Pasta with Zucchini Pesto

Notice how I cook in trends? For a while it's ham, then it's rice, then it's pasta...Really, it's just because I look at a recipe and then see some right next to it that look good, so I mark them and while they're fresh in my mind, I come back to them.
 
Anyhoo, my husband asked for spaghetti one night, so I started looking through the pasta section of Fannie Farmer. This recipe was perfect because it uses a lot of zucchini, and I'm drowning in the stuff, and cream cheese, which I just made. Since I'm all proud of my cream cheese, of course I'm looking for ways to use it! Unfortunately, I didn't have fresh basil for this. Fannie Farmer doesn't call it pesto, she just calls it 'pasta with zucchini,' but from the strong basil flavor, even using dried basil, I would call it a pesto even though it is technically just basil sauce.
 

Cooking in pan.

For this, I used:
1/2-3/4 lb. whole wheat spaghetti
3 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 c. grated zucchini
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. whole milk
1/2 c. fresh basil (or about 1/4 c. dried)
salt & pepper to taste

Put your pasta on to cook and make the sauce as follows:

• Put olive oil in sauce pan or skillet and heat, then add garlic and cook for about 1 minute on medium heat.
• Add zucchini and cook another 3-5 minutes.
• Add milk and cream cheese and cook until cream cheese melts and sauce bubbles.
• Stir in salt & pepper & basil.
• Drain pasta and toss or top with sauce.

 This was pretty tasty. If I made it again, I'd have to have fresh basil, though. And the sauce was a bit thin, so I think I'd like it better if it had more milk and was a creamier sauce. But otherwise, it was tasty and super quick and easy. A good vegetarian meal.

Homemade Cream Cheese

A while back, I found a recipe for making your own cream cheese (on Pinterest, of course). I pinned it, and a while later, found it forgotten like so many other pins. I read the recipe and it sounded really easy. So I went to my local natural foods store, where they told me they didn't sell rennet and that they didn't know of anywhere locally that sold it. WHA???

So, I gave up on it for a while. Then, a friend of mine brought some homemade cheese to a party. Weirdly enough, when I asked where she got her cultures, she said she got them at the brewing store. So, I went to the brewing store and amid all the beer-making tools, found rennet and cheese cultures. I got some and then got busy with canning. Finally, over Labor Day Weekend, I had enough time to make the cheese. At that point, I'd had an 8 oz. container of heavy cream floating around the fridge for over a month!

When I got around to making it, I couldn't believe I'd put it off so long. It is beyond simple. I thought it was going to be really expensive, and therefore something I'd only make once, but in the end, it ended up making so much more cream cheese than I thought, so it wasn't even expensive.

For a cost breakdown I got:
1 gallon of organic milk for about $8.
1 cup of organic cream for $2.
1 packet buttermilk culture for $1.
1 bottle of rennet for $8, but since I only used 3 drops, that's about, I don't know, a nickel.

So the total for what I used was $11.05

I got:
3 8 oz. packets organic cream cheese
1 quart buttermilk
1.5 quarts of whey for cooking
1 quart milk left for everyday use

Not bad, if you ask me!

For this, you will need:
butter muslin or fine muslin--I couldn't find anything called butter muslin, so I just bought some muslin with a tight weave and the lady at the fabric counter said she made cheese and it would work. It was just called original muslin, I think, or maybe fine muslin.

1/2 gallon whole milk, at room temperature (pasteurized but not ultrapasteurized)
1 c. heavy cream, at room temperature (pasteurized but not ultrapasteurized, if you can find it. I could only find ultrapasteurized organic cream, so I had to use that, and it worked fine).
3 drops rennet
3 tbsp. buttermilk
salt to taste

Opening the cloth...and here it is!

 So, pour your half gallon of milk and your cream into a large bowl and stir it. Let it sit until it's at room temperature--I think ours was about 75 or 78 when we decided to go ahead.

Add your buttermilk and stir until well mixed, maybe 30 seconds.

Add 3 drops of rennet and stir gently for 1 minute.

Cover the bowl and let it sit for 24 hours undisturbed.

At this point, it will look about like yogurt.

Dampen your cheese cloth (butter muslin) ahead of time, or when you're ready for it. Then lay it over a colander with the center of the cloth in the colander basin.

Gently spoon the yogurt-like mixture into cheese cloth and secure the ends and tie so it hangs in a bag. 

Hang it from a sturdy cabinet door handle or somewhere it can hang undisturbed for another 24 hours. We used a steamer basket instead of a colander, with the steamer pan under the basket. Then we just hung it over the steamer for 24 hours (NOT ON THE STOVE). That way, it could drip into the bowl but nothing else got into the whey, like fruit flies or other critters.

After 24 hours, unwrap your baby cream cheese! It will be soft and pliable. It was a bit sour tasting until we stirred in the salt, and then it tasted just like store cream cheese. The texture is a bit different since it doesn't have gelatin added. It's super creamy and delicious. And so simple--just set it up and leave it and voila, organic cream cheese!

Make sure you put the whey that dripped out into the fridge, too. You can use it in bread or pancakes or soup in place of stock.