By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Handmade boar salami....home-cured olives...wine grown in the back yard....fat, juicy venison sausages.

We ate this—and much, much more—on Saturday at the home of Hank Shaw, a political writer, and his partner, Holly Heyser, a journalism professor at Sacramento State.

Hank was also nominated for the James Beard blog award this year. We shared a table with him and Holly and his mom at the awards ceremony in New York back in May, and really enjoyed their company and like-mindedness. Hank writes fascinating accounts of making food from scratch, which in his case involves hunting and fishing as well as gardening. Holly grew up hunting in Minnesota and has a blog of her own about, as she says, "acquiring food the hard way."

Talk about a gracious guy. Even though he lost to us, he invited us to a cookout at his place on the east side of Sacramento. 

Dinner fell on what turned out to be a fearsomely scorching day in his neighborhood—as in, 108 F°. Nonetheless, a small group of us One-Blockers left our cool coastal habitat behind, lured by his promise of wild game.

A Wild Feast

The minute we walked in the door, Hank had his homemade and very respectable sangiovese ready for pouring, and a glistening array of things to eat:

* Good home-cured olives, which I found impressive since we've tried to make them ourselves, without success (yet!)
* Hank's own pickled beets, carrots, and sunchokes
* Totally delicious shad rillettes—a sort of loose pâté, traditionally made with pork or rabbit but here with  tasty local shad that Hank caught with his dad recently on the American River. I had no idea that shad existed in the West. I thought they were strictly an East Coast species. Now I'm hankering to catch some shad myself. (Their roe are particularly amazing, fyi.)
* Excellent saucisson sec, a dry salami from a wild boar Hank bagged in Monterey County. Secret ingredient: 1974 Heitz Cellars Angelica, made from Mission grapes. This fortified wine was the first wine made in California back in the 1700s.
* Lonzino, air-cured from the loin of above boar—more delicate and thinly sliced, so it looked like rose petals
* Fennel- and ouzo-cured salmon, made with an Alaskan pink salmon caught by one of Hank's friends

Bear in mind, these were just the appetizers. I hadn't seen snacks so hefty since my New Year's in Moscow, when I noshed on an enormous spread of zakuski.

After a fully appreciating all that was on the table, we presented Hank with a couple of just-baked fruit pies, plus gifts from the One-Block Diet: last year's honey from hive Veronica and this spring's honey from Midge, plus a bottle of red-wine vinegar and some fresh eggs from the flock.

Then he took us on a tour of their abode.

The Tour

The first guided look-around of a person's house is always fun, isn't it? It's especially interesting when the place is full of strange and quirky stuff. Hank and Holly live in that kind of house, and seeing how Hank makes his food only increased our pleasure in eating it.

Hank's homemade wine, hanging out with the books.
Each carboy holds one varietal; included here are
Tempranillo, Sangiovese, and deep, dark
Portuguese Touriga.The two tiny carboys in back are
Zinfandel, which Hank made from his own grapes
(the rest used grapes he bought).

The garden, where Hank grows everything from beets
to heat-resistant romaine to salsify. 

It occupies a chunk of their 1/4-acre back yard,
but there's plenty of space to grow more stuff. We
semi-seriously suggested he try growing wheat—
since he actually has the space for it.

A few of Hank's vines (I think these are mainly Zinfandel).
More grapes grow against a far wall.

In the garage, garden zucchini dry on a rack.
Several ripe figs were set out to dry on a work
surface nearby.

And best of all...

The "curing fridge"—a battered but useful appliance
in the garage, equipped with a thermostat control
and a teeny humidifier (at bottom right).

 

Hank at the grill while we gab under the tree.

Hank slowly and tenderly grilled a slew of those venison sausages until they were shiny, taut, and on the verge of bursting. The rest of us sat around under the big shady tree just beyond and gabbed for a while.

The Dinner

We went indoors—merciful air conditioning!—and feasted on those sausages, stuffed into giant buns with homemade pickles; firm, meaty marinated octopus liberally seasoned with paprika; two pasta salads—one with the couscous-like Sardinian pasta called fregola, studded with bocconcini (tiny fresh mozzarella balls), and the other with barley and sundried tomatoes—and a lovely, simple little beet salad with feta cheese and lovage. So much care and generosity went into this dinner. Hank even made the paprika. As in, he grew the peppers, dried them, and ground them. Having made our own salt, we knew this wasn't as crazy as it sounds. These kinds of things are worth doing, if for no other reason that it makes you really, really appreciate paprika and salt.

