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Lithuanian apple cheese. Apple pectin and apple cheese Apple cheese

Lithuanian apple cheese. Apple pectin and apple cheese Apple cheese

Relatively recently, while discussing making jam with sugar and pectin, I came across a recipe from the grocery store’s collection on how to make pectin yourself. Since there was no shortage of the main and only ingredient, besides water, I did it.
I decided to show you too, in case someone needs it.)

bottled water – 0.5 cups

green apples – 7 pcs.

Cut the apples into small pieces, including the core and peel. Place in a thick-bottomed saucepan and add water.

Cook, stirring, over low heat for 15–20 minutes.
Use a ladle to transfer the resulting apple mass into a clean nylon sock and hang it over a clean dish. The liquid strained out after 4-6 hours will be natural pectin.

I strained it not in a nylon sock, but in a special bag that Katya gave me katrinute sent from Lithuania. All Lithuanian women have it, I think. It perfectly strains both zeppelin potatoes and cottage cheese. Every time I remember Katya with a kind word.)

"Pectin is not just a natural gelling substance - it is also a very useful product for our body. It stabilizes metabolism, reduces the content of harmful cholesterol in the body, improves peripheral blood supply and intestinal motility. And most importantly, pectin very effectively cleanses the body of harmful substances without disturbing the bacteriological balance. For this unique ability, experts call pectin “the orderly of the human body." To prepare jelly, simply add a few tablespoons of pectin to a hot berry or fruit broth. Let cool to room temperature, then put in molds and put in the refrigerator."(C )

I was only able to check this way: I only had chokeberry (chokeberry) at hand. Usually the jam from it turns out to be very liquid and does not thicken, but here I reduced the amount of sugar and added two-thirds of this jar of the resulting pectin.
The jam sits in the jar and hardly moves.)

And here’s also a reminder about a very interesting Lithuanian recipe, again from Katya katrinute , about apple cheese.

And it's very tasty!!! Like a very, very dense marmalade, or something, but the consistency is like cheese, and that’s it. And delicious, apple, aromatic!
Now is the apple season, so it’s not a sin to remind about it.

This is what it looked like for me:

In Katya's magazine
“And now closer to the recipe and, most importantly, to the technology.

For 7 kg of prepared Antonovka
1.5 kg of sugar.

Peel the apples and remove the seed chamber, cut them randomly into small pieces (cubes). As you cut, put them in a bowl and add layers of 500 - 700 g of sugar. 7 kg of chopped apples will fill an 18-liter tank to capacity. Cover with a smaller lid (board) and place a weight on top. Leave it overnight. In the morning, drain the juice, bring to a boil, pour over the apples and put under pressure again for half a day. After this, drain the juice and use it for its intended purpose (you can bring it to a boil again, pour it into bottles and close it for the winter, or just drink it).

Let the apples cook, adding the remaining sugar. After all the procedures with bending the apple mass, half of the 18-liter tank will remain. For cooking, I advise you to take a pan with a thick bottom - otherwise it will burn. So now we stock up on patience and cook the apples for a long time. At first, the mass will gradually turn into porridge, then this porridge will thicken and darken. I put it all on the lowest heat and everything chugs for me for two days (with a night break, of course). The more the mass thickens, the more often it must be stirred, carefully scraping along the bottom and walls.

The cheese is considered ready when, firstly, the apple mass does not stick to the walls of the pan, and secondly, a piece of the mass is placed on a damp cloth and rolled over it with a finger - it should not stick to the cloth or smear. At this stage, put the apple-cheese mass into a damp cheese bag, tie the bag, place it on a board, cover it with a second board, and put pressure on it (a couple of three-liter cans of apple juice in my case :)). Leave for half a day or a day. After this - the moment of truth: carefully remove the cheese from the bag and place it on a board (tray) lined with plain writing paper (like for printers), cover with gauze and leave to dry for a day, then turn it over and leave to dry on the other side.
All! The cheese is ready. We pack in paper bags, put in cardboard boxes. This delicacy can be stored for up to 2 years (like all apple products).

