Ser | Finding Feasts

How to make farm cheese recipe — Click on image for recipe

Home made farm cheese, my first blog post for 2017! Yipee.

Actually break open the champagne and do a little dance. It’s more like the first blog post for about 8 months! For me anyway.

Without going into boring lengthy details lets just say that 2016 was a very frustrating year for Finding Feasts. Not only were there NO mushrooms to forage for but accessing our blog (no thanks to our old hosting partner) was a nightmare.

I am pleased to say that yes, we are back!

Now back to my recipe. Farm cheese or farmers cheese is something that takes me back to my childhood. Mum used to farm cheese fresh from the local deli or make it from milk that would go sour before it was boiled.

True Polish farm cheese has a white curd like texture and a slightly sour smell, it is often used for making cheese cake and our famous pierogi (take note…no ‘s’ on the end!) I am not quite sure when mum first found it at the deli here in Australia, but when she did I was in heaven, especially when she made me a plate of farm cheese pierogi, smothered in a burnt butter sauce with sprinkles of sugar and cinnamon.

I have been wanting to make my own farm cheese for a while now but didnt know how to until I cam across this recipe by fellow Polish blogger Martyna Angell from Wholesome-cooke.com. Her blog is amazing! This is her recipe.

Buttermilk is expensive at $2.70 per 600 ml, however this is my treat. I use two 600 ml cartons to produce about 500 grams of fresh farm cheese in about 2 hours.

My favourite at the very moment is fresh farm cheese on rye bread with chives.

It’s great to be back blogging!

Bella

FinSki's Poppy Seed Pate Cake with Baked Ricotta1 — Click on image for full recipe

This is a Polish marriage made in heaven! Poppy seed cheesecake or as I now call it, Poppy seed pate cake with Baked Ricotta!

You might remember that a while ago I came across this tub of poppy seed pate mixture at my local continental grocer.

Happily handing over my cash to the register operator I ran home and ogled hundreds of recipes for poppy seed mixtures. Most of them called for ingredients that I didn’t have and being a Sunday I was determined to not have to venture out into the shops again.

My pantry had Anzac biscuits that had a week left prior to the use by date and sugar. In the fridge I had butter, a kilo of ricotta and eggs.

What on earth did you do with the Anzac biscuits I hear you ask?

Well, as crazy as it sounds they were the base for the cake, a baked base! At first when I put all the ingredients together I had a mini melt down, I remembered that when you typically make a cheesecake base with digestive biscuits, you don’t bake the base. You let it set with the cheese on top.

With my cheesecake about to go into the oven, I couldn’t give up now, no matter how large the error was!

When the cake was in the oven at 180º C the butter melted slightly and leaked onto the bottom of the oven tray, but once the cake cooled down my baked Anzac biscuit base was amazing. The hard set biscuit base complemented the softness of the baked ricotta and poppy seed pate.

The rest of the cake was divine too!

Will I make this exactly the same again…hell yes!

What errors have you made in the kitchen that have ended up working out ok?

Bella

Tag: Ser

Farm Cheese

Poppy Seed Pate Cake with Baked Ricotta