Obviously I like cheese. I am equal-opportunity when it comes to cheese consumption, and claim no favorite. But when in Austria, I always go out of my way to eat some topfen, a fresh, curdled cheese. Known elsewhere as quark, it’s always called topfen in Austria, because it can be made in a Topf, a pot.
When I wwoofed on a dairy a couple of years ago, I saw topfen being made, and wrote down the recipe. It requires raw milk, which I can’t easily source at home, but recently I got a chance to give it a try. There’s a dairy right across the street from where I’m staying now, and anyone can wander over with a jug and help themselves to fresh, raw milk right from the tank, for 50 cents a liter. Like any cheese, there’s a good deal of art, science, craft, and practice that goes into the production of good quality topfen. I have none of these skills, but I chanced a liter of milk on my recipe and lack of experience. And lo and behold, I ended up with about 100 grams of topfen.
The recipe I wrote down is:
Let milk sit in a warm place for 1-2 days. Do something to keep flies and other things from diving in.
Milk and whey will separate, cream will rise to top. Skim cream from top. Slice remaining milk cross-wise.
Heat very low for 1-3 hours.
Strain. Feed whey to a convenient calf.
Eat?
I had a question mark after Eat because I couldn’t remember if there was another step in preparation. There’s probably something to refine the texture, but it’s also possible to eat it at this stage. Mine was a little chewy and squeaky right after I strained it, and became a little more dry and crumbly as it sat in the fridge for a couple of days. The only way to know if it was edible, and not toxic, was to eat it; I mixed in some chives, ate it on bread, and waited. The next day I could declare the experiment a success.
A simple topfen recipe that I like is a dough called Topfenblätterteig. Mix equal weights of topfen, butter, and flour, and let it chill in the fridge for a bit. Roll it out, folding it over on itself a few times. If you do it right, the baked dough will have layers, or leaves (Blätter). Cut dough to any size you want, fill it with anything you want (jam, chocolate, fruits, nuts, cheese), glaze it with an egg to make it more beautiful, and bake it until golden brown, say at 180° C for around 15 minutes. It’s a recipe that allows for infinite variation and creativity, and there isn’t a whole lot than can go wrong.
The recipe I wrote down is:
Cheese Skipping 
Recent Comments