Curds and Whey, Kase Knoepfla!

So, for some reason, despite being sick with a head/chest cold and tired from said sickness, one two-year old who has yet to sleep through the night, and one nearly fourteen-week pregnancy, I decided to make Cheese Buttons using homemade noodle dough and homemade farmer’s cheese.  And it didn’t take me all day. 

Cheese buttons are one of those strange family traditions (you eat what? what’s a cheese button?) that my father and his family brought with them from North Dakota when they moved to California in the middle of last century.  I’ve never met a single person, from outside my family or from outside ND, that knows what a cheese button is.  Poor everyone else.  

Cheese buttons (or Kase Knoepfla as we’ve never called them but I know from they internet is their other name) are super yummy noodle pockets of cheese fried in butter.  Yup, like a giant ravioli that, once it has been pulled from the boiling water, is then fried in butter.  Oh, yum.

I broke a cheese button making tradition however, by not using only white flour in my dough (much to my father’s distaste–although everyone else liked it– when I let him try some of the leftovers).  Instead I used the following recipe:

Easy, Nutritious Pasta Dough:

• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup white-whole wheat flour
• 2ish tablespoons of wheat bran
• 2ish tablespoons of flaxseed meal
• 3 eggs

The dough has to rest after it is made (in the food processor) and kneeded (in the kitchenaid mixer) so that gave me the perfect time to make my cheese.  

I’ve never made my own cheese before but have been interested in it ever since reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about two years ago.  Just over a week ago I had a conversation with a wonderful friend with cheese making experience, and was inspired (mostly because she said cheese for cheese buttons would probably be the easiest kind to make) to give it a go.  And I’m so glad I did.  This cheese was great.  My dad even said it was like real North Dakota cheese button cheese.  High praise!  And it was so easy!  Making my own cheese actually made making cheese buttons easier because I didn’t have to buy cottage cheese and hang it up in a cheesecloth for a day to dry it out  (our usual method since dry cottage cheese, or farmer’s cheese, isn’t available around here).  

Making Lunch for Miss Muffet:

This is so, so easy, and I’ve actually made it twice and it doesn’t seem to be strict as far as times or quantities.  I…

Heated one-half gallon of milk (NOT Ultra-pasteurized–use pasteurized or raw milk) to between 140 and 160 degrees (I tried 120 first, which I had read somewhere, but when I put the vinegar in not enough curds were made).  I heated the milk pretty slowly, stirring occassionally.  Once the milk was hot enough (I read that that you can bring it almost to boiling, but I didn’t want to wait that long) I turned off the burner and poured in between 1/3 and 1/2 cup of white vinegar.  I immediately saw some curds and whey action:

I stirred it occassionally over the next half hour to forty-five minutes.  When it was nice and curdy I draped a cheesecloth inside a collander that was inside of a bowl and poured in my goop.

Then I pulled the collander out, leaving my whey in the bowl (to be made into ricotta later on).

I wrung the cheese out a little in the cheese cloth then let it sit for a few minutes so any excess whey would drain out.

Then, like magic, beautiful, wonderful, dry, farmer’s cheese.

A few eggs, some salt and pepper and the cheese was ready to be buttoned up.

(And I love my nifty new pastry cutter thing (only six bucks) with the one side that does scallopy cuts, I just wish they were more scallopy.)

It didn’t take long for me to make a plateful of cheese buttons ready for the boiling pot of water, and the frying pan after that.

And these, my dears, are cheese buttons with the appropriate side of fried noodles (because what could be better than frying the leftover noodle dough in more butter and eating it too?).  

Now I have to admit, (from reading on the internet and once viewing Schmeckfest: Food Traditions of the Germans from Russia) that we don’t serve our cheese buttons the way others seem to.  Nope, we don’t serve them with fried onions and bread crumbs, we serve them with salsa and grape jelly (or blackberry preserves when you can’t locate a single grape jelly that doesn’t have HFCS in it–please don’t tell the corn refiner people I said that!).

And now that I’m finally finishing this post a full week after the cheese buttons were made and many days since the last of the leftovers disappeared, I’m thinking about the gallon of milk in my fridge and the blackberry preserves that turned out to be almost better than grape jelly, and how easy pasta dough is to make (with a food processor, kitchenaid mixer and atlas pasta machine on hand) and am thinking I might just know what I’m going to make for dinner tomorrow night after all.