Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ana Makes Mozarella



If you love pizza, and if you have looked at the tantalizing pictures of pizza on her blog*, you might consider following Ana's example and making your own, fresh, mozarella cheese. It's easy! There's no need to provide a recipe here. You can do what Ana did and search online for "how to make mozarella," and then choose from among the many sites you'll find.

You only need two weird ingredients: citric acid, commonly sold with canning supplies, and liquid rennet, sometimes available at larger grocery stores or online, of course. Ana got hers from a neighbor who makes goat cheese. It doesn't take much.

You also need milk, of course. Regular whole milk from a grocery store works well. Ana, living in a rural, agricultural neighborhood, managed to get a gallon of fresh cow's milk, unpasteurized, with cream and all intact. (For legal reasons we should recommend pasteurized milk. Ana, like tradition-minded people in Italy and France, didn't bother with that.)

You'll have fresh mozarella in less than an hour. In addition to putting it on pizza, she also rolled out some strips, sprinkled them with basil, and rolled them up and cut them into disks to eat with crackers and wine. Excellent!