COTTAGE CHEESE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 325, 14 September 1945, Page 22

COTTAGE CHEESE

OTTAGE cheese is an easilymade and a _ nourishing "spread" for sandwiches, toast, bread and scones, and an excellent. butter-saver. It can be varied with different flavours, such as chopped chives, or chopped parsley, and eaten with any kind of salad. You will find that it soon becomes one of the indispensable articles for the pantry. To Make: Use thick sour-milk curds; or to a quart of milk allow a tablespoon of rennet and % teaspoon of salt. Warm the milk to blood heat, then put it into a bowl and stir in the rennet and salt. Leave for 2 or 3 hours in a warm, but not hot, place-the kitchen should do. When thoroughly set, transfer it to a cheese-cloth bag, and hang it over a basin to drain for 12 hours, usually overnight. An easy place to use for draining the cheese is the kitchen sink-hang the bag on the tap, and place the basin underneath. The whey which drains through can be used in moistening cakes or scones; or it may be drunk, It is supposed to keep one young! When the curd is properly drained, take it out of the bag and put it into a dish or basin, pressed down, with a weight on top. It is then ready to use. Cottage Cheese Salad Plate In the centre of each plate heap a good helping of cottage cheese. Dust it with paprika (the real Mexican pepper), If no paprika, a faint sprinkle of ordinary pepper, especially black pepper, will do; or it may be omitted altogether and a sprinkling of chopped chives, or parsley, substituted. Round the cheese arrange 2 or 3 thin slices of tomato first dipped in French dressing, small crisp lettuce leaves, and thin sandwiches of minced ham,;:or tongue. (Grated carrot may be substituted for the tomato.) Cottage Chéese Fried Cakes This is a Los Angeles recipe. Mash up a pound of cottage cheese with a fork, and gradually add a beaten egg, 1-3 teaspoon salt, a tablespoon of top milk or cream, and a tablespoon of sugar. Then work in, little by little, enough sifted flour to make a stiff dough- it will take about % cup. Roll out %-inch thickness, and cut into squares. Have ready a saucepan of rapidly boiling salted water, and drop in the cheese squares. Boil until they rise to the top; then remove with a perforated spoon. Drain them, and then fry to a golden brown on a hot, oiled griddle with enough shortening just to keep them from sticking. Brown on both sides. Serve either in place of meat, or as a dessert, with honey, syrup or stewed fruit poured over. Sauce: Melt 4 tablespoons butter (or good shortening) and in it brown % cup coarse breadcrumbs, adding a _ little. chopped onion and parsley.

Serve as the main portion of a vegetable plate, that is, surround with separate portions of hot boiJed beetroot thinly sliced and covered with white sauce; creamed celery; sliced boiled or fried ‘potatoes; creamed corn; creamed leeks; a little pumpkin; haricot beans; brussels sprouts-any vegetable in season, especially peas and beans, A real "vegetable plate" has five or six separate divisions around a raised centre space. In the centre is put the "main portion" — perhaps creamed chicken, or poached eggs on toast; or in this case, the dumplings; and the vegetables are arranged in the divisions, thus keeping each neat and separate. Cottage Cheese Filling for Cakes This is an unusual filling, which is especially good with gingerbread and butterscotch cake, The gingerbread is generally baked in a flat tin (a meat-dish is good), and then cut across lengthways and put together again with the filling. The butterscotch cake is baked in two layers and the filling used between and also on top, Cream with a fork about 4oz. of cottage cheese; add 2 cups icing sugar, 3 tablespoons cream or top milk, and 2o0z. melted chocolate. Blend thoroughly before spreading. Butterscotch Cake You may as well have this recipe now, in case you have the icing sugar to make the cottage cheese filling: Half @up of shortening, 2 eggs, 2 cups brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cocoa, 2 cups flour, 1% teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 4 tablespoons vinegar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, cold water. Cream shortening and sugar; add wellbeaten eggs. Measure flour, and sift; remeasure. Add salt, soda and cocoa, and sift 3 times. Put vanilla and vinegar in a cup and fill the cup up with water. Add dry ingredients alternately with liquid to the creamed mixture. Pour into 2 well greased and floured cake pans. Bake at 350deg., 30 to 40 minutes.