Chronicle Books Blog

That One Time I Made Cheese.

Bonjour Mes Amis!

Have you missed me? M’avez-vous manquer? Fear not – for I have returned, for (sadly) the last installment of the Lexie/Rachel Project. If you are joining us for the first time, you may not know that I have been on a culinary journey of sorts with The Little Paris Kitchen as my guide. Think Julie/Julia but in a California set, awkward 20-something kinda way, ya dig? You can catch up by checking out my first and second adventures if you like.

Today will be about that one time I made Cheese.

No really, I did, for reals, make cheese. Why this seems magical to me, I’m not sure, but it is. Cheese is probably one of my favorite things ever. I have overpaid for cheese like I have for shoes, plane tickets, and anything else that is truly worth it in the end. I have always pictured the people who made cheese in cute little wooden cottages tucked away in the rolling hills of France, Italy, or Sonoma County (I mean, all San Franciscans have to buy local, right?!) speaking in hushed voices and passing down voodoo secrets which make the cheese taste so delicious. But it turns out, even I (and you! And you!) can be one of those gifted, charmed, cheese-making- people! Enter: Rachel Khoo.

And so it happened like this: as I was flipping through the pages of this lovely book trying to figure out what I wanted to write about next, I landed on the page of Fromage Frais and thought – “like that’s possible” only to read through the incredibly simple instructions below and then, MADE CHEESE. ME. I MADE CHEESE.

Fromage frais
Fresh cheese

Makes about 14 oz

Fromage frais has a smooth, creamy taste and a subtle acidic note, making it less smelly socks and more freshly washed white linen. Of course, an additional plus is that it’s low in fat and cholesterol, but that doesn’t mean it’s low in taste.

• 2 qt 2 percent or skimmed milk, preferably organic but not UHT or homogenized
• 1/2 cup plain live or probiotic yogurt, preferably organic
• juice of 1 lemon (6 tbsp)
• a pinch of salt or sugar
• 2 tbsp heavy cream (optional)

Pour the milk into a large pot. Heat very slowly, stirring gently, until it starts to steam and little bubbles form around the edge (it should not boil at any point). This should take about 20 minutes.

Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before stirring in the yogurt and lemon juice. Leave to sit undisturbed for a further 10 minutes. Return the pot to the heat and bring the milk to a boil. Once it separates into curds (the solids) and whey (the liquid), remove from the heat.

Line a fine-meshed sieve with cheesecloth or a clean tea towel. Place the sieve over a bowl and pour in the separated milk. Scrunch the cloth tightly immediately above the cheese, like making a money bag, and twist to squeeze out any excess liquid. Now tie the corners of the cloth together to form a hanging pouch and thread a wooden spoon through the loop. Hang the cheese over a large bowl or jug (don’t let it sit on the bottom), and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight. The longer the cheese hangs, the more the liquid will drip away and the drier the cheese will become.

To serve, twist the cloth as before to squeeze out any excess liquid, then remove the cheese from the cloth and season with salt or sugar. Serve as it comes for a firm version, or beat in a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream for a smoother, creamier cheese.

Serving ideas
Spread the cheese over a slice of toasted brioche or bread, then just let your imagination and taste buds get creative to sweeten or spice it up. These are some of my favorite flavorings.

Sweet: a drizzle of honey or maple syrup or a sprinkling of sugar can be quite sufficient. Or serve with fresh or stewed fruit (berries are especially good). For a crunch factor, try nuts or granola.

Savory: cracked black pepper, a pinch of chile, or freshly chopped herbs (chives, parsley, etc.)

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes–overnight

How it went: I actually ended up making this at about 10pm on a school(work!) night. One of my roommates had a spontaneous dinner party earlier, and everyone was still gathered in the kitchen sipping on wine and nibbling at a cake when I realized that I needed to start the cheese so it could sit overnight.

So I followed the recipe to a T, not wanting to mess with science/voodoo cheese magical procedures, and in less than an hour I was draining the curds and whey (love that I just said that without first saying “little Miss Muffit, sat on a tuffet, eating her…”). Everyone knew I was making something for the Lexie/Rachel Project, but had no idea it was cheese until they saw me draining/tying the cheese cloth knot! Needless to say they were very impressed – I upped my DIY/organic San Francisco street cred by a few points and, as I put the hanging ball-o-cheese in the fridge, I felt incredibly accomplished!

Also, IT TASTED AMAZING. See below for a collection of pictures of the making process and my brave roommate Ellie building her English muffin breakfast this morning c/o the fresh cheese! Feel free to also indulge as we did with just the plain cheese and a bit of honey.

And so this lovely little adventure comes to an end in print, but not in life. I have cooked and will continue to cook many recipes from this little book and I encourage you whole-heartedly to as well. It’s a beautiful text that keeps it simple, so that anyone (no matter their culinary level) can enjoy the pleasures of delicious, fresh, French cuisine.

