I am not a master yogurt-maker by any stretch of the imagination. Streptococcus thermophilus (as the name suggests) loves heat. But if you get it too hot, it will die. This last batch, instead of trying to play it safe at the low end of thermophilus's temperature range, I cranked it up and started working with the high end of the bacteria's heat tolerance. My thermometer kept fogging up, so I kept having to rinse it and restart my measurements. Which meant I was far hazier than I would have liked on the exact temperature of the milk and the heating bath in the cooler. (I got a cooler this time, because I was tired of making perfectly good yogurt and letting it sit in a too-cold house overnight.)
But it survived. I'm pretty sure if I do it all over again, I'll run the risk of killing my starter, but in a few more batches I think I'll get good and comfortable with it. (As an added bonus, everyone in the family will have enough sour cream substitute, soup thickener, fro-yo, and smoothies to last them a lifetime.)
Who ever thought that cooking up a batch of bacteria could be so exciting? (Or stressful?)
So, here comes recipe #2. Labneh. Hopefully, this won't prove to be as tricky as yogurt was for me.
I'm going to copy the recipe down in my journal in case anything ever happens to that beautiful, wonderfully informative website. (Have you ever noticed, it's always the websites with the best info that suddenly seem to shut down when you most need to find that recipe/chunk of information?)
Anyway, after copying that. I'm gonna pull out my newly purchased gentleman's handkerchief and make myself some yogurt cheese. Blue cheese, here I come!
PS: So I started making the labneh, and it looked so pretty sitting in the fridge, surrounded by veggies and healthy-type things, that I totally had to show it off. So, here you go: Labneh! (I still don't know how to pronounce the word... oh well.)
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