Hank served his honey lemon-verbena ice cream, I cut up the pies, and we chewed our last bites in a semi-stupor. Hank brought out some little glasses filled with that precious 1974 Heitz Angelica, which tasted surprisingly similar to Italian nocino, a walnut liqueur. Delicious. 

Then Hank and Holly, pied pipers that they are, ushered us into what they proudly call their Opium Den. It's a library with deep pink walls, a comfy sofa, a fireplace, and a mantle adorned with bare skulls of past game. As we sank into the sofa, Hank plied us with homemade absinthe. Yow. You could practically see the fumes emerging from our lips as we tried it. It only took a couple of sips to finish us off.

We eased into our cars and drove home, sated from head to toe and marveling at all that Hank and Holly do. Before we left, they accepted our invitation to munch freshly baked pizzas from our brand-new wood-fired oven, topped, naturally, with whatever will be ripest and most flavorful in the One-Block garden. Coming soon.

UPDATE: Here's what Hank wrote about the evening (and you can see the food he made, too).

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Last Sunday, Erika Ehmsen, Johanna Silver, Amy Machnak, and I sat in a darkened theater at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, nerves tingling. As some of you know, we'd been nominated—along with fellow one-block-diet bloggers Elizabeth Jardina, Rick LaFrentz, and Margaret Sloan—for a James Beard Journalism award.

Since we were sitting at a table near the exit sign, way way at the back, I was sure we wouldn't win. After all, no one would put us here if we were actually meant to get to the stage in any reasonable amount of time. I gently suggested that everyone just relax and enjoy dinner and give up the dream of winning an award.

So we did, and got to know our tablemates—fellow nominee Hank Shaw; his wife, Holly; and his lovely mother--all come from Sacramento. Hank writes a very entertaining, knowledgeable, pull-no-punches blog called Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Like us, he's trying to show how possible it is for you to make your own food — from scratch. He tends to hunt and forage, we tend to garden and make wine, but the intention is very much the same. We felt glad to be sharing our table with a kindred spirit.

Then Kelly Choi, announcing the winners for the award ahead of ours (for Audio Webcast or Radio Show), accidentally opened the wrong envelope. "Erika Ehmsen, Elizabeth..." Oh, my lord. She'd flubbed, but we knew we'd won. Whoever got the Audio Webcast award, well, sorry, dude, our screaming completely drowned out your moment. Then we ran to the stage. (Ok, Erika walked. She's pregnant and wise.)

Hank Shaw's mother very kindly took this picture of us accepting our award:

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

We’re looking over a four-leaf clover that Chicago’s French Pastry School sent to wish us luck at this Sunday’s James Beard Foundation Awards. (Thanks, guys!) Four of us are headed to New York for the ceremony, and we’re excited and nervous—and not just about what to wear!

Our One-Block project is in great company in the Best Food Blog category: Our fellow nominees are Bon Appétit columnist Andrew Knowlton’s The BA Foodist and Sacramento omnivore Hank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, which takes locavore to a near-complete DIY level. We’re looking forward to swapping stories with Shaw, Knowlton, and all of the other food and wine writers we’ll be meeting this weekend.

Want to hear who we’re talking to and find out if we win? We’ll be posting live updates from the Media Awards ceremony on Sunset’s Twitter page. Sign up to follow us by clicking here—it’s free, easy, fun, and admittedly a bit addictive. Wish us luck, and see you on the Interweb!

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Bacon, tomato, and warm, gooey Carmody, from Bellwether Farms in Sonoma, CA. Photograph by Iain Bagwell; styling by Randy Mon

We love local cheese (including our own). To celebrate local Western cheesemakers, we're going to publish a Great Grilled Cheese Sandwich story in our July issue. Who will create these crunchy, melting beauties?

You, our readers!

Yes, this an open invitation to all of you to send us your favorite grilled cheese sandwich recipes, preferably using Western cheese(s).  If we choose your concoction, you'll get a cheese-filled gift basket. And the glory of getting published in Sunset, of course.

To enter, send your original recipe to sunset.com/submitrecipe OR Grilled Cheese Contest, Sunset magazine, 80 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025.

