Movin On Up to the Cheese Pie

Half the week I'm stirrin' up some curds and haulin' large wheels with some great cheesemakers in Waco. The other half, I'm playing a proper 1950s housewife back in Del Rio. I make pies. Many pies.

It all started three months ago with one of my favorites, southern lemon chess pie. The chess pie was my first ever pie and pie crust attempt; it met rave reviews and is likely the main reason my boyfriend put plans in motion to propose marriage. The obsession progressed to the point where I was making three pies in one day.

Cheese is no stranger to pies. So, eventually, I decided to set up a play date for my good friends cheese and pie.

You've heard of cheesy desserts incorporating smooth, sweet cheeses like cream cheese (cheesecake) or mascarpone (tiramisu). Stronger cheeses can also participate in the dessert party as a standalone treat (cheese plate, or see blue cheese-honey-Sauternes combo from my Valentine's Day post). But I'm a believer that non-traditional cheese desserts have a place in the sugary pantheon as well. Enter pies.

Remember that ricotta I made in the last post? It would meet its sweet fate in my first cheese-based pie attempt, a "Cheese and Honey" pie.

Stumbling through several online recipes, I discovered that the so-called "cheese and honey" title that initially caught my eye was actually a traditional Greek dessert called Melopita. Generally the pie is made with either Ricotta or Myzithra cheeses. Myzithra (also Mizithra) is a Greek cheese made from whey remaining from feta production and a bit of added goat or sheep milk. The cheese is then pressed and salted, so it resembles Ricotta Salata in texture and taste. Myzithra would have been the more exotic and daring choice, but my castaway ricotta from my mozzarella debacle needed a home.

Because whey ricotta is a by-product of an initial cheese-make, it's a fairly low-yield cheese. I needed 16 ounces total, so I had to combine my small ricotta ball with some whole milk ricotta I purchased at the store. Because whey is high in protein and low in fat, my ricotta was the healthier of the two. Whole milk ricotta is made entirely or partially from the actual milk. The milk is curdled by vinegar in a manner similar to paneer, so the finished product still has all of the fat and cream from the original milk.

Melopita dusted with cinnamon

The pie was fairly simple: mix ricotta, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup honey, 2 tablespoons flour together for the filling. I then added cinnamon, vanilla, and a bit more honey according to my own taste. I also boozed up my basic crust recipe with some bourbon and vanilla. My final result tasted like a fantastic pumpkin pie. It was creamier in taste and a bit thicker in texture, but very reminiscent of fall.

The first Melopita recipe I found called for either ricotta or "other curd cheese." Translated, the vaguely stated instructions simply direct you to either ricotta or cottage cheese. In the comments one hapless woman, confused by the term "curd cheese," decided to use cheddar curds she had laying around. Fortunately, she said her pie turned out fantastic. While that's not what the Greeks had in mind, I'm just crazy enough to be intrigued by the blundering variation. If I can get my hands on some cheddar curds (not in Del Rio), I might just experiment with such pie insanity.

For now, I'll just tell you about the other, far more "traditional" (so-to-speak) cheddar and pie experiment to which I progressed. A surprisingly sizeable portion of the U.S. population has likely heard of apple pie being served with cheese melted on top or on the side as curds or chunks. I believe it's fairly popular in New York and other Northeastern states. The rest of you probably just threw up in your mouth a little. You have no reason to trust me. I'm the type of person who likes weird food combinations like ice cream and cheese sandwiches when I was a kid or Funyons with a Fig Newton when I was ...bored.  But believe me, you haven't lived until you've eaten apple pie with cheese.

I'd seen the combination on menus before and in a scene of Taxi Driver where Robert DeNiro's character orders apple pie with cheese. But I wanted to try to make cheese get cozier with the pie. I wanted to add the cheese directly to the pie as it appeared in many recipes for Yorkshire apple and cheese pies. In fact, our pie-with-a-side-of-cheese tradition was likely brought over to the colonies from English and Scottish settlers.

