Home-made cottage cheese

We all meditate in different ways. Some mediate using traditional methods, yet others do fitness, dance or paint. My best way to meditate is to be in the kitchen. I simply immerse myself in the process, so the rest cease to have any importance for me. Once, I owned a cafe and spend hours in the kitchen and was very happy. I was actually saying that probably I was the happiest person on the planet because I worked so many hours in the kitchen :) How sad that I could not make my living that way. Oh, well... I am writing about meditation in the kitchen because just recently I have done it again. Finally I made a home-made cottage cheese. I was making ricotta cheese often but I cannot find any explanation as to why it took me so long to try making cottage cheese. It is so easy and how gratifying.

My hubby loves cottage cheese and there is none where we live now. After I made it he said that he does not remember the last time he ate something so delicious. I take his word for it because I am not a big fan of white cheese. Sure I eat it but it is not something that I need or crave every day. So there you go, I made it and I will continue making it from now on.

It is not my recipe but I think that it is OK. A lot of those recipes call for fresh milk and I guess I was not convinced if I manage to replicate the taste if I use the pasteurized version. The cool thing with fresh milk is that you can also make buttermilk from it so in the end you are using all natural ingredients to make a new product. There are only few places in this world where you can find fresh milk and not everyone have access to them.

This version calls for milk products you find in your grocery store or supermarket. I am not against food from supermarkets because I believe that even such food can be nourishing. So to make this cottage cheese we need milk, buttermilk and yogurt. I used ratio 1:1:1. The only trick we should remember is to cook it very slowly. It took me 1 ½ hours to do it. I used the lowest setting “2” and played with the lid to control how quickly milk was warming up. You cook it until temperature reaches 40-50 degrees Celsius. And this is all. Sure it is time consuming because we need to be close to the pot for almost 2 hours but for me it was nothing since kitchen is my meditation field.

This cottage cheese can be used to make cheese cake or as the filling for crepes, my childhood dish that I love. You can also mix this cheese with onion springs and sour cream (or yogurt) and have a spread for your bread. I also like my bread with this cheese and a little bit salt or some honey. We also make potato and cheese pierogies, also called Ruskie Pierogi. I hope that one day you will also give it a try and you will enjoy it as much as we did.