Now some special points:

1. Cookbooks often contain the so-called quick method of cooking apple cheese. It consists of skipping the procedure of peeling and slicing apples, the apples are baked in the oven, rubbed through a sieve and then put to boil. What can I say... rubbing 7 kg of apples through a sieve is strong... yes. Have not tried. And then, cook them no less anyway. In a word, if you want, try it.

2. So-called “marble” cheese is often made. That is, at the last stage of boiling the apple mass, some fresh chopped apples are added. As a result, when cut, the cheese becomes mottled. There are also some nuances here. If you add fresh apples to the cheese mass, the cheese will “spread” slightly, as juice will begin to release from the apples and this will increase the cooking time of the cheese. To avoid this, I would advise adding dried chopped apples - this will also add additional flavor to the cheese.

3. When boiled, the apple mixture becomes quite chocolate-colored. I had to eat apple cheese that was quite light in color. There was no opportunity to ask the hostess how she managed it. I can assume: not boiled down too much, lying under pressure for a long time, with an increase in load, and drying for a long time. Maybe it's worth it, I don't know.

4. Cheese bags. Traditionally used to make curd cheese in Lithuania. A piece of fabric is usually now made from dense nylon fabric. A square folded into a triangle is sewn along the side. The sharp corner is stitched across so that the sharp corner of the cheese has an “iron” shape.

5. The finished cheese, just taken out of the cheese bag, almost does not spring under finger pressure. It doesn't leave a dent.

6. Spices and fillers. Traditionally, apple cheese is topped with cinnamon, orange and lemon zest, and a little clove. It doesn't have to be a matter of taste. In my version, as you can see in the photo, dried cranberries and apples are added, which, of course, goes somewhat beyond the Lithuanian tradition... :)

7. Submission. In principle, the cheese is good on its own. They put it on a plate, cut it with a knife and off they go. But, for example, in Ms. Zawadzki’s book “Kuchrka Litewska”, whose first edition was published in 1854, the following option for serving apple cheese is proposed: cut out balls of cheese, soak in syrup, roll in coarsely ground sugar or honey and dry in the oven.

This delicacy is not for every day, but for a cold, winter evening, Christmas, for example... :)) "(C)

I made half a portion, with 3.5 kg of Antonovka. The only deviation from the recipe was that I boiled it not on the stove, but in the oven.

For the New Year, I received a package from Katya, and it also contained her cheese. And I could compare.
It turned out just as it should! Both mine and Katin’s are in the photo.

Well, I remembered a good recipe, and Katya

marg_f- apple cheese! Traditionally in Lithuania, apple cheese is made only from Antonovka. so if you have access to Antonovka - go ahead! Yes, and a few more words regarding the name “cheese”. I remember on Yulia juliamaxi attacked when she posted a recipe for scones with quince cheese, saying it was marmalade. Cheese is not marmalade. In any case, marmalade placed in a cheese bag, placed under pressure and dried can hardly be called marmalade... :)

And now closer to the recipe and, most importantly, to the technology.

For 7 kg of prepared Antonovka
1.5 kg of sugar.

The cheese is considered ready when, firstly, the apple mass does not stick to the walls of the pan, and secondly, a piece of the mass is placed on a damp cloth and rolled over it with a finger - it should not stick to the cloth or smear. At this stage in wet for a cheese bag, lay out the apple-cheese mass, tie the bag, place it on a board, cover with a second board, put pressure on it (a couple of three-liter cans of apple juice in my case :)). Leave for half a day or a day. After this - the moment of truth: carefully remove the cheese from the bag and place it on a board (tray) lined with plain writing paper (like for printers), cover with gauze and leave to dry for a day, then turn it over and leave to dry on the other side.
All! The cheese is ready. We pack in paper bags, put in cardboard boxes. This delicacy can be stored for up to 2 years (like all apple products).

Now some special points:

5. The finished cheese, just taken out of the cheese bag, almost does not spring under finger pressure. It doesn't leave a dent.

And yes, I won’t show you on the cut! This is not a delicacy for every day, but for a cold, winter evening, Christmas, for example... :))

Bon appetit!

Apple cheese is a traditional Lithuanian dish. At its core, apple cheese is compressed and then dried apple marmalade, but in taste and texture it is a completely special, unlike anything else dish. Moreover, if I didn’t know how it is prepared, I would never have thought of comparing it to marmalade. It’s very tasty, very unusual and very, very appley!

