Adventures with Juustokiapa

    So what do you do when you find yourself alone on Mother's day?   It was a truly miserable day of low temperatures, howling wind and at one point, about an inch of snow on my front yard.   

    Well if your me...you make cheese.   Not one, but two different types of cheese.  Both of which you have never made before and wanted to experiment with. I'm actually happy to call both a success, although the quick mozzarella I made missed the mark in my opinion.   

    That's the fun thing however, and so far I've been pretty successful in my cheese making endeavors.  I was not going to do a post about cheese making however, generally speaking they are only popular with 3 - 5 people and I don't really have a lot of great photo's to share this time.  However I decided to because one of them is a bit unusual, a lot of fun and simple to make.   Although it is time consuming.

Juusoliapa - final product

 

    When I was out gathering some things for some vegan cheese experiments (see recipe links), I came across some "Bread cheese."   Now I had heard of this before but the details were sketchy to say the least.  Juustoliapa...or better known as that unpronounceable Finnish/Swedish squeaky cheese, was originally made from reindeer milk.  Modern versions use cow's milk, this cheese was designed to be dried out to keep for years.  It's a survival food of sorts as well.

     In fact, it's actually baked as part of the cheese making process and produces copious amount of whey.   I don't believe this whey was meant to be saved and used in other things, like breads, as it is in other cheeses.

       It was often served warm as a slice or in a round cake, and the final product is only about 1 inch (3 cm) thick, often with jams or jellies as a desert.   I actually had some this morning with some strawberry jam and was surprised at how well the jam and cheese complemented each other.  

    It is also served in coffee, where the heat of the coffee is supposed to warm up the cheese.  When added to the coffee, it loses its "squeakiness" somewhat and takes on the flavor of the coffee, it's actually not a bad combination.  

    A squeaky cheese is actually referring to the rubbery or springy curd of cheese itself, when bitten, the air trapped in the curd escapes, making the cheese "squeak."  The cheese itself has a very mild taste.

    That being said, the recipe I used was not very clear on the directions.   Long story short this will produce a lot of very wet curd, which then needs to be drained off.   The directions do not call for it to be strained over a cheesecloth, and frankly you will probably not need one.   You can let the cheese drain in a regular strainer with small holes, the curds are that large.   

    I drained the whey off at least twice in this process.  I even cut the recipe in half!  I should note that I used tapioca flour instead of corn starch (2 T of tapioca flour = 1 T of corn starch).   Then after baking at 500 degrees F (260 C) for 20 minutes you will still have some whey.   Some of this was lost as I "flipped" the cheese into another container of the same size to brown the other side.  

    So in the end you end up with a drier cheese, very mild in flavor that "squeaks" when you eat it, but goes very well with jams and jellies.   I even had it with breakfast the last two days in a row.  

    I was so happy with my Just...Juusto...that cheese, that I thought I would try a quick Mozzarella.  This is NOT a beginners cheese despite what various books or websites may tell you, and I've been putting off making it for several reasons.   

    What I ended up is a bit rubbery, it does cook up well - as I had it on burgers last night (and as my wife pointed out, breaking our Meatless Monday rule), and has the color of a nice Mozz.   It is just off in taste a bit.

    Although when cooked, it tasted exactly like a Mozz should.   It acted exactly like a Mozz should.  That's the problem with making Mozzarella.  Even veteran cheese makers have issues with it.   However I'll take a win where and when I can find it.

I'll take a win here even though it's a ugly win.