Mad Cheese Science

 More notes on Rhyming Cheese Tarts

Starting experiments on what cheese to use for my rhyming cheese tarts. To recap, the recipe I am working off is is from the 15th century Liber cure Cocorum:

For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

So, this first round of experimentation is to determine what kind of cheese to use. The recipe calls for "new" cheese. Which would exclude aged cheeses. Please read through my initial thoughts on this project for details about cheesecakes and the like. 

 So,  'Cheesecakes made of ground cheese beaten up with eggs and sugar, coloured with saffron and baked in cofyns or crusts.'  Very vague. I would conjecture that any fresh cheese could work. Aged cheese could be transported over long distances, but fresh cheeses are very local things: made and consumed within days, in the days before refrigeration. Cheeses are also very localized. Every location in the cheese making world has cheese unique to that region. So, I don't need to look for a particular brand of cheese, I just need to figure out what type of cheese to use. I decided to experiment with three types of cheeses that can be called "new". Cheese curds. "Dry" ricotta", and basket cheese. Firm,  spreadable, or soft.

For all three experiments I used one chicken egg, the equivalent volume of cheese, one teaspoon of sugar (except for the curds: see below), one pinch of saffron threads bloomed in 2 tablespoons of warm water. I also used pre-made phyllo dough shells just because I'm lazy. I mean, I used a standard, pre-made pastry shell so that all tarts would be uniform in size and would bake evenly. 

Cheese curds:

Dash's had a sale on cheese curds, so I bought a package. I microwaved the water and let the saffron bloom while the toaster oven heated up. I used my toaster oven because I was only going to be baking ten tarts at a time and the toaster would heat up faster. 

The first step was to grind the cheese curds with my mortar and pestle. This was a problem: the curds were very firm and did not want to be ground. 

I had to cut up the curds, with a knife, into small pieces so that I could turn them into a paste. This took about 15 minutes. I spent so much time trying to mash up the curds that I forgot to add any sugar. I suppose that the sugar could have helped break down the cheese. Oh well. I didn't realize this until after I had baked the tarts. I also didn't heat the water enough for the saffron, it didn't bloom very well.

I scrambled the egg and added the cheese and saffron water. Based on modern egg tart recipes, I decided to use a whole egg, rather than just the yolk or white. In addition, the recipe calls for eggs, not egg yolks or egg whites. I mixed the egg, cheese, and saffron water with a fork, then spooned the mix into ten phyllo dough shells. 

Looking at modern egg tart recipes calling for the same shells, I loaded the shells, while still frozen, and baked at 350F for 8 minutes. 

After 8 minutes the edges of the shells were brown and the filling was puffy and solid. I let them sit for five minutes before tasting. This was when I discovered that I had left out the sugar. 

The texture was nice and it tasted fine, but it wasn't a cheesecake. It was more of scrambled eggs with bits of cheese. The saffron flavor was very subtle and they turned out a pale yellow. They weren't bad, but not what I was looking for. The cheese curds were just too firm to integrate with the egg to form a cohesive filling. So, cheese curds are a no. 

"Dry" Ricotta:

For my second attempt, I made some changes in my procedure. While the cheese curds were baking, I 'nuked' two tablespoons of water for 90 seconds. Then I ground my pinch of saffron in my mortar and scrapped it into the water to bloom. (I had cleaned the mortar and pestle beforehand). This would allow the saffron longer to bloom, which should give a better result. 

After tasting and bagging the first batch of tarts, I scrambled up another egg and spooned out an equal volume of "dry" ricotta cheese. It was ricotta with all of the whey squeezed out of it. Very tasty. Two teaspoons of ricotta went into the mortar long with one teaspoon of sugar. 

While I mushed up the ricotta, it picked up all of the left over saffron powder. Scraping the cheese and sugar paste into the cup with the egg, I then added the saffron water and mixed it well. The egg and cheese integrated better, not completely, though. There were pieces of ricotta floating in the mix. And was more orange than the first batch. The hotter and longer bloom did work well.

Spooning into another ten shells, I also baked at 350F for 8 minutes. But, the filling was still goopy. I had to bake it for another 4 minutes for it to set. 

After 12 minutes, the edges of the shells were brown and the aroma of baked eggs filled my kitchen. I pulled them out and let them sit for five minutes. Five very long minutes. While I was waiting, I cleaned my utensils, ground up another pinch of saffron and let it bloom in hot water.

12 Minutes of baking did the trick. The filling was fully cooked and set. It had a better aroma and texture than the cheese curds. As to the flavor, very nice. However, the flavor of the ricotta was very pronounced. Not a bad thing, but one could definitively identify the cheese as ricotta. The strong flavor did over shadow the saffron. The sugar did sweeten the tart, almost like a mascarpone cheese, but not as sweet. Delicious, but I'm not sold on the ricotta flavor. The texture of the cheese and the ease that it mushed up was head and shoulders above the cheese curds.

Basket Cheese:

The basket cheese was firmer than the ricotta but no where near as firm as the curds. It also had a mild, fresh flavor. And with a hint of salt, something that wasn't listed in the recipe. I think that a small bit of salt would enhance the flavor of these tarts. Another egg scrambled and two tablespoons of the basket cheese went into the mortar, long with one teaspoon of sugar. 

The basket cheese took more effort to mush up than the ricotta but no where near the effort needed for the cheese curds. Like the ricotta, the basket cheese picked up the remains of the saffron. I did have to use a spoon to scrape down the sides to make sure that the cheese and sugar was well mixed. 

Cheese, sugar, and saffron water went into the mug with the egg and were well mixed. There were small pieces of cheese floating in the egg. The mixture went into ten shells and then they went into toaster oven. 

I set the timer for 12 minutes, figuring that these would take as long as the ricotta. After 12 minutes they were puffy but still a bit wet on top.

They needed another minute before they set. 

After five minute of rest, the puffiness settled down. The color is lovely.

These are the clear winner. The color is perfect. The aroma is excellent. And they taste like a cheesecake. Not as sweet or as firm as, say, a New York style cheesecake but in that ball park. The texture was as good as the ricotta, but the mild nature of the basket cheese doesn't over power the taste of the saffron. There is no hint of salt in the finished tart, but I think that it is definitely enhancing the flavor of the filling. I think I will stick with the basket cheese, as I am very happy with the result. I'll use the ricotta for a pasta dish and snack on the cheese curds.

Grinding the saffron in the mortar before letting it bloom made a big difference, as did using hotter water with a longer bloom time. The color is lovely and I like how the threads of saffron are clearly visible in the filling. Their presence and the color would show diners how decadent these tarts were. 

I do not know if scrambling the egg prior to mixing it with the cheese is the period method. If I were doing this with a stand mixer, I would add the egg to the cheese and sugar, and beat them together. Perhaps, in period, the egg was cracked into the cheese and sugar mixture and worked together by hand. I will experiment with my method, in future experiments. But, I will be sticking with the basket cheese and the whole egg: the end result was exactly what I was looking for. I don't know if I would add more sugar or not. If I plan on adding sugar to the coffin, I won't need to increase the sugar in the filling.