Letter from Boston Mozzarella Adventures By MASAKO YAMADA	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
モッツァレラチーズ作り 食にはちょっとうるさい雅子さん。今回は、インターネットを駆使して料理本や材料を取り寄せ、モッツァレラチーズ作りに挑戦しました。ピザを作るのに使うモッツァレラチーズは店で売っていますが、手作りのものはとても高価です。本場イタリアのチーズ職人が作るようなチーズの味を再現することはできたのでしょうか？

It all started at a party at my friend's house. I was shuffling through his cookbooks and I found one that I liked very much. It explained how to make items that you would usually buy at the store, in your own kitchen.

It had instructions on how to make fancy candies, ice cream, smoked fish, pickles, preserves and different kinds of cheeses. I asked him where he had gotten the book, and he told me that he had found it at a used book store.

I soon found out that the book was out of print. I tried checking some well-known Internet bookstores to see whether they had the book in stock, but apparently these companies don't carry out-of-print books. Many of the large companies can do custom book searches for you by contacting secondhand bookstores, but this is often expensive. At the very least, it can take a long time.

At the suggestion of my (more computer savvy) boyfriend, I tried checking out some smaller Internet stores to see whether any of them carried the book. Sure enough, I found a local company that handles only cookbooks, and they had a new copy of the book in stock. They had another book by the same authors, so I decided to buy that one too.

I clicked on the order form and entered my credit card number. I was finished with my purchase in minutes. Not only were the books being sold far below retail price, the package arrived at my home in two or three days!! The company itself was quite small, but the selection and service were worthy of the big leagues. Needless to say, I was very happy with my purchase (including the impulse buy).

As I flipped through the pages, I decided that I wanted to make some homemade mozzarella cheese. This is a gourmet item that most cooks do not make at home, and I thought I could impress my friends by making some. Handmade mozzarella is often ridiculously expensive in stores, and there is the impression that only old Italian craftsmen can learn how to make it.

The directions looked simple enough for me to try. The only problem was that the recipe called for rennet. The three local supermarkets that I visited did not carry any. When I asked a saleswoman at one of them, "Do you have rennet?" she answered, "Is that used to make soap?" Again, I decided to turn to the Internet.

Fortunately, I found my treasure at the Web site of a small, local cheese supply company. Not only did they have rennet, they had three different kinds (I chose the vegetarian kind). They even had a kit with all the ingredients necessary to make mozzarella cheese.

The prices were very reasonable. I filled out their order form and, two or three days later, I had enough rennet to process 20 gallons of milk for mozzarella. I made another impulse purchase while checking out the Web site: enough tartaric acid to make a few years' supply of mascarpone cheese.

The new cookbook and rennet supply in tow, I started making my first batch of mozzarella. Although the recipe pamphlet said that it would only take me 30 minutes, after nearly an hour the cheese still did not have the wonderful stretchy quality that mozzarella usually has. It looked and felt a lot more like cottage cheese. I like cottage cheese, but I've made it many times before without any special ingredients and I was expecting more.

I felt a bit embarrassed, since I couldn't seem to make the cheese look like the sample in the catalog that (supposedly) a 3-year-old made. It was especially disappointing considering that my boyfriend and I had bought a lot of pizza ingredients so that we could make pizza using my fresh mozzarella cheese. We ended up making cottage cheese pizza instead.

It was quite yummy, but not what I'd dreamed of when I started shopping on the Internet. I think that now I should try searching for a different method of making mozzarella. I hope it won't involve any more impulse purchases.

Shukan ST: March 31, 2000

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