I found the best white cheddar Del Rio had to offer (some $10/lb blocks from a random New York cheesemaking factory I'd never heard of), and let my madness unleash itself. I found four or five recipes to start from, mixed and matched, and ended up with two experiments.

This unassuming crust holds
a delightful hidden ingredient

One was a streusel pie with the cheese in the filling: standard crust, sliced apples tossed with 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar and the other filling accouterments (cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, corn starch, brown sugar, vanilla, and yes, bourbon), and a sugar-flour-butter streusel topping.

The second pie incorporated cheese into the crust instead of the filling. So I made the same filling, minus the cheddar. Then I folded a 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar into the crust instead. The dough tasted like a cheddar biscuit. It was so good I started to eat raw dough with glazed, crazed delight in my eye. Feeling ill, I returned to pie-making.

I lined the pan with the cheese crust, added the filling and covered the top with the cheddar crust as well (no streusel). Then, I made a maple-*ahem*bourbon sauce to be added to either pie. In the end, neither pie needed the sauce, so I just used it as ice cream topping. The pies were amazing standing alone. The classic combination of sweet fruit with salty cheese. Incorporating the cheddar into the recipe made for a cohesive and subtle cheese flavor. I imagine that taking bites of curd alongside pie would pack a stronger punch.

I'm obsessed, so I could have actually used a bit more cheese flavor in my pie. Next time I might try a pie with cheddar in the crust AND the filling. Convention and moderation can't hold me down.



I was too excited to eat these pies in immediate succession to make time to focus my camera

Through Thick and Thin

As I observed the children's cheesemaking class a few weeks ago, I watched 11-year-olds beat me at my own game. The mozzarella they made in class was a gooey, elastic beauty of dairy Gak. (I miss Gak.). My curd never quite looked like that. It always falls apart into smaller grains. Though, eventually it does come together in the stretching phase. For instance, the last batch of accidentally successful mozzarella I made started out a little grainy, but stretched out to a smooth ball that was fully functional for cooking and melting.

I was jealous of their novice success, yet, undaunted and determined to create an equally attractive mozzarella curd at home. My hypotheses for the cause of my shortcomings were 1) an overly dry curd, caused either by stirring too much, cooking at high temperatures, or a small cut; or 2) a bad set/coagulation, caused either by too little rennet, a short set time, or the poor quality of my store-bought milk. Milk quality was likely the biggest factor. The children's class was using raw milk straight from the cow. But there's nothing I can really do about that, short of getting a goat to feed off the tumbleweed in the desert bordering Mexico out back.

I attempted to mimick the curd of my pre-pubescent nemeses first with a citric acid batch, and then, with a cultured batch. I changed just a few of the factors first to see if I could pinpoint the problem. I used a little more rennet, barely stirred the curd, and cut the curd into large squares to retain moisture. It immediately fell apart. The curd was so weak and grainy that I couldn't even drain it. The curds never molded together and, instead, slipped right through my strainer, mocking me as they poured down my disposal.

So, on my next attempt, I increased the set time as well as the rennet, and I reduced the temperature to about 100 degrees during stirring. I also went back to my original 1-inch checkerboard cut. Same problem. It wasn't the size of the cut, the temperature, or any of my guesses relating to the coagulant, unless it was a combination of all three, in which case I would be making a new batch to control for each factor and sub-factor individually. I did not have the patience or milk funds to be quite that mad of a scientist.

I also surmised that the omission of calcium chloride, which I usually add to strengthen curd from store-bought milk, may have been a culprit. But the mozzarella help page on New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.'s website indicated that the omission shouldn't be a problem even with store-bought milk. In fact, depending on initial calcium phosphate and ionic calcium levels in the milk, calcium chloride may be counterproductive when making mozzarella because during the stretch you are trying to elongate the protein matrix which is held together, in part, by the bound calcium.