Deadline: April 13. 

We're standing by, waiting to try your killer grilled cheese sandwich.

Excuse us while we do a little crowing.

We've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award! Yes, this very blog.

The category is: Blog Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurants, or Nutrition. (Yep, that sounds like us.) The winner will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on May 3.

And this is right on the heels of the news that our One-Block Feast story from August '08 was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award.

Spring is feeling very springy indeed.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Good news! Our print story last August about our summer one-block feast, We Had a Dream, has been nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) journalism award.

To read our story, click here.

We're thrilled about the nomination, since the IACP has thousands of members—and other nominees include such food-magazine luminaries as Gourmet, Saveur, and Food & Wine. The winners of the awards will be announced at a gala ceremony in Denver on April 4.

We'll let you know how we do!

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

We began with salad, wheatberry ciabatta, and homemade butter.

Our winter feast started with a happy accident.

Back in September, Team Kitchen and Team Garden drew up a list of cool-season crops that would do well in our area, and planned a menu around it. First we'd have a salad of Belgian endive and escarole, with a fresh poached egg on top and croutons from extremely homemade wheat bread (as in, we grew the wheat and ground it).

Well, the endive never sprouted. And we couldn't find escarole seeds. Who knew there'd be a run on escarole seeds?

Moral: Be flexible. Johanna, our test garden coordinator, had also planted some red butterhead lettuce and arugula, so Team Kitchen adapted.

It was easy; the lettuces were beautiful. We hardcooked the egg instead of poaching it, because a liquidy poached yolk, great on crisp endive and escarole, would've turned the tender lettuces into a sticky clump. We added small chunks of sweet, juicy tangerines from our tree, garlic-rubbed croutons, and a vinaigrette made with tangerine juice, our olive oil, and sea salt.

Red butterhead lettuce and arugula salad with tangerines and hard-cooked eggs.

We had plenty of wine to go with the food. The Syrah was in bottle at last and had recovered from its bottle-shock; it was back to its original blackberry suaveness. The Chardonnay still tasted fine—like a crisp green apple.

Sunset Chardonnay and Syrah, left; right, wine editor Sara Schneider sips the white as managing editor Alan Phinney tears off a chunk of ciabatta. (By the way, that construction site you see through the windows here will be a big outdoor kitchen, to be completed by June.
Come to our Celebration Weekend and see it for yourself.)

The stunning brassicas from the garden—cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, Savoy cabbage, kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens—gave us our main courses: a winter vegetable chowder and spicy braised greens with preserved lemon.

Our chowder was packed with cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, and broccoli rabe,
plus a few potatoes saved from fall. On top: broccoli rabe flowers and purple rosemary blooms.

Braised Savoy cabbage, mustard greens, and
Tuscan kale with preserved lemon and chile.

The broccoli romanesco was so beautiful and strange that we used it as decor, too.

We ended not with our original dessert—olive oil tangerine cake, which turned out to be a total clunker given we were destroying the original recipe—but with something that arose naturally from our short list of available ingredients, which included honey, eggs, "imported" cream, and tangerines.

 

Tangerine honey crème caramel.

We had a very nice afternoon.

Recipe editor Amy Machnak and researcher Elizabeth Jardina.

Test garden coordinator Johanna Silver in the middle of
what must've been a vivid story.

Me (at left) and copy chief Erika Ehmsen.

SO WHERE ARE THE RECIPES?

They and the story of how we raised the ingredients for this winter menu will be showing up in larger form at some point in the months ahead—I promise.

For now, please have some salad. It's hearty enough to eat when it's cold, but bright and lively, too—which suits our California March, the month when winter slides into spring.

Red Butterhead Lettuce and Arugula Salad with Tangerines and Hard-Cooked Eggs

MAKES 6 to 8 servings TIME About 1 hour

We used our own chickens’ eggs, but we let them sit in the fridge for at least a week to let the air pocket inside each shell expand and make the eggs easier to peel.