Ingredients for Apple Cheese:

Apple Cheese Recipe:

The process of preparing apple cheese can be divided into 4 main stages: heat treatment of applesauce, boiling the puree to the consistency of very thick marmalade, molding the cheese and drying it. Of course, the most delicious cheese comes from Antonovka, but until it is ripe, we use currently ripe apples from the orchard. To prepare, we need only four ingredients - Demerara sugar TM "Mistral", apples, cinnamon and candied fruits.

Wash the apples, remove the middle and cut the peeled apples into thin slices. Very often the peel is also cut off from apples, but personally I never do this, because it is very tedious and not logical, because apple peel contains a lot of pectin, which gives the cheese its strength. Place them in a saucepan, stirring with 4 tbsp. l. sugar Demerara TM "Mistral" (from the total amount of sugar). Leave the apples for a day at room temperature, during which time they will give juice. You can also put a weight on top to better separate the juice, but I didn’t do this.

After the apples have stood overnight and given juice, without draining anything, I put the pan with the apples on the stove and cook them under the lid until completely soft. Grind the cooked apples into a homogeneous puree using a submersible blender. Add all the remaining Demerara TM "Mistral" sugar to the finished applesauce.

With the lid open, cook the apple mixture over low heat until it becomes a very, very thick marmalade. During the boiling process, be sure to stir the apples so that the mass does not stick to the bottom, and also do not let it boil or gurgle. For this amount of apples, I needed 1 hour and 40 minutes to boil.

Add cinnamon and candied fruits to the boiled apple mass and cook with constant stirring for another 3 minutes. You can use a little ground cloves as spices; very often dried fruits and nuts are added to the cheese.

In Lithuania, apple cheese is formed using triangular cheese bags. Perhaps that is why it is called cheese. If there is no such bag, you can take gauze. Before laying out the boiled apple mass, the gauze needs to be soaked in water and squeezed thoroughly.
We place the hot apple mixture on wet gauze and form a circle of cheese, and then place it on a wooden board, on top of another board and a weight weighing 2 kg. Leave the cheese in this form under pressure for a day.

Take a plate and place bamboo sticks on it in the form of a lattice. We unwrap the cheese and place it on our grill, drying it open. In the original recipe, the cheese is laid out on parchment and the cheese is periodically turned over during the drying process, but I found this method tedious; on a wire rack it is ventilated both from above and from below. There are no exact instructions on exactly how long to dry the cheese. I think that a lot here is determined by the degree of cooking and the thickness of the apple mass. In my case, the cheese was dried for 5 days. During the drying process, the cheese should become elastic and dense.
I store apple cheese in the refrigerator, wrapped in parchment paper. Traditionally, apple cheese is boiled in the fall during the apple season, and cut into pieces on the Christmas table. This is both a wonderful Christmas gift and a delicious Christmas treat. This delicacy can be stored for up to 2 years.

Frankly, I don’t even know who I can surprise and interest more today: apple lovers or cheese lovers... In any case, I invite everyone to come and see me - we’ll cook and taste wonderful and delicious apple cheese together...

The recipe is not mine, but taken from the World Wide Web. I’ve been carefully eyeing it for a couple of years and finally decided to experiment this fall. Apple cheese is very common in the Baltics and is considered a traditional Christmas delicacy in those regions...

No, no, this is not a typo - it is really prepared during the generous apple season, and then, like expensive cheese, it is aged until the right time. And, as a rule, it ripens just in time for the New Year holidays. In some Lithuanian families, it is customary to give each other a wheel of this cheese for Christmas - as they say, you simply cannot find a better present!

This dish can easily be classified as a dessert - it is a bit reminiscent of dense and viscous marmalade, because it is prepared from boiled applesauce (by the way, using the same cheese technology) with the addition of nuts or raisins.

So, we will need:

300 g sugar

Cooking time: the process is quite long - 12 hours for preparation, about 3 hours for heat treatment, and then cooling and ripening

Recipe difficulty level: taking into account the time required for this, then somewhere in the middle

Progress:

Fruits must be thoroughly washed and dried. It is advisable to leave the peel, because it is the peel that contains the most pectin, the amount of which determines the final result of boiling applesauce. But we carefully remove the core and all unnecessary things.