Bewildered, angry, and dejected, I drained my second weak batch in cheese cloth instead of a strainer so that I could actually capture some of the useless curd. For what purpose, I don't know. Punch it into submission? Face it down before it ran away in the drain and threaten that soon, very soon, its comrades would be mine to eat? Scare my mess o' curd into working for me, I suppose.

Ricotta ball

Both times my curd looked more like ricotta than mozzarella. Why not just make some ricotta with the whey, I thought, and salvage some of the cost of this failure. Ricotta, translated from Italian to "recooked," is formed when protein and minerals leftover in the whey are precipitated out with heat and acid levels.

I boiled the whey from my cultured batch until flakes of ricotta started to rise, drained it, and formed a small ball (ricotta from whey is a low-yield cheese). You can only make this style of ricotta from whey left after a culture ripened batch, not an acid precipitated batch. In other words, I can't use the whey from my citric acid batch to make ricotta. All of the specific protein that rises out to form ricotta has already been precipitated into the curd when you use acids such as vinegar or citric acid as the ripening or curdling agent.

The ricotta success was met with mild satisfaction as I casually tossed the ball into my fridge. (Stay tuned next time for the delicious journey that ball of ricotta takes.). I had wasted two gallons of milk, and was forced to re-up once again for my final attempt at a really good mozzarella curd. I had regressed from moderate success to colossal disappointment in under two weeks.

Third time's a charm, they say. But "they" say a lot of stupid crap, so I wasn't convinced. Regardless, I started again on a citric acid batch. No calcium chloride, diluted citric acid, a slightly increased amount of rennet, a longer set time, usual cut (1-inch checkerboard). Curd with store bought milk would always be weak, so again I stirred very slowly. I also heated the curd a little more, inching past the usual 110 degrees to about 115. Higher temperatures form a drier curd, which I was hoping would also be firmer and more likely to hold together in the whey. And, while the moisture would take a hit, I was hoping the the slow stirring would compensate. My last correction: using bottled water to dissolve the rennet instead of tap water.

Chlorine, which can be found in trace amounts in most tap water, will kill your rennet. When I started making cheese in the kitchen, I always used bottled water. Then I got lazy and cheap and started using tap water without any repercussion. My curd always set. It wasn't hard to believe that Del Rio's public utilities employees might be cutting some corners in their water treatment and failing to add a chemical or two. So maybe there's no chlorine, I thought? In reality, my guess is that a combination of factors in previous cheeses, maybe varying levels of chlorine or the effects of calcium chloride, masked my tap water problem.

THAT is a good stretch. That
 is also what unrestrained
glee looks like. 

A combination of poor quality milk, the omission of calcium chloride, and tap water interacting with the rennet likely had confounded my two recent mozzarella attempts. Then again, all of this is wild conjecture. The one change to my dilution, however, seemed to do the trick. After draining, I had the best mozzarella curd of my short cheese life. It was still grainer than the class curd, but I think milk quality will always affect that texture somewhat. After it was completely drained, it gelled together into a moist, gooey blob that stretched and stretched until the joy numbed me to the fact that I was burning my hands on hot mozzarella.

Home cheesemaking of late has been a series of peaks and valleys, peaking soon after I simply own the valleys of really, really, sucking at this game. I couldn't make a cheese with a proper meltable texture, so I owned my foibles and made a successful Paneer, a cheese that is meant to be unmeltable. Then, bam, my next attempt at cultured mozzarella sans pH meter worked, almost by accident. Then, I had batch after batch of mozzarella curd that was more aptly identified as bad ricotta. So, I make a proper batch of whey ricotta for the first time. Shazam! No more cheese funk and, on the next attempt, I make mozzarella curd with the best stretch yet. I'm not really sure what to call this pattern of existence. But I'm pretty sure that such a pattern -- one of simply repeating the product of failure in order to become better at the original goal -- would rarely work in other facets of life...at least not without (hilariously) tragic results. And that is one of many reasons why, despite our struggles, cheese and I remain BFFs. 

