Zabarbada of Fresh Cheese
Andalusian p. A-13
Take fresh cheese, clean it, cut it up and crumble it; take fresh coriander and onion, chop and throw
over the cheese, stir and add spices and pepper, shake the pot with two tablespoons of oil and another
of water and salt, then throw this mixture in the pot and put on the fire and cook; when it is cooked,
take the pot from the fire and thicken with egg and some flour and serve.
8 oz farmer's cheese
1 c loosely packed chopped green coriander = 1 oz
2 onions = 6 oz
1 t ground coriander seed
1 t cumin
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t pepper
2 T oil
1 T water
1/2 t salt
1 egg
2-3 T flour
Mix together cheese, green coriander, onion, and spices. Put oil, water and salt in a large frying pan or a dutch oven; shake to cover the bottom. Put in the cheese mixture and cook on medium-high to high about 3 minutes, stirring almost constantly, until the mixture becomes a uniform goo. Remove from heat, stir in egg, sprinkle on flour and stir in, serve forth. It ends up as a sort of thick dip, good over bread. It is still good when cold.
We have also used cheddar, feta, mozzarella and ricotta; all came out well, although with the feta it was a little salty, even with the salt in the recipe omitted. Some cheeses will require more flour to thicken it; the most we used was 1/2 cup.
When I read this redaction I thought it odd that the original recipe said crumble fresh cheese but all of
the cheeses mentioned that had been tried were aged except for the Farmers Cheese. Since I am more
used to making it I made Paneer (an unsalted Indian Cheese). I brought ½ gallon of whole milk to
approximately 185 degrees F and poured in ½ c white distilled vinegar. I turned off the heat and gently stirred just the top inch until it was well separated. I gave it all a stir then poured it through a strainer lined with a tea towel and let it drain until it stopped dripping. I then weighted it under a cast iron pan for an hour or so while it firmed up. I put that in a lidded container and refrigerated it until the next day.
When I was ready to make the cheese sauce I crumbled the cheese (which was 9.1 oz) and mixed it
with 7.4 oz of diced onion, 1.5 oz of chopped cilantro (green coriander), a slightly heaped tsp each of
ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon and just over ½ tsp of black pepper. I used extra virgin olive oil,
mixed the egg with about 1 tsp of milk so that I could blend it fairly smooth and not have ribbons of
cooked egg in the sauce and used 2 tsp of kosher salt since the cheese was unsalted. I followed the
cooking directions in the redaction. It made just over 2 ½ cups and the salt seemed good. Lady Ellie
said she is used to using a lot of salt and it may have been too much but everyone else said it was good with the amount it had. I figured if I used enough so that I thought it could use a little more that would be a good amount and it seems most people agreed with the amount. I used about 2 1/3 T of rice flour to thicken it instead of wheat flour so that it would be gluten free.
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