[Sca-cooks] Cream cheese?

Ana Valdés agora158 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 4 02:21:54 PDT 2011


this is what I got regarding ricotta

   The Greek antiquarian who wrote volumes on food, Athenaeus (c. A.D.
170-230), talks about "tender cheese" at a banquet. We don't know if this is
ricotta, but he also mentions a cheese from Sicily that was well known.
Ricotta cheese, which is generally recognized as having been invented in
Sicily, is known in the language of the island by another name: zammatàru, a
word in Sicilian meaning "dairy farmer." This word is derived from the
Arabic za'ama, meaning "cow," leading to the supposition that ricotta might
have its origins in the Arab-Sicilian era.

    Two of the earliest mentions or depictions of ricotta are related to
Sicily. Professor Santi Correnti, chairman of the history department of the
University of Catania and a preeminent historian of Sicily, writes that
during the reign of the Sicilian king Frederick II, in the early thirteenth
century, the king and his hunting party came across the hut of a dairy
farmer making ricotta and, being ravenous, asked for some. Frederick pulled
out his bread loaf, poured the hot ricotta and whey on top and advised his
retinue that cu' non mancia ccu' so' cucchiaru lassa tutto 'o zammataru (Those
who don't eat with a spoon will leave all their ricotta behind).

    The first depiction of the making of ricotta is an illustration in the
medical treatise known as the Tacuinum sanitatis (medieval health handbook),
the Latin translation of the Arab physician Ibn Butlan's eleventh
century Taqwim
al-sihha.

    Ortensio Lando in his Commentario delle piu notabili e mostruose cose
d'Italia published in 1548 has his fictional traveler go to Val Calci, at
some distance from Pisa, for the best ricotta in the world.


Ana


On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 6:45 AM, <wheezul at canby.com> wrote:

> > On 8/3/2011 5:42 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:
> >
> > Hmm. Interesting.
> >
> > How about quark? Anyone here worked with it? There is apparently a
> > possible mention of it in Tacitus, which has me rummaging through my
> > books to see if I have his stuff on the Germanic peoples...
> >
> > Liutgard
> > Hmm. Interesting.
> >
> > How about quark? Anyone here worked with it? There is apparently a
> > possible mention of it in Tacitus, which has me rummaging through my
> > books to see if I have his stuff on the Germanic peoples...
> >
> > Liutgard
> >
>
> I LOVE cream cheese so I try to read everything I can on it.  First of all
> there is a 16th century recipe for 'flot kesen' from Rontzier's "Kunstbuch
> von Mancherley Essen" dated 1598:
>
> Von Flot Kesen
> Man thut Laue in Flot das es ruenne /
> gibts darnach in Formen oder durchschlege das die
> Waddecke dadurch lauffe / gibts darnach in ein Sil-
> ber / und frisch Flot darueber / wescht Erd: oder hei-
> delbirn in Wein auss und gibt sie auch darueber / etc.
>
> About Cream Cheese
> One adds rennet in cream so it curdles /
> give it next in a form or sieve that the
> whey there-through runs / give it forth in a sil-
> ver [dish] / and fresh cream over the top of it/ wash straw- or
> bilberries* out in wine and place them over the top / etc.
>
> Another 16th century mention:
> The manner of making jonchees, butter and cheeses. Chapter 23, Livre 1, La
> Maison Rustique (I've translated this from the French)
>
> "She gathers the cream from the top of the milk, separated after the milk
> is taken from the cow, and cooled a bit, and of this cream one has cheese
> of cream that she is wont to sell in summer for afternoon snacks and
> desserts."
>
> I've also been working with quark, but haven't found the word "quark" in
> any pre-16th century materials yet.  Glossaries advised me that züger
> (zu:ger) or its variant spellings zyger, ziger or cziger are the earlier
> words for quark or topfen.  I taught my mother to make it last
> Thanksgiving and we made a marvelous German style cheesecake.  She was
> quite excited about it as the $6 a container quark from the deli was a
> little spendy for her taste.  I'll try to check out MHGDB for
> ziger/zyger/zuger tomorrow on a faster computer than this old clunker.
>
> PDX side note - BTW Liutgard, have you checked out Sheridan Fruit Market
> on Grand Ave?  Last time I was there I bought some non ultra-pasteurized
> cream "Garry's Meadow Fresh" out of Mulino.  I noted with interest that
> there was a large block of fresh cream cheese, but I can't recall if it
> had gelatin in it.  I made 'flot käse' (ka:se) from the cream I bought
> there (in glass bottles) - it turned out nommy and I served it with
> waffles we made over the fire with sour cherry sauce.
>
> Katherine
>
>
>
>
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