Cheese and Youth: A Sociologically Sound Guarantee of Excellence in Life

Last week at my Waco gig with Brazos Valley, I learned two things about children. One, if they are open to the idea of experimenting with cheese, then teaching them cheesemaking is a surprisingly productive and fun educational exercise. And, two, children know way too much about the use and effect of ADHD drugs amongst their classmates, and what happens when little Johnny Q forgets to take his pills. This blog is about cheese and not Adderall, so we'll leave the latter to a clever anecdote about the darndest things kids say.

I've mentioned that the good folks at BVC host an array of classes on homesteading crafts like woodwork, blacksmithing, pottery, and, of course, cheesemaking. The cheesemaking classes come in varying level of difficulty and give hands-on instruction on everything from the production to the aging. Usually, adults take the cheese classes. Every once in a while, a visiting school on a field trip will be adventurous enough to test the potentially volatile combination of grade schoolers and hands-on cheesemaking. Last week, I popped in to observe a children's cheesemaking class.

Nothing warms my heart more than a child who is daring with cheese. Most children love the cheeses familiar to mac & cheese or grilled cheeses -- the bright orange and safer versions of dairy-lust. I'm particularly awed, however, by the children who build on their conventional, youthful cheese love by dabbling in cheeses off the beaten path for a little person with such underexposed taste buds. If I meet a child who tells me they like blue cheese (and surprisingly, I've met a handful), that is a child who I know is quite advanced in being awesome at life -- a child who I look at and think, "you know kid, you're going to be alright."

Children are notoriously picky eaters. You can't really blame them for that. A child's receptiveness to foods is largely linked to both physiology and familiarity. Taste buds usually adapt to familiar and repeated flavors. If a child is not used to a food, the "strangeness," either perceived or real, may scare them away. Taste buds also become less sensitive and less abundant with age. So children prefer milder, sweeter flavors, and shy away from flavors like spices or strong cheeses that blast their sensitive palates. Generally, children become somewhat heartier, adventurous eaters as their taste buds soften, and as their parents begin exposing them to new and "unusual," healthy, fresh foods. The extent to which people open up to different foods is still, of course, based on subjective and cultural preferences. So, yes, picky eating is biological, but it is also linked, in part, to good parenting and ensuring your kid isn't a spoiled spawn who gets whatever bland junk food they want.

Kids' cheese preferences and eating habits are perfectly understandable for both scientific and gastronomical reasons. I love the warming comfort of an orange safety cheese myself (save for Kraft Singles or any brand of American cheese, which I have loathed since childhood for leaving my mouth tasting of a rubber balloon swabbed in someone's hot armpit). It's a safe bet that most people raised in this country love those cheeses just the same, at least secretly. And why not?  Boring, industrially-produced cheeses and cheese product is delightfully salty, incredibly versatile, and cooking with it makes you feel about as happy and youthful inside as sucking down a Fla-Vor-Ice on a hot day.

Fighting for position in the curd

But when kids are willing to try foods that are unfamiliar and often strange, it says something to me about their advanced open-mindedness to a world outside of themselves. To find a child who knows about different foods, who affirmatively likes, say, blue cheese, or who at the very least is willing to try unusual cheeses and foods, is to find a child who's momma raised him right.

The children I saw in last week's cheese class of elementary schoolers exhibited all the fine qualities of good-natured adventurousness with food. They were excited to try feta cheese, a salty and often unusual cheese for kids, and scream out their opinion of it, even if the review wasn't particularly glowing. When mozzarella-making rolled around, they were eager for a chance to dip their hands in the gooey curds and whey. Everyone smelled like cheese at the end and nobody complained. Okay, they might have complained a little, but they still had a grand time overall. I'm not too worried about kids like this; I think they're on track to excel...well, as long as they don't forget to take their pills.