Queijo Manteiga

[queijao666]

This is a cheese from northern Brazil that I ate when living there, interesting and tasty and might be a fun project for someone who wants to try something new. Its made from raw curdled milk and without rennet, drained, then cooked in fresh milk, and then cooked further with clarified butter until it gets absorbed, then put into molds. I'm going to try making it with a bit of culture and pasteurized milk since even though good raw milk is available where I am, I'm not brave enough to try and do it the traditional way.

https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/northern-manteiga-cheese/

https://www.sertaobras.org.br/enciclopedia/queijo-manteiga/

This is a web translation page of a good recipe, there are a lot of bizarre recipes now that use corn starch and other things to mimic the cheese.

http://www.almanaqueculinario.com.br/receita/queijo-de-manteiga-21283

Here is a somewhat rambling video of a woman making it in the traditional way, although she only describes the way she collects the curds over several days and drains them, and she spends a lot of time making the butter while the filmmaker rambles. Its not super important to understand the video, its more about watching what she does. This is what I saw myself when living there although I wasn't as interested in the technique then as I am now lol. The clarified butter is also something you can watch videos about, its like ghee but often much more pungent and is used for many traditional recipes in that part of Brazil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjJ_rYTxExs

Manteiga da terra/da garrafa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manteiga-da-terra

[mikekchar]

A cheese for you for this.  I'm definitely interested!  Lately I've been wanting to do more lactic cheeses, so this is perfect (if I can get butter, that is...  Sometimes there are butter shortages in Japan....)

[queijao666]

Groovy, my first cheese;) Yeah, what appeals to me about this cheese is the various techniques together, making something a lot more unusual than just a fresh cheese, or a lactic cheese that won't be aged with mold. Its sort of like making quark that is quite tangy, especially if you ripen at the warm room temperature that would mimic hot Brazil, then washing the drained curds in hot milk, like a washed curd cheese, and then mixing in the hot clarified cultured butter until its a smooth concoction. I don't think the cheese is meant to last much past a week even in a fridge, I almost always ate it in a grilled sandwich or just as tasty slices, kind of like american cheese (but it is better than that lol).

If you can get good nonhomogenized milk there, you could try making your own cultured butter with the skimmed cream and then clarifying it yourself for this cheese. That's probably what I'll do, as I think it would be more in the spirit of the cheese and save me the cost of buying a good quality cultured butter.

[mikekchar]

Milk is crazy expensive here: $4 per *liter*.  I'd need a bank loan to get enough milk to make butter :-)  However, I *did* notice that sometimes I can get cream on sale.  Cultured butter is pretty expensive here as well ($5 per 100g???) so I might be able to get the price down a bit.  I have a friend who claims to know someone with a dairy.  I'm hoping that some day I'll be able to buy milk directly from there.  However, usually farm gate prices are insane (like $10 per liter) because they sell it in conjunction with bus tours to the farm (and Japanese people will pay any amount of money for a unique edible souvenir).

[queijao666]

Wow that is pricey, that is more like what I would pay here for the best quality raw milk. I mostly make moldy cheeses, and its a very satisfying return for one gallon recipes using very reasonably priced nonhomogenized vat pasteurized milk, to produce cheeses that definitely cost more if I want to buy them. I have an acquaintance who works for an artisan cheesemaker nearby, and my camembert and valençay have turned out well enough to please him and cost a lot less for me to make than to buy. I think if I were in your situation I would probably not want to risk making something like caerphilly lol, my two gallon recipe did not make a big cheese, but it won't deplete my hobby budget even if it doesn't turn out completely as hoped for.

[mikekchar]

Well, cheese is even more expensive than milk here.  Mass produced cheddar from New Zealand goes for $5 for 90 grams!  Japanese cheese (other than Camembert style) is just as expensive.  150 grams of gouda costs $8.  Cheese just isn't popular here.  So I can sort of justify it.  But to be honest, my grocery store sells the milk for half price on the day before it expires, so normally I wait for it to go on sale.  But lately the store only brings in 3 liters at all and I'm lucky if there is 1 liter left at expiry time.  Interestingly, the best before date is only 7 days after milking.  So $2 per liter for 6 day old milk is not that bad.  Last year, I had the same trouble getting milk and I *think* it's because the farms are calving right now.  Mid June last year the store was innundated with milk (they were bringing in 15 liters at a time and probably only selling 2 or 3).  Hopefully the same thing will happen again.  I'm worried that Covid-19 has stopped the distribution of milk, though.