[Sca-cooks] Help with cheese

[Kathleen Madsen]

Folks, just remember that what we have here in the US
that comes in "bricks" is a modern invention that
doesn't match the medieval counterpart at all.  Most
of the brick-style cheeses are processed products
designed for the American consumer in the first half
of the 1900's as a way to get fluid milk to market
albeit in a different form.  These products were
beginnning to appear along with pasteurizers at the
local dairy.

I'm not trying to say that it's wrong to use, my
opinion is use what you can find if you have to, but
just realize that what is labeled mundanely as
"farmers cheese" or "pot cheese" may not be of the
right consistency or texture as that being called for
in the period recipe.

Farmers cheese is a fresh cheese that has a curd-like
texture and can be almost grainy at times.  It is
allowed to drain after the curd is cut so that the
curds harden a bit and clump together.  Think of a
dry-ish, slightly salted feta.

Pot cheese is a family of cheeses and can be like a
slightly curdy cream cheese or a slightly dry yogurt
in texture.  It's known as "pot" cheese because it is
sold in pots as it is difficult to handle any other
way.  These days they usually come in plastic
containers.

Eibhlin

***********************************************
> 
> I would have to guess that Farmer Cheese is a
category rather than a 
type. 
> The kind we get here in the Midwest is a
plastic-wrapped brick 
cheese, 
> like any of the other harder cheeses. The texture is
like a Havarti 
rather 
> than anything curdlike, and IIRC it's very like the
stuff I grew up 
with 
> that was sold as "brick" cheese, which is fairly
bland but not curdy. 
I'd 
> have to buy some and test to see how it melts, since
I don't 
remember.
> 

That is what we get in Lancaster County PA and
Central/Eastern PA also. 
I've never seen pot cheese marketed as farmer cheese
in these areas, so 
it's probably a regionalism. I'm the one who uses
'farmer' cheese in 
her 
cooking and I don't know what else to call it; i'm
sorry if calling it 
that confuses people.

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"History doesn't always repeat itself. Sometimes it
screams
'Why don't you ever listen to me?' and lets fly with a club."