An easy and quick recipe for mozarella cheese (adapted from Margret Kingsolver’s recipe in “Animal Vegetable Miracle” [1]):

Ingredients

5 litres full cream milk (I’ve only ever used cow’s milk since buffalo’s milk is hard to come by in Springs)

10 tablespoons lemon juice (in 1/4 cup cold water)

1 rennet capsule dissolved in a tablespoon of water (can be purchased from National Food Products in Randburg, Johannesburg [2])

Method:

Sterilize all utensils (do not ignore this step!)

Pour milk into a bucket and place into a pot of warm water over a moderate heat on the stove (I use setting 3 or 4 depending on the ambiant temperature)

Add the lemon juice and stir well with a plastic spoon

Heat to 30 degrees celsius and add the rennet and stir well again

Heat to just over 37 degrees celsius and remove from heat

Leave to seperate and when the whey is clear pour off as much whey as possible

Ladle the curds into a microwaveable dish and kneed gently

Microwave on high for 1 min and kneed again, separating more whey from the curd

Microwave twice more on high for approximately 35 seconds, kneeding between each heat treatment (the curds should be sticking together at this point)

Salt to taste with uniodized salt (NOT sea salt)

Kneed, stretch and pull until the cheese is smooth and shiny

At this point the cheese can be eaten or stored in a brine solution made of uniodised salt (again, not sea salt) in water.

Note: This recipe does not produce the same type of cheese as is commonly bought in a shop since it’s made from cow’s milk. It does, however, brown quite nicely around the edges when grilled.

[1] Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp & Camille Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Our year of seasonal eating, 2007, HarperCollins Inc., web: http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

[2] National Food Products, P.O. Box 85103, Emmarentia, 2035, tel: +27 11 646 9022, web: http://www.thehomebrewshop.co.za/