Curds and whey?

Everyone knows the nursery rhyme about Little Miss Muffet, I wonder if her curds and whey were plain, or if they were flavoured with something,  sweetened with honey perhaps? I have a recipe which uses rosewater which makes it sound like a rather delicious yoghurt. No-one really knows the origin of the rhyme, it may be a couple of hundred years old, or four hundred years old, it may be based on Mary, Queen of Scots, or it may be based on the daughter of a Dr Muffet. One interesting thing is that the rhyme is the only known example of the word ‘tuffet’, and no one really knows what it is either, maybe a little foot stool, maybe a pouffe, maybe a tussocky mound of grass… no-one knows!

An excess of milk has led me to make yoghurt, which is very successful, and cheaper than buying it… but maybe I should move on to cottage cheese, and I have found a recipe:

• 2 pints of milk (use skimmed if you’re watching the calories)
• 2 tbsps plain live yoghurt (or cultured buttermilk, but I already have yoghurt!)
• 2 tsp rennet
• salt
• 3-4 tbsp of extra yoghurt, or sour cream or cream
• optional 2 oz of powdered milk which will give you more cheese

1. heat the milk to 38ºC, 98ºF (if you are adding the powdered milk, put it into the milk and mix it in before you start to heat it)
2. take it off the heat and stir in the first lot of yoghurt and the rennet, cover and leave
3. after a while, anywhere between 30 mins and 3 hours, when the curds will have set, cut them gently with a knife
4. heat again to between 38 – 45ºC, 98 – 110ºF, stirring very gently
5. when the curds have become all knobbly and look like cottage cheese, strain over a jug, collecting the whey to use for something else
6. gently wash the knobbly curds under a cold running tap, breaking them into smaller knobbly bits, and washing away all the whey
7. when they are drained, add salt to taste and the extra yoghurt/sour cream/cream

I might try this tomorrow; we have an extra two pints of milk because I forgot to cancel our delivery!