March-ing to Zion

Easter Time. That's right. The end of March. Easter is a movable feast determined by a lunar calendar. So we celebrate Easter on the Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. The Spring Equinox, which determines the First Day of Spring occurred on March 20th this year, the full moon on March 27th, and here we are.

None of the Apostles celebrated Easter, but Jewish Christians began celebrating it as a part of the Passover celebration (as you remember, that's why Jesus was in town) and it later spread to Gentile Christians. For the first 300 years of Christianity, Christians determined the date of Easter based on the date of Passover which starts on the 15th of Nisan. In 325, during our favorite Ecumenical Council, the Council of Nicaea, the attendant bishops uncoupled Easter from the Hebrew Calendar.

For those of you straining to find a mention of the Easter Bunny in the epistles, the tradition of an Easter Hare comes from the territory of Alsace, which also gave us World War One. Rabbits were long thought to be hermaphrodites which could self impregnate. Therefore, capable of immaculate conception, they were associated with the Virgin Mary. Which is gross.

Doing it Levant Style
To celebrate, we made the Levant's most popular cheese, Labneh, or as they call it in Isreal, breakfast. Also known as Yogurt Cheese, you make it by draining the whey from Yogurt.

Following the emminent Dr. Fankhauser's instructions, I boiled my cheesecloth for ten minutes to sterilize it. Boiling for a minute kills bacteria, sure, but ten minutes kills the endospores. And it's the endospores that scare me.

I then whisked the yogurt into a creamy consistency and added a teaspoon of salt. After thoroughly mixing the salt into the yogurt, I poured it into the sterilized cheesecloth. One hundred percent of the yogurt ran through the cheesecloth. So I went back and actually read what the good doctor had to say about cheesecloth. He said what they call cheesecloth at your local Schnucks is useless. It makes for a good bouquet garni, but fails to catch your curds. So, I can make Coq au Vin until I'm bleu in the face, mais le fromage, non.

I had to cut a huge square out of a white shirt and boil that. I have since purchased white cloth napkins for the next batch.

I suspended the little baggie of yogurt to let the whey drain.

I left it in the fridge for 24 hours.

I got a little over two cups of whey from my yogurt. In cheesemaking, two cups of whey is considered one wheam. You can retain the whey to distill your own whey protein powder, but that's time consuming and doesn't yield very large quantities. It takes three wheams to make a quarter cup of whey protein concentrate. That is, a quarter cup whey concentrate = a wheam of whey, a wheam of whey, a wheam of whey.

Aine told me not to do it. I couldn't help myself.

After 24 hours, we removed the labneh from the fridge and scraped it out of the cloth, it made about a cup.

We added some olive oil and rosemary and enjoyed it on some homemade whole wheat bread.

It actually tasted really good. Will eat again. If you want to make your own, but don't want to go through the hassle of making your own yogurt, you can just buy a quart of yogurt and strain out the whey. L'Chaim!

Next Time on Cheesing with Jabbo:
Neufchatel, an unripened rennet cheese from Normandy.