6 to 8 eggs (not super-fresh)
2 tsp. fresh tangerine juice
1/2 tsp. each finely grated tangerine zest and sea salt
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 to 4 thin slices wheatberry ciabatta or other whole wheat bread,
     cut into 1/2-in. dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste with 1/4 tsp. sea salt
5 loosely packed cups arugula leaves
6 loosely packed cups red butterhead lettuce leaves
     (about 1/2 small head)
2 large or 4 small tangerines

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Put eggs in a small pot and cover with about 1 in. of water. Bring to a boil; immediately lower heat to a simmer and cook 10 minutes. When eggs are finished, transfer to ice water; let cool 1 minute. Crack eggs all over on counter and return to ice water for 5 minutes. Peel under cold water. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, whisk tangerine juice, zest, and salt together in a small bowl. Whisk in 1/4 cup olive oil. Set aside.
3. In a heatproof cup, microwave remaining 1/4 cup olive oil with mashed garlic for 10 seconds. Put bread cubes on a baking pan and drizzle with garlic oil, tossing to coat. Spread in a single layer and bake about 15 minutes, or until crisp, stirring once or twice. Set aside.
4. Rinse greens and dry twice in a salad spinner. Peel tangerines and remove thready white pith; then cut fruit crosswise into chunks, removing any seeds.
5. In a large bowl, toss greens gently but thoroughly with only enough dressing to coat. Add tangerines and croutons and toss just to mix. Divide salad among plates. Add a quartered egg to each plate and drizzle eggs with a little more dressing. Or pile it all on a platter if you like, so people can help themselves.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Four of our chicks at about two weeks old, back in August of 2007.

If you've been enjoying our blog posts about our various one-block feast projects, and don't yet know about our downloadable how-to guides for each, check them out by clicking on the one that interests you.

The Guides:

How to Raise Chickens

How to Make Beer

How to Make Olive Oil

How to Raise Honeybees

How to Make Wine

How to Make Vinegar

How to Make Salt

How to Grow Summer Crops

How We Made Cheese

How to Attract Beneficial Insects (we threw this one in just for fun, and because it's helpful)

Send us your comments, if you like...and stay tuned for the launch of new projects as we head into spring.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Several years ago, I spent some time in Finland, writing a story about a Finnish family and their summer food traditions. They had a cozy pine-scented house on an island in the Southern Finnish archipelago. A freestanding sauna lay a few hundred feet away, and below it, a small dock from which you could plunge your sauna-steamed body into the frigid Baltic Sea. They went mushroom- and berry-picking regularly and had giant crawfish feasts whenever they could.

They also made their own fresh cheese. To them it was as routine as blending a smoothie might be for us. Pia, the mother of the family, whipped it up one night in 20 minutes, and it was the first time I thought of cheese as something the average person could actually do.

She also had a handy square mold into which she packed the cheese, with a decoratively ridged bottom (to imprint the top of the cheese) and a channel on the inside edge for draining the curds. As soon as I got back to Helsinki, I bought one.

My Finnish cheese mold.

Once home, I put it in my Culinary Curiosities closet (i.e. the closet in the spare bedroom) where it mingled with a curvy Turkish glass teacup, my Indian bread-rolling board, and some panettone liners from Italy. I planned to use it someday, really.

Three days ago, it rose in my memory as I was thinking about making a batch of the Fresh Chive Cheese from our One-Block Diet summer feast. Instead of rolling the cheese into a log, I'd put it in my Finnish cheese mold.

As long as I was at it, I changed the recipe a little, too. This time around, I mixed in chervil and tarragon along with the chives, and lots of lemon zest as well as the lemon juice used for curdling. And some red chile flakes.

I skipped the kneading step and put the seasoned curds right in the cheese-cloth–lined box, covered it with its lid, and put 4 pounds of weight on top. The whole thing went in a big metal bowl to catch drips, and then into the fridge.

Curds in the box, left. Right, two weights (totalling 4 lbs.) compact the curds into sliceable cheese.

A few hours later and with a drizzle of olive oil on top, it was ready: Fresh lemon herb cheese.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Here's what we're giving for Christmas this year:

Photograph by Spencer Toy

Yes! The fruits of our summer one-block diet.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

At last, after much trial and error, we eat! See how our crops became a summer feast. | Jump to the recipes.

Coming up next: How we're eating from the garden every day.

Veggie-garden primer | Sunset guides to growing edibles

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Yesterday, a large package marked "PERISHABLE" arrived in our test kitchen. The fromage blanc we made at Cowgirl Creamery had arrived. Would it be noticeably novice-like?

Team Cheese's Fromage Blanc, fresh (in tubs) and aged, made two weeks ago at Cowgirl Creamery.