Now we need to set aside a couple of tablespoons of apples, and put the pan with the rest of the contents on the fire and cook until soft for about 15 minutes.

Then puree everything with a blender, add the remaining sugar, mix and put the pan on the fire again. Now for a long time - you need to boil the puree for one and a half to two hours over very low heat, stirring all the time.

During this time, the mass should decrease in volume by 2-3 times, become thick and viscous, since all the moisture will evaporate.

The cheese will stay in this form for a day. Then we remove the weight, unfold the gauze, put the cheese on parchment and leave it to ripen. This happened on my balcony. The cheese can be considered ready and ripened when, after pressing with a finger, no trace remains on the surface.

Have you made jam, cooked jam, compote and pressed juice, but there are still apples left? Then it’s time to get to apple cheese.
This is a wonderful traditional Lithuanian product, which is prepared, indeed, similar to cheese: it is also pressed in gauze and then allowed to stand. After this, the cheese becomes dense, elastic, approximately the same consistency as churchkhella. It can be stored for an incredibly long time - up to three years. The degree of boiling of apples is such that they don’t care.
This cheese tastes like nothing else: neither marmalade, nor jam, there is nothing to compare it with. Need to try.
The best apples for cheese are Antonovka. If suddenly it is not there, take any sour and dense, hard apples. By the way, any substandard apple scraps left over from some other preparations can be used for cheese. We will boil the apples to puree, and the puree to a viscous viscous mass, so what the original product looked like is completely unimportant.
The traditional shape of apple cheese is teardrop.
Nowadays, apple cheese in Lithuanian stores comes with all sorts of additives. Here is a photo of all kinds of apple cheese, for example with red pepper.

Supplements are a very good idea. In general, this is, of course, a dessert product, but not very sweet. So spicy additives come in very handy. One of the most common additions to cheese is nuts. Hazelnuts, almonds and even pine nuts all work great. To come up with other options for additives, remember what good confectionery brands put in dark chocolate: candied orange peel, crispy pieces of cookies, various peppers (not just red).

Regarding sweetness: the amount of sugar in cheese may vary. As always happens with traditional products, each housewife has her own recipe. On average, 1 kg of apples contains 250 sugar. However, due to the fact that the apples are strongly boiled, with this proportion the cheese turns out to be very sweet. If you have a sweet tooth, perhaps try it. If you are not ready for heart-rending sweetness, reduce the amount of sugar to 150 grams per kilogram of apples.

2 kg apples
350 g sugar
150 g nuts
1 tsp cinnamon

Apples need to be washed and dried and cut into slices or cubes - it doesn’t matter. Place them in a large saucepan and sprinkle a little sugar - four to five tablespoons. At this stage, sugar is needed so that the apples release juice. So they sprinkled it with sugar, mixed it, covered it with something and put it under a load (small) for a day. Time has passed, the juice has been released - we drain it and use it for some other purpose. It is not needed for cheese. And putting aside 2 generous handfuls of apples for later, put them on low heat on the stove and cook until they become soft. Now you can grind them in a blender to a puree. Now you can add all the remaining sugar and mix. Now you need to transfer the mass into a large saucepan, so that the mass lies in a not very thick layer and - cook, cook, cook. The mass should decrease in volume by about three times, it should no longer be wet, but become viscous and viscous.

The time will vary depending on the weight of the apples, but you need to count on many hours. Of course, during the process, the mass needs to be mixed. Add the reserved apples to the boiled mixture, mix and let cook for another quarter of an hour.

After turning off the heat, add the nuts and stir.

Then the final stage: burm a colander and put double-folded gauze in it, and transfer the mass into it. We close the top with the free tip of gauze and, if you want, at this moment you can give it an authentic teardrop shape. Place the cheese under weight for a day. Then the cheesecloth can be removed and the cheese placed on a board to dry. So it should lie for at least two days, and preferably a week. During the process, it must be turned over so that both sides dry.

The finished cheese is very dense and slightly springy under your fingers. Here it is!