[Sca-cooks] Farmer Cheese in STC, was sumthin' about faith and cellos...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On May 31, 2006, at 10:07 PM, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

>> Around here, anyway, farmer cheese is a soft, drained curd cheese, a
>> little like cottage cheese drained and pressed into a very soft
>> brick. When unwrapped, from a distance it looks like a block of cream
>> cheese or feta, but when you spread it, its curdy nature becomes
>> evident, and it doesn't really melt in the sense that cheddar or
>> mozzarella melt. It gets soft, but that's about it.
>>
>> I've heard of people using it for STC goo, but I don't get the sense
>> Digby intended anything like it, unless there's a different product
>> known as farmer cheese that is rather different from the stuff I'm
>> familiar with.
>
> The farmer cheese that I get, and that I've used in STC, is more of a
> soft solid cheese-- along the lines of Muenster.
>
>> Actually, that's one of the reasons, I suspect, that that crafty old
>> devil Digby has you include the butter from cooked veg. It's a  
>> butter-
>> and-water emulsion. When you stir it as the cheese melts, it remains
>> a smooth emulsion -- if you've done it right.
>
> Sarah has been trying to get it to work with butter that hath  
> served for
> sperages every year for some time, but somehow it never emulsifies
> properly. Too much water? Not enough fat? I'm not sure. Any hints
> gratefully accepted.

Probably too much water. Emulsions can be hard to create, but within  
certain limits, they actually can be pretty forgiving, and again, up  
to a point, it seems like the thicker they are, the more fat they can  
absorb (which makes them even thicker). Eventually they'll break, but  
with experience you can usually tell when that's about to happen and  
stop adding fat.

I remember working for a chef named Mark May (who eventually opened a  
Manhattan restaurant called May We, so when he vanished from the  
scene he clearly deserved whatever he got -- he was no Bobby Flay,  
but a bit of a legend in his own mind). But he did teach me some  
pretty astonishing things about emulsified butter sauces, tossing  
huge handfuls of cold butter chunks into skillets with just a bit of  
liquid, and letting them sit at a hard boil without obvious  
attention, and they always produced nice, creamy sauces, in spite of  
breaking nearly every rule in the book.

I think the butter that hath served for spargus is butter emulsified  
into a small amount of asparagus-flavored water, something like a non- 
sour beurre blanc. It's not really just asparagus water with some  
butter floating in it. My experience is that sweet butter works  
better than salted.

Let me see if I can find a beurre blanc recipe that isn't too  
involved. What you'll want to do is take some of the technique, if  
not all, and not all the ingredients, but the text of such a recipe  
should provide you with some clues as to the technique I'm talking  
about. This is one of those times where seeing it once is worth about  
80,000 words. Basically what you're doing is taking a little of the  
water (think about draining vegetables quickly, and what clings to  
them and drips off after a few seconds -- maybe a tablespoon, no more  
than two), and melting butter into it, stirring almost constantly.  
You start with maybe half a teaspoon or so, a small pat of cold  
butter. Stir that in, and let it fully incorporate until your water  
starts to become translucent and eventually, opaque. Add another,  
then another, waiting for each to be fully incorporated before adding  
the next. As you go, the pats, and the number of pats, can get  
larger. If you see bubbles of clear butterfat start to develop around  
the edges, it's time to stop.

Yes, this sounds like a lot of trouble, but often this swirling  
technique is what a lot of Elizabethan and Jacobite (or is it  
Jacobean?) recipes are talking about when they call for "a peece of  
butter the bigness of an egge".

It was really quite an education, though, watching this guy throw  
what seemed like huge wads of cold butter, seemingly pounds at a  
time, in frying pans and succeed against all the rules and all the odds.

Naturally, I do it that way now, too ;-). But I teach the "correct"  
way to others. When it becomes time to do what I do and not what I  
say, that time will become evident.

At some point I'll try to get to an event with a pan and some  
butter... maybe even some asparagus and some cheese...

Geez, this is starting to sound like EKU...

Adamantius




"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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Holt, 07/29/04