They sure looked good. And I must say they tasted wonderful. The fresh cheese was tangy and pure-tasting, yet luxurious--like very creamy yogurt. And the little aged cylinder had the texture of super-dense cheesecake, with a velvety ripe layer just beginning to appear beneath the rind and the slightest mushroomy flavor. They tasted worthy of Cowgirl.

We have the recipes. We have our notes. Now if we can just make these, or something approximating them, by ourselves...

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

How lucky we are that Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, of Cowgirl Creamery, have agreed to be consultants for Team Cheese. They make some of the best cheeses in the country. Not only that, they've been mentors to many other cheesemakers, and do all they can to support the growth of good artisan cheese in America.

They've also agreed to give us a cheesemaking lesson! This is like Rafael Nadal saying he'll help you work on your serve.

Cowgirl Creamery's barn in Pt. Reyes Station, CA.

         Sue Conley (left) and Peggy Smith.   

Our "Class" at Cowgirl: Fromage Blanc and Cottage Cheese

Bright and early last Monday, Sue Conley and Cowgirl cheesemaker Jonathan White met us at Cowgirl's Pt. Reyes facility. We started out like any sensible cooks do, by reviewing the recipes.

                                  

Together, we review the recipes we'll make today.

First up: fromage blanc, a soft, mildly tart, spreadable fresh cheese. (It's great on toast with honey.) Jonathan had already pasteurized the milk the day before, added culture (to help preserve the cheese, create flavor, and develop texture) and rennet (a coagulant; they use chymosin, a microbial rennet), and let the milk sit overnight to ripen.

"With hard cheese, all flavor develops in the aging room," says Sue, wearing her usual adorable French cheesemaker's cap. "With fresh cheese, flavor develops as it's coagulating, long and slow."

Now, at 9 a.m., the fromage blanc has finally formed soft curds. Our task: to pour those curds into cheesecloth-lined colanders and let them drain.

                                                Pouring the fromage blanc curds.

                           

Associate Food Editor Elaine Johnson, with fromage blanc curds.

 

"You can put that colander right over a bucket, too," says Sue. "You get whey, and you can use that to make ricotta."

I'm noticing how much attention is paid to cleanliness around here. All the equipment is sparkling stainless steel. The sink is full of bleach solution for scrubbing equipment and floors. All of us are wearing hairnets, and our shoes are covered with paper booties. Cleanliness is absolutely essential for cheesemaking—almost an ingredient in and of itself—since so much of a cheesemaker's job consists of controlling bacteria. Let the right microbes thrive, and you have good cheese; let the wrong ones invade, and your cheeses are inedible.

Every now and then, we'll stir the curds so that they drain evenly (if we  don't do this, the outside will dry out first).

While our fromage blanc drains, we start in on the cottage cheese. Cowgirl's cottage cheese is a rich, creamy, small-curd type that, amazingly enough, starts with nonfat milk.

"Cottage cheese was a farm cheese you'd make after churning butter," says Jonathan. "Because it was something you could do with skim milk." Aha. So it gets its name from all the nameless cottages in which thrifty rural women have produced this cheese. 

As with the fromage blanc, the milk ripens overnight. It gets a sprinkling of culture (in powdered form, from a little packet), to develop the flavor just like a bread starter would, but no rennet. At Cowgirl, this ripening happens in a big steel bath with hollow walls that fill with hot steam, controlling the milk's temperature.

Now Jonathan slowly raises the temperature of the milk. It takes about half an hour to get it to 90°F. How the heck are we going to do this back at Sunset, without a giant steam-jacketed steel tub? I wonder. "You could try a bain-marie," suggests Sue. Good idea. We will.

At 90°F, the cheese is ready to be cut, using a very large, delicate-looking rake-like object (the cheese harp) to slice the curd into 1/2" squares.

                                    

Recipe Editor Amy Machnak rakes cottage cheese curds.

Then it needs to "heal" for 10 minutes. This means that each tiny curd square rapidly forms a protective skin, which will become a plump, distinct morsel of cottage cheese.

The temperature, meanwhile, continues to rise in the vat, to 110, then 130--very, very gently. Every five minutes or so, we stir the curd very gently with a large slotted spoon, to encourage moisture release.

At 130°F., the curds have shrunken quite a bit, and look like bits of pasta floating in lime soup.

