Lets Make Fast Cheese

Traditional Latvian fast-cheese have many recipes because in every house it's made differently. This is one of so called fast-cheese recipes.

What we need:

1. 4 liters/kg milk
2. 2 or more eggs (gives color and better taste; preferably home eggs)
3. Salt (1 tea spoon - very soft cheese; 3 tea spoons it's possible to taste little bit salt; possible to put salt around cheese at the end.)
4. Cumin seeds 1 tea spoon (I put about 3-4 teaspoons as I like them, but that is too much)
5. Garlic for those who like it. (This time I didn't add it, but I like it)
6. Little bunch of dill. (Gives nicer taste)
7. Vinegar essence about 2 tea spoons on this amount of milk. (At home I had apple vinegar 6% so I add about 4-6 teaspoons of it.)

Step 1: Cutting Dill

Step 2: Preparing Salt and Cumin Seed Mix

Step 3: Preparing Milk

It's very easy to sear (burn) milk at bottom of bowl while boiling it, so You need to stir it almost all the time on quite small gas. Salt/cumin seed mix and dill add almost at beginning.

Step 4: When to Add Vinegar?

When milk starts boiling and "growing" (see video) then it's right time to add vinegar while stirring everything. After that almost immediately switch off gas and let milk to become cheese 2-4 minutes. Stir it and You are ready for next step.

(You may download video to see process...)

Step 5: Draining

Idea is to separate cheese from "milk juice". It's possible to achieve it with cheesecloth or in my case with clean white cotton fabric.

Step 6: Cheese Almost Ready

After draining you can give form to cheese you like and let it cool. Any way warm cheese is also very tasty. In my case half of it was eaten by family while it's warm. Hardness of cheese depends on how heavy weight you put on it.

Enjoy!

P.S. With this recipe you can get highly creative and develop this cheese on salted type cheese for beer snack or sandwiches adding dried tomatoes, pepper, herbs and other spices or you may develop as sweet cheese adding sugar, raisins, dried fruits, poppy seeds and so on.

Also its possible to play with hardness of cheese - if you put little more vinegar and bigger pressure at the end than you can get harder cheese but if you add butter or olive or other oil than you may get cheese spread.

If you have smokehouse use it - smoked cheese is very tasty.