Our plan was simple: to make homemade cream cheese using just two ingredients: milk and freshly-squeezed lemon juice. “Are you sure this is going to work? You’ve made this before?” I asked him unconvinced. “Of course! Trust me, this is going to be amazing.” I still wasn’t sure. Because, you see, he is a lot like me when it comes to his food experiments: fearless verging on mad ?
Ingredients:
0.5L full-fat milk
lemons
Directions:
1. He poured half a liter (around 17 oz) of (full-fat) milk into a pot and set the heat to medium. He then told me to slice a couple of lemons and put the juice in a little cup. I did that.
2. “OK. Now that the milk is properly approaching its boiling point, I’m going to turn it off. I want you to slowly pour the lemon juice in now. Don’t stir it. DO! NOT! STIR! IT! Just pour it in slowly. The milk will start to curdle and we’ll end up with cheese!”
3. So I did that. I poured the lemon in slowly and alas! the milk began to thicken fiercely and curdle up on top while he and I stared into the pot hypnotized by all the wizardry.
We waited. And we waited. And we waited.
“Is… is it done? It looks kind of…. liquidy. Should we just try and scrape the cheesy top off?”
“No… let’s wait a bit longer. We’re not getting that much cheese. Hmmmm… this is very odd, maybe because we used lemons instead of white wine vinegar….”
“Wait. We were supposed to use white wine vinegar!?”
“Well… in theory yeah. But we’re out so…”
4. We waited for about 15 minutes and then just poured the milk through a sieve. The result was about a cup of creamy, soft, white cheese.
I was pretty impressed to be honest. But he wasn’t “we were supposed to end up with a LOT more… but hey, this should be good. Grab a butter knife and a plate; I’ll get the oregano and bread!”
We were pretty excited to try it ? And, like so, we sat down with our little plate of cheese, a couple of slices of fresh whole-grain-seeded bread, and this gorgeous Cretan oregano that he’s a massive fan of. Result? Oh! the cheese was gorgeous! Especially with the oregano on top which complemented the cheese’s lemoniness to perfection. Sure, it wasn’t a faultless attempt (we could have ended up with way more cheese) but hey hey! not bad, not bad at all ?