Jonathan pumps cold water through the vat's jacket, rapidly cooling the cheese; at the same time, he turns on an overhead sprinkler to rinse it and reduce the acidity. Then they're left to drain for an hour or so. In a home kitchen, you'd just rinse the curds with cold water and let them drain in a colander, says Sue.

The Last Steps to Fromage Blanc

We scoop the mostly-drained fromage blanc into perforated tumbler-size plastic molds and sprinkle them with salt.

                                            Me, packing fromage blanc into molds.

They should be filled almost all the way to the top, because the cheese will shrink as it continues to drain. Some we spray with candida mold, which will give the cheese a soft, downy, delicate white rind. (This is how Cowgirl makes its Inverness cheese.) The rind development will take several days.

                        

The fromage blanc, undergoing its final drain (another few hours).

When finished, it'll have a wonderfully rich texture, similar to that of cream cheese but lighter.

The Last Steps to Cottage Cheese

Jonathan has moved all those itty bitty curds over into sturdy plastic tubs on tables. All that's left to do is to salt the curds and then mix in a rich, creamy dressing of half cultured milk and half creme fraiche.

                                                Sue does the final mixing.

The cottage cheese is like nothing we've ever tasted from the grocery store. It makes us realize that we've only known weary, stale, plasticky cottage cheese...how can we ever go back?

We leave with tubs of fresh cottage cheese, Sue's promise to send us our finished fromage blanc (both fresh and ripened), and a determination to, yes, try making these at home.

We'll let you know how it works out.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

After fiddling around with gallons of milk, many lemons from our tree, homemade salt, and several different types of herbs from the garden, we've decided to make two cheeses for our one-block-diet summer feast: fresh chive cheese (firm, for slicing) and oregano queso blanco (crumbly, for sprinkling).

FRESH CHIVE CHEESE

TIME: About 2 1/2 hours (45 minutes active time)
MAKES: A 7-in. log (about 2 in. diameter)

We wanted to make our own version of caprese salad (ripe tomatoes + basil + mozzarella), but found out that mozzarella isn't the easiest cheese for beginners to tackle. So we adapted this simple recipe from one in Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making (Storey Publishing, 2002), for the Indian cheese called chenna. It's really fun to make: once you have curds, you gather them up and knead them, just as you would bread dough, until they're satiny smooth. We added herbs and salt, rolled the curds into a log shape, chilled it, and sliced it into rounds. We're planning to layer it with lots of different kinds of tomatoes, our own basil, and vinaigrette made with our own olive oil and vinegar (and a drop of our own honey).

1 gal. whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized)*
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (from 4 to 5 large lemons
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped chives        

1. In a large, heavy pot, heat milk to a gentle boil over medium-high heat, stirring every now and then so it won't scorch (this will take about 30 minutes, so bring a book). As soon as it boils, remove it from the heat and drizzle in lemon juice, stirring slowly and gently. Keep stirring until solid white curds separate from greenish-white, translucent liquid whey. (If whey is still milky instead of clear, heat the pot gently until whey is clear.) Let pot sit until curds have settled below whey, about 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, line a large colander with cheesecloth and set in sink. Pour curds into colander and rinse gently with lukewarm water for 5 seconds. Gather cheesecloth up over curds and gently twist to squeeze out some liquid (but not all; it should still be dripping a little).

3. Put a plate on cheesecloth-wrapped curds and top with a 5-lb. weight. Let drain 45 minutes. (At this point it may still be dripping a bit; this is okay.)

4. Unwrap cheese and put in bowl of stand mixer with dough hook attachment; add salt and chives. Beat cheese on medium-low speed (or knead it by hand) until silky-looking and no longer grainy (it should look like cream cheese), 10 to 12 minutes.

5. Roll cheese into a 2-in.-thick log and wrap in waxed paper and then plastic wrap. Chill until cold and firm, at least 1 hour. The cheese will keep for up to 3 days in the fridge.

* We used cream-top organic milk from Straus Family Creamery, in Marshall, California, for both our cheeses, because a) it was as local a milk as we could find  b) it has wonderful flavor and comes from healthy cows.

 

OREGANO QUESO BLANCO

MAKES About 2 cups TIME About 2 hours
The reason for making this cheese? To have a crumbly, savory topping for the soup we're planning. It's a simple, fresh white cheese with Mexican flavorings, and reminded us of Mexican queso blanco. It too is based on a recipe called Lemon Cheese, from Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making.

