrigerate.
- The cheese is ready to eat in 24 hours.
- Don't rush to pour out the whey left over from the Ossetian cheese!
- Nadezhda recommends making ricotta from it. Heat the whey to 90 degrees Celsius, add 1 gram of citric acid per liter, and wait until the ricotta flakes form. Then drain the resulting mixture in a colander lined with cheesecloth, hang the cheese, and let it sit overnight. By morning, the ricotta will be ready!
