I think I've already mentioned Julia Moskin's D.I.Y Cooking Handbook for the New York Times online right? It's where I got inspired to make vin d'orange. (Which turned out great, incidentally.) She's got a bunch of useful recipes there, including a few that overlap with some of mine. Like one for making your own ketchup; and preserving lemons; and this one for making your own fresh cream cheese. Hers is a slightly shorter process because she uses rennet, which causes your milk to curdle right away. I learned my technique from Nourishing Traditions, where you simply let milk sit out on the counter for a few days until it curdles on its own. Actually, some good bacteria helps it along. You separate the curds from the whey (reserving the latter for making pickles and sauerkraut, and stirring into soups and smoothies), then drain the curds so they come together in a light, creamy cheese. It's kind of magical.
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I can't take credit for that: my friend Louise told me about a Rawesome food co-op in Venice, California, that sells raw milk—she's going there to stock up! I feel like the Pied Piper of natural dairy. Love it. I'm  jealous because they sell raw butter there. The farm I buy from doesn't separate the cream from the milk and I haven't quite figured out how to do that successfully. Every source says you just wait for it to rise to the top and skim it off, but that seems to leave me with something more like half-&-half. Any thoughts? Raw cheese, on the other hand, is pretty easy to find—as long as it's aged. I guess they figure any harmful bacteria will have died off, so by law raw milk cheeses have to be aged at least 60 days to be considered fit for human consumption. Whatever. You know I'll get my hands on some fresh raw milk cheese very soon. Thinking about making my own mozzarella. Yep, I'm a radical. (By the way, did I ever tell you that my father contracted bovine tuberculosis in Mexico when he was 19? Saved him from going into the service during WWII! Nowadays, even mom-&-pop farms do regular testing to make sure that doesn't happen.) So I did pick up some raw milk cheeses at Lucy's Whey in the Chelsea Market this week. I sampled them for lunch today and they were truly delicious. (I also picked up that lovely tray from Brooklyn Slate. Great packaging; would make a nice housegift for some cheese-loving host.)
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Meet Louise, an enormous black milk cow who'd just given birth to this still-trembling little calf on Saturday morning when we stopped by our small local farm to pick up some raw milk. They're kind enough to sell it to us right from the cow. Well, pretty much. It's legal in New York, but only if you buy it directly from the farm. (It's banned outright in New Jersey, and available at retail in Connecticut.) You'll need to bring your own container—I use big glass jugs. If this recent article in New York magazine is any indication, raw milk is gaining in popularity as people begin to understand more about its nutritional value and appreciate its wonderful taste. (Old-style delivery services will bring it right to your door!) My mother-in-law was absolutely horrified at the idea of us drinking raw milk, and that's a testament to how this country has been brainwashed into believing that industrialized food is cleaner and safer. But in fact, high-heat pasteurization and homogenization do a great disservice to the quality and value of the milk we drink. And most cases of salmonella associated with milk in the past decade have been from pasteurized products. Perhaps, like I did, you shun milk altogether? As recently as a couple of months ago, I was posting about all the alternatives—soy, almond, rice, hemp. Now that I've learned about how the high-heat and chemical extraction processes essentially damage these foods, I really can't recommend you consume any of them on a regular basis. I know, I know, the ground beneath us is always shifting. But I feel much more empowered now that I have begun to do my own research (forever indebted to Sally Fallon of Nourishing Traditions) and really understand the science behind my food choices. Don't despair, there's still plenty of good stuff to eat.