1/2  gal. whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized)
9  tablespoons  fresh lemon juice (from 4 to 5 large lemons)
1  teaspoon  sea salt
1 1/2  tablespoons minced fresh oregano leaves

1. In a large, heavy pot, heat milk over medium-high heat just to the point of boiling, stirring often to prevent scorching. As soon as the milk looks as though it's about to boil (small bubbles will being to break the surface), remove the pot from the heat and, whisking briskly to create tiny curds, drizzle in lemon juice. Reduce heat to low, return pot to burner, and whisk for another 2 minutes (do not let the milk boil). Cover and let sit 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, line a large colander with cheesecloth and set in the sink. Pour in curds and whey. Tie two opposite corners of cheesecloth into a knot over curds and do the same with the other two corners. Hang cheesecloth sack from sink faucet for 1 to 2 hours, or until curds have stopped draining.
3. Pour curds into a bowl and add salt and oregano. Rub between your fingers to mix and to break curds into small grains. The cheese will keep up to 1 week in the fridge.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

In an attempt to create a more substantial one-block feast, one that won't have us ordering Chinese an hour later, we're going to add some cheese to the menu. Mozzarella came to mind first, because it's so tremendous with ripe tomatoes and basil. But it seemed like a slightly tricky one to make and perhaps a wee bit painful. We'll save it for when we're more, er, experienced.

So, we did what most people do when they've never made cheese before: We got ourselves a copy of the invaluable Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll, first published in 1982 and re-released in 2002.

Then, the question of ingredients. Since we weren't raising any kind of milk-providing animal, we were going to have to "import" some milk. California law prevents us from buying directly from the nearest owner of cows, goats, or sheep (milk can only be sold to the public from a licensed store).

We've ended up with probably the best milk commercially available, from Straus Creamery, in Tomales Bay, California. Straus was the first certified organic dairy west of the Rockies, and the Straus family's big-picture wisdom and energy has helped save huge portions of that beautiful area from development. And their milk is really, really good (Cowgirl Creamery uses Straus milk to make their award-winning cheeses). We're thinking of the milk as an "import" that we'll transform into a different food ourselves, to make it as personal as the rest of what we're going to eat.

Besides milk, all we have to make cheese is what we have from the garden: lemons, a variety of herbs from the garden, and salt (which we hope to make ourselves too, though it's seeming crazy to try).

Team Cheese came together as quickly as a batch of fresh curds, and we divided up to make a few of Carroll's recipes. Our plan: to make our own versions of the cheeses we liked best.

Warming up plain milk was the first step for all four recipes we attempted.

We tried:

* Lemon cheese (meant to be moist, with a "spreadable consistency and a mild, lemony flavor" according to the headnote);

* Queso blanco ("a firm cheese, with a bland, mildly sweet flavor")

* Whole-milk ricotta ("good flavor and a high yield")

* Chenna (an Indian cheese "kneaded while still warm into a light, velvety smooth, whipped-cream consistency. It is an essential ingredient in many Bengali sweets")

Our results (doubtless skewed by the fact that we had no heavy cream, no cheese salt or citric acid, and no vinegar:

* Lemon cheese: A winner, though ours was crumbly and fluffy. It seemed a lot more like Mexican queso fresco, possibly because we decided to whisk the curds vigorously as soon as they'd set, and to add minced fresh oregano. We were trying to come up with a plausible topping for a Mexican-style corn soup--and this seemed to work.

* Queso blanco: we totally lost control of the temperature, which needed to be between 185° F. and 190° F. I'm not sure what we ended up with, but curdling required a vast amount of lemon juice (again, to be fair, the recipe specified vinegar). Kinda rubbery.

* Whole-milk ricotta: Not so different from the lemon cheese. Again required way more lemon juice than expected, just to get a curdle going...an accidental boil sealed the fate of this cheese. "Hard and gritty!" read the notes on the recipe.

* Chenna. A hit. The unusual technique of kneading the curds didn't produce "whipped-cream consistency" for us--it was more like cream cheese--but we folded in some chopped chives, rolled it into a log, sliced it, and had a very acceptable stand-in for fresh mozzarella.

So! Two cheeses join the one-block feast menu.