Bob's Fromage Caprese

Bob Albers is a retired electronics engineer who has traveled all around the world, and now lives in Mandeville, Louisiana (24 miles north of New Orleans). We interviewed him in 2016, (click here) and, since then, he has written 15 articles for us so far* (including this one). We’re very grateful to him for his contributions to our community of home cheese makers.

Fromage Caprese

By Bob Albers*

Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of Summer. If you can open a second browser page as you read this, please do so and copy the following into the URL space – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOV96BCAvZc.

OK, it is now summer time and time to put an end to cabin fever. My next door neighbor just put in a swimming pool and gave a swim party on the 4th of July to inaugurate it. She invited the whole neighborhood and a few friends and relatives. This inspired me to come up with something special.

I first thought of caprese salad, but salad for 40? Caprese is a good idea but why not as a dip? In addition to the caprese dip, I could also make a fresh dill dip (Home Cheese Making, p.308).

For the spreads, how about my own Smoked Tuna Cream Cheese Spread and NESC’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Coeur a la Creme.

I made a double recipe of each. However, in this article I am providing only a single recipe. The spreads have a cream cheese base for a slightly firm texture while the dips use a Fromage Blanc base, made softer by adding back some of the whey.

And now for the titled delight.

Ingredients:

8 oz Fromage Blanc (directions for making below)
6 tablespoons of finely chopped basil
6 tablespoons finely chopped sun dried tomatoes
¼ tsp. non-iodized salt

Directions:

Make Fromage Blanc according to the instructions on the culture package and also found in Home Cheese Making, p.63.

In this picture the curds & whey are ready for separation –

The curd is transferred to the flour sack cloth lined strainer in thin slices in order to facilitate maximum whey removal.

Next, we drain the whey in the open strainer shown here (and we save the whey).

Then, once enough whey has run off, we form a draining bag by gathering the 4 corners of the flour sack towel together and forming a bag. (The bag is being hung over a pot in my laundry room sink.)

At this point, the bag’s contents weigh about 8 pounds. Once the whey has finished draining, the contents have shrunk considerably and weigh 1 lb. 14 oz., as seen here.

Now we can use the Fromage Blanc in our recipe.

While we were draining the curd, we recovered some of the whey to be used in re-hydrating the sun dried tomatoes.

Here they are soaking in the whey for about a half hour while we chop the basil.

Here is the basil.

Now that the tomatoes are pliable, they can be seeded. (I just didn’t think anyone would enjoy a tomato seed in their spread.)

All ingredients below are combined in a mixing bowl and blended together.

Mix all the ingredients. If the texture is too stiff for a dip, add back some of the whey until it is more dippable. Allow the flavors to meld 48 hours before serving.

And now, as we say in South Louisiana, “Laissez les bons temps rouler” (let the good times roll). Here is the party.

Everyone who tasted the Fromage Caprese said they had never had anything like it before and they loved it.

*About Bob

These are his previous articles, listed in order with the most recent at top:

Bob’s Smoked Tuna with Homemade Cream Cheese
Bob’s Homemade Limoncello
An Easy Way to Flip Camembert
Creole Cream Cheese Recipe #2
Calculating Weights for the Dutch Style Press
Be a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)
Time Keeping Spreadsheet for Making Cheese
Kummelkase (Caraway Cheese)
Cream Cheese Experiment
Bob’s Homemade Curd Cutter – Part 2
Bob’s Homemade Horizontal Curd Cutter
Making a Drying Box
About Cooking Curds
Creole Cream Cheese