Anyone that knows me personally, knows I have this man-crush thing on Alton Brown. Science and food. How do you make television more entertaining. Maybe if Adam and Jaime from Mythbusters blew up everything he made at the end of every episode. A couple of years ago, I watched Alton Brown lose his damned mind. He is all about the most simple route to great taste. When he made cottage cheese from scratch it perplexed me. The simplest route to great taste in cottage cheese is cracking open the Breakstone's container and shoveling it in. Right? Alton kept assuring me that once I tasted this homemade stuff, I wouldn't go back to store bought. Hmmmm...
Flash forward to now. I'm paying more attention to the ingredients labels in foods. Cottage cheese is definitely processed and definitely fortified with chemical shit that I don't want in my kid (if it requires "natural flavors" it's probably not fucking natural). She eats the stuff in such quantity, I'm contemplating my own milk cow. So she and I set out this evening with simply skim milk, white vinegar, kosher salt, organic half and half, and a candy thermometer to cross that next hurdle in a more natural diet.
Results: It's good. Actually it tastes great! The texture is definitely different. It's kinda chewy. Sorta like mozzarella. That was a bit of a surprise but it doesn't take anything away from it being a damn fine cottage cheese. Alton, I'm sorry I doubted you.
As an afterthought, his yogurt cheese recipe is AWESOME. It's like a healthier cream cheese, absolutely foolproof to make, and it's lactose intolerant friendly! Get some!