Photohunt: Education
Making Mozzerella class
This week’s photohunt theme is Education. I started to do another post on France until I realized that I did it for the theme of School. Then I had an idea….
Last weekend I was in Paso Robles for the “Slow Bowl”, one of the annual get together of members of the Slow Travel forum. Shannon does a wonderful job of organizing the tasting and dinners. This year she was also able to arrange for a class on how to make fresh homemade mozzarella and burrata cheese. Her friend Alan has been making homemade cheese and she arranged for him to give us a demo.
We gathered in the kitchen at Slow Bowl Central. Alan is a great instructor, humorous but also very detailed oriented. A couple of people had attempted to make mozzarella before so they also discussed how they had failed.
It was actually pretty simple if you can get the correct ingredients. One key is to get milk that has not been ultra pasteurized so it will curdle correctly. He also gave us several tips on how long to cook and the right temperatures. In less than two hours, we were all enjoying wonderful fresh warm mozzarella. It was definitely an education in cheesemaking.
Equipment, ingredients and recipe organized to start
Measuring out either the lipase or rennet
Checking the curd
Breaking up the curds
Continuing to break up the curds from the whey
Cheesecloth to drain the curds
Squeeze as much liquid as you can from the cheese
Stretch to get the correct consistency
For burrata – pull off small pieces and fill with marscapone cheese
Enjoy – dipped in olive oil and course salt
Interesting! The cheese curds look like tofu… and looooove mascarpone cheese. Was introduced to it at an Okinawan izakaya where they serve it on crackers with fish gut mixed in it. 😀
Hahaha, I also used the Burrata experience for today’s theme. You do have better documentation and photos.
May I copy the last one, please. I think that is of Tracey. Now, I just need to have her make these for me soon.
I want to try that! I love fresh Mozz.
Great take on the theme. I just visited someone else who attended that educational event and fun to see each of your pictures.
Thanks for your comment on mine and I wanted to tell you that Plants Delight Nursery is a great place to visit. They have specific open house dates but I think if you are traveling you can probably call and visit other than the open house times. If you are in this area in addition to The NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, NC; Duke Gardens in Durham, NC and the Ralston Arboretum (NSCU in Raleigh, NC) are well worth a visit. It’s nice having all of these interesting gardens in the triangle are of NC.
This looks delicious = I can see a theme appearing on all the Slow Travel bloggers from the WC…
wow…am learning. thanks to this wonderful post.
have a great weekend! 🙂
Marta, Me Three, I blogged “Burrata” today too. It was really fun doing this as a group. The results were surprising to me…I’ve never had such fresh burrata! Wonderful and such a treat to take a class. Have ordered the book and kit for Mike’s Valentines Gift.
Very interesting 🙂
That looks like a great lot of fun.
hello, marta. i enjoyed looking at the photos and at the same time reading the processes. it is truly an interesting form of education – educating oneself about food!
Hi Marta, great step by step photos and take on this week’s theme. Seems like a few of us had a slow travel education theme going in one way or the other. 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing your photos of your Slow Bowl get together. Have a wonderful weekend.
Given the cost of burratta that would be a very cost-efficient education! t was greta to see everyone having fun while they were learning.