For the love of pete, make your own cheese curds.

How to make cheese curds:

1. Heat 2 gallons of milk to 96F and add 1/2 tsp of calcium chloride.

2. Add 1 packet of thermophilic culture and let this ripen for 30 minutes.

3. Then add 1/2 tsp rennet and stir gently for 30 seconds.
The milk will begin to gel in 6-10 minutes, and will be fully set and ready to cut in 18 -25 minutes.

4. When firm, cut the curds into 3/4 inch cubes and stir 5 minutes.

5. Then begin to cook the curds to 116F slowly over the next 30 minutes (starting out at 2F every 5 minutes and then increasing the heating rate as the curds dry out). (Open a nice white wine now, pour yourself a glass)

6. Continue to stir the curds for the next 30-60 min at 116F to increase firmness. (top-off you glass of wine at this point)

7. Drain in cheese cloth and bundle by tightening the cloth.
Press with a weight of 1 gallon of water (aprox. 8 lbs) and let set 1-3 hours. (yep, time to open the next bottle. You are not going anywhere tonight anyway)

8. Now break the curds into small bite size pieces and toss with a bit of salt (to your taste). They are ready to eat. They can be stored in a covered glass container or a ziploc bag.

NOTE: If you have a pH meter (you really should), the end of step 5 should be pH6.4 and step 7 pH5.3.

Pretty straight forward.

ATT Phone Service Problems - 14Feb11

Please note, our incoming phone lines are working intermittently. Oddly they can work perfectly, or not at all.

If you are contacting us for a catering order please email us at: catering@zhmarketcafe.com

AT&T is not our friend. The automated AT&T "customer service" system, the one that you actually never get to speak to a real human being, claims that a service tech. will be here to fix this problem by 6PM on Tuesday.

Thank you for your consideration and Happy Saint Valentine's Day.

Z&H Catering

An area that we do not talk about very much, but has become a big part of our reality is catering. Z&H does a lot of lunch and meeting catering, the most popular catering of this type are our Sandwich Platters and Bag Lunches. Groups range from a handful of folks to over three hundred.

A growing area for us is custom catering, we have done everything you can imagine from fancy holiday parties to a wedding for 150 folks. We like to craft menus to suit each particular event; this has turned into a great outlet for our creativity.

If you ever find yourself in need of delicious and thoughtful catering please consider Z&H for your event.

Something different on a snowy morning....

How about a Kimchi-egg sandwich on Saturday morning? with bacon perhaps? 20 inches of snow and a Kimchi-egg sandwich sounds about right. Break the back of winter.

Z&H Cheese Tasting at 47th Street...

Join us for a freewheeling cheese tasting from 1 to 3 on Saturday with Kamala (our awesome cheese maven); we will be sampling L'Amuse, Ossau Iraty, and Delice De Bourgogne. And for the first time in Hyde Park, Vegan Caviar from Aqua-Gourmet. Even though it is vegan, it is fantastic.