TRUFFLE BOOK RECIPES

Steps:

• To make our own cream cheese, first we need to boil the milk. If you are going to use raw milk, you have to keep the milk over 72 C (162 F) for about 15seconds or boil for 2-3 minutes. If you are using pasteurized milk as I do, just boiling it will be enough.
• Boil 2 liters of milk on high heat, then turn the heat down to the lowest when it’s at boiling point, and pour 1 lemon juice over it. You will see the curdle form immediately. At this point, don’t stir too much and wait for curdle to gather.
• When the milk curdles and the green layer appears, collect the curdle with a sieve.
• While the cheese is still hot add salt to taste. At this point, you already made a cheese and it is called ‘lor’ in Turkish. Don’t let the leftover water waste. You can use it to make soup, give it to your pets, water your plants with it, or even for drink it yourself.
• To make the plain cream cheese, put the warm curdle in a food processor. Add 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and more salt if you so desire. This step should be done while the cheese is still hot. This is important to keep the cheese creamy and smooth.
• Pulse the food processor for about 3 minutes until the cheese becomes smooth, continue for a few more minutes if there’s still granules in the cheese. After you’re done with this process, enjoy your homemade cream cheese!
• For truffle oil cream cheese, you can spare half of your cream cheese, or boil 1 liter of pasteurized daily whole milk from scratch and curdle it with a half lemon’s juice. After the same sieving steps as above, add the cheese, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and salt to taste into the food processor while the cheese is still hot. Pulse it again for 3 mins.
• After making cream cheese, add 1,5 tablespoons of truffle oil into the food processor and pulse until the cheese becomes completely smooth. We didn’t add the truffle oil when cheese is really hot to prevent the truffle oil from getting cooked.
• For basil-walnut cream cheese,
• curdle 2 liters of milk by following the steps above. While it is hot, put into the food processor and add 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons of butter at room temperature, and salt to your taste.
• Pulse the food processor until the cheese becomes completely smooth. After that, transfer the cheese to a large bowl to cool down. Otherwise, hot cheese will darken the basil.
• Wash and dry a small bunch of basil and chop roughly. Don’t forget the take thick stems out.
• Roughly chop a handful of walnuts as well.
• Mix the walnut and basil with cream cheese, make sure you give it a good mix.
• Then wrinkle a baking paper and lay it out on the counter. Wrinkles will help the paper not to roll back on itself.
• Spread the cheese on the bottom quarter of the paper and roll it into a giant sausage.
• Twist both ends.
• Refrigerate for 3-4 hours to harden, so to you will be able to slice the cheese.
• After that, remove it from the refrigerator, and enjoy your homemade basil-walnut cream cheese. Bon appetit! or afiyet olsun! As we say in Turkish.