Jusqu’à ce que nous nous revoyions,

Lexie

Purchase: The Little Paris Kitchen: 120 Simple But Classic French Recipes.

Subscribe to our monthly Cooking Newsletter.

As I get ready to be a new mom (now T-minus 2 months), I find myself swimming in diaper decisions, car seat queries, and the like. There’s one pure delight amidst all the slogs through online round-ups and reviews, and that’s picking out what I’m going to read to the little tyke. I’ve always had a soft spot for vintage children’s books. Last year I blogged about late nineteenth century picture books, and lately I’ve been obsessed with children’s books from the 1950s and ‘60s, especially essentially plotless ones where the illustrations take center stage.

A Kiss is Round, from 1954, is a simple poem by Blossom Budney that lists a lot of round things, and it’s the perfect excuse for Vladimir Bobri’s exuberant drawings. I love his drawing style, with its fine black lines and large swathes of color.

The Quiet Noisy Book (1950), written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, is a joyful exercise in midcentury design. Angular shapes and bold graphics make it a page-turner, as the text lists increasingly fanciful possibilities for what caused a noise.

My favorite recent find is Do You Hear What I Hear from 1960, written and illustrated by Helen Borten. Her illustrations, with their vibrant colors and dynamic layouts, are a perfect match for the text, which is a poetic exploration of sound.

What are your favorites from that era? Please mention any must-reads in the comments below.

Allison Weiner
Designer

The staff of Chronicle Books was so lucky to get to meet Ursus Wehrli, author of international bestseller The Art of Clean Up last month when he was in San Francisco as a presenter at the TYPO International Design Talk. His visit was a special occurrence, since Ursus, based in Zurich, has an incredibly busy year-round performance schedule.

Perhaps you saw this profile the New York Times featured about him in the Home & Garden section in March.

We invited Ursus to our offices so he could meet the team who’s been working quite successfully to spread the Art of Clean Up word throughout North America. Oh, and there was another motive: would Ursus be so kind as to perform his art of tidying up and organizing something of his choice at our work place?

We walked around perusing all the beautiful open workspaces we have here. Suddenly, he honed in on something a bit surprising, in light of all the piles of book proofs, contracts, journals, Boo and Maddie on Things standees, out-of-print titles, and boxes full of next season product advances throughout our four floors.

BOOK DUMMIES.

What are book dummies? Basically “mock” blank books used as reference that convey the true trim size, page count, and paper type for a potential book project.

Here are the results of Ursus’ concise, and very helpful bespoke Chronicle Books clean up. While walking through the Production Dept., he noticed a shelf of random books, in a state of disorganized disorderly despair.

After some silent contemplation, the clean up emerged.

Please note the excruciating attention to detail with the end result!

Thanks again to Ursus from everyone at Chronicle Books for taking the time to share his exquisite art of tidying and cleaning up with us!

Peter Perez
Associate Director, Marketing

Purchase The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy

Subscribe to our monthly Art + Design Newsletter.

The Chronicle community is heartbroken over the loss of one of our beloved authors today. Kathreen Ricketson was an incredibly talented quilter, pillar of the online craft community, inspiring blogger, and devoted wife and mother.

Kathreen dedicated her work to fostering community. As she says in Little Bits Quilting Bee, the craft community is about “learning together, sharing ideas, and helping each other.”

Let’s all continue to be inspired by Kathreen. Let’s make stuff and share it. Learn and connect. Tap into the power of craft and creativity to bring us together.

In the spirit of helping each other, an education fund is being created for Kathreen’s children. Follow along at WhipUp.net for more details.

We thank Kathreen for her important contributions to the publishing and craft community. I will remember her for her easy-going attitude, collaborative spirit, and sharp creative vision.

Laura Lee Mattingly
Editor, Lifestyle

Big congratulations to our guest blogger for this week, Diane Morgan—winner of 2013 IACP and James Beard Foundation cookbook awards! (She is also the author of 17 other cookbooks.) Roots has been included on lists of featured cookbooks for 2012 by The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times, Epicurious.com, and The Daily Meal.com.

Finding Our Roots
by Diane Morgan

I was young when the back-to-the-earth natural foods movement of the 1960s started. When Frances Moore Lappe’s seminal book, Diet for a Small Planet, was published in 1971, I bought it and read it cover to cover. To my mother’s dismay, I declared myself a vegetarian who only ate fish—what is labeled a pescatarian today. It was a valiant effort that didn’t last once I went to college.

I look back on those beginnings and think about where we are today, thanks to victory gardens, community-supported agriculture (CSAs), a growing network of farmers’ markets, and ever-expanding national chains of natural foods stores. When the big box stores promote packaged and fresh organic products, you know the message has trickled down. And the push toward healthier eating continues with schoolyard gardens and with educational initiatives coming directly from the White House.

Are we finding our roots? Are we going back today, to generations not so long ago, when our grandparents and great-grandparents ate seasonally and shopped locally because that was their only option? They ate roots because they were cheap, stored well, and were nutritious. They pickled and preserved and planted backyard gardens out of necessity and economy.

