Homemade Cottage Cheese

This way of making a homemade cottage cheese is more traditional Ukrainian, then a modern one. Back in Ukraine, I used to make a cottage cheese myself a numerous time. It is very simple. Fresh raw milk I left on my counter in a room temperature for a day. When the milk turned out to, how we call it, a sour milk, I just transferred it to the pot and left on a low heat. In approximately 15-20 min actual cottage cheese started to separate from the milk and went on top, surrounded by liquid we called syrovatka - whey. Just like on this picture:

Then I shut of the stove and dumped everything what is in the pot on a colander covered with a cheese cloth and waited while liquid will drain. Done! We have a nice homemade cottage cheese now!

In Ukrainian cooking culture, cottage cheese is big - one of the signature dishes of Ukrainians are pyrogy (varenyky) with a cottage cheese. Also, we make crepes rolled with cottage cheese and cottage cheese pancakes; we do lots of baking goodies with it, we just eat it as a separate dish mixed with sour cream (very often with addition of green onion, cucumbers and tomatoes).

So, when I moved to Canada I had a really hard time here to find a perfect cottage cheese that would taste like Ukrainian one. Only one time in 8 years (!) I had exactly the same, perfectly made, moist, with little sourness, not grainy, nice and smooth cottage cheese - at the house of our friends in Alberta. They got it from their friend-farmer. And - that's it! In 8 years! Until other my friends from BC gave me the idea how I can do my homemade cottage cheese here, in Canada. I have developed this idea, improved it a little and - voilà! I love it!

So, how I make it. Exactly the same way how I used to make my Ukrainian one (back to my description below), only instead of sour milk I use 1 litre of buttermilk plus 1 litre of plain Liberte kefir. I dump it in a pot and put it on a low heat - if you have an electric stove, it is number 3 of a temperature grade. 15-20 min, and my cottage cheese is starting to separate. Yay! Then a regular action - draining from whey, let it cool down, then cover it and store in a fridge up to four days. Also, you can freeze it if you would like to keep for longer.

Oh, and there is a lot of whey left. Not a problem at all for me - I make my pyrogy (varenyky) dough with whey, also I make a crepe dough on a base of whey, and I just love to bake a bread on a whey starter. So, nothing wasted in a good household :)

Well, that's it about the cottage cheese for today. Such a simple recipe and such a long story :) Anyway, we have a cottage cheese feast tonight - here is our salad with it! Plus a little bit of sour cream, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes - yummm!

Smachnogo! (which means Bon Appetit in Ukrainian)