I remember fondly the tomatoes my father grew and the sinus-clearing horseradish my grandfather uprooted from his garden in preparation for Passover. My maternal great grandmother “put up” pickles, canned beets, and turned summer fruit into preserves. The neat rows of filled and labeled glass canning jars lined her basement pantry. On a low shelf were the crocks of pickles covered with linen cloth.

What I think of as the revival of back-to-basics home cooking is what our forebears did out of necessity. Bread was baked at home, soup stocks were made from a mishmash of vegetable scraps and bones simmered all day on a back burner, cabbage was fermented and turned into sauerkraut, leftovers were eaten, and nothing was wasted.

I love this sensibility, and believe root vegetables, moreso than many other edible plants, reflect these earlier times of scarcity and economy.

Without the threat of war in Europe, my great-grandparents on my paternal side emigrated from Munich, Germany in the 1850s, prior to the American Civil War. They found their roots in Savannah, Georgia. My maternal great-grandparents emigrated from Lithuania in the 1880s. Like most leaving Europe, they came to the land of promise and opportunity, living modestly as they built a better life. I know from my grandparents’ and parents’ love of family gatherings that their Jewish traditions and holiday foods thrived. Old world ingredients, cooking methods, and recipes were passed down.

These family stories of uncertainty, travel, and hardship from the Old World to the New World are not unlike the intriguing tales of a vegetable’s diaspora from its origins to scattered lands. It’s a lovely metaphor to consider.

Most root vegetables have curious lore and odd stories from antiquity. Stories range from how some roots were used medicinally as aphrodisiacs and to how others were used to treat scurvy. The carrot common in every supermarket today was originally purple in color, native to Afghanistan, and can be traced back three thousand years. However, upon arrival in Europe, its purple hue was not well accepted, and it wasn’t until it was hybridized in the Netherlands from its original purple color to orange that it found favor.

The Buddhists held lotus root sacred as a symbol of purity. It is native to tropical Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, and has been cultivated for more than two thousand years. By around 500 BC it was being grown in the Nile Valley for its exceptional beauty, though the poor found greater value in boiling, drying, and grinding the seeds and rhizomes for food. In China, evidence of its cultivation dates to the Han dynasty (207 BC–AD 220). In India, a golden lotus flower is said to have grown from the navel of the god Vishnu, and, in China and Japan, Buddha is often depicted either holding or seated on a lotus blossom.

An Old World vegetable popular in central Europe and the Netherlands, parsley root is just beginning to catch on in the United States, where it is most commonly found at farmers’ markets. It was grown and used in Germany in the sixteenth century and was introduced to England from the Netherlands in the eighteenth century, though it never really caught on with cooks there. In central Europe, parsley root was one of several vegetables and herbs known as Suppengruen, or “soup greens,” which were traditionally added to the water in which poultry or beef was boiled for use in a soup or stew. If you ask a grandmother of Jewish or central European descent for a list of the essential ingredients in chicken soup, she is likely to include parsley root—my maternal grandmother did!

These tales of families and foods are intriguing and deeply interwoven—not to be forgotten, and in many instances revived. That was my hope in writing my cookbook Roots.

Kashmiri-Style Turnips With Greens

This is an adaptation of a recipe from Raghavan Iyer’s splendid 660 Curries, using baby turnips with their bushy greens instead of the kohlrabi Iyer suggests. Like kohlrabi, turnips “come alive in the presence of sweet fennel, pungent ginger, hot chiles, and smoky cardamom.” Iused two leafy bunches of baby turnips in this recipe, cutting the turnips into halves or quarters, depending on their size. Iused more than half of the greens from the tops. Since the greens cook down so much, you could chop and add all of them if you wanted to, adding a tad more cream at the end of the cooking time to make enough sauce.

Serves 4

2 tbsp canola or other neutral oil
1 serrano chile, stemmed, halved lengthwise, seeded, deribbed, and finely minced
1 tbsp peeled and minced fresh ginger
2 black cardamom pods
1 tsp fennel seeds, ground in a mortar or spice grinder
14 oz/400 g baby turnips, trimmed and halved or quartered, depending on their size
2/3 cup/165 ml water
1 tsp kosher or fine sea salt
About 4 cups/120 g lightly packed chopped turnip greens (from just over 2 bunches baby turnips)
2 tbsp heavy whipping cream

1. In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the chile and ginger and sauté until fragrant and soft but not brown, about 2 minutes. Add the cardamom pods and fennel and sauté just until aromatic, about 20 seconds. Add the turnips, water, and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the turnips are almost tender when pierced with a fork, about 5 minutes. Pack the greens on top, cover, and let the greens wilt, about 3 minutes longer.

2. Give the greens and turnips a gentle stir and then add the cream. Simmer, uncovered, over low heat until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately.

Purchase Roots: The Definitive Compendium with More Than 225 Recipes.

Subscribe to our monthly Cooking Newsletter.