Fig Rennet Cheese
A soft and creamy cheese made with fig branches!
As far as I know, this kind of cheese is quite popular among shepherds of Türkiye and Italy.
In Turkish it’s called ‘teleme’, in Italian ‘la pampanella’ ,’caprino al lattice di fico’ or ‘cacioricotta al fico’ .
They’re mostly fresh cheese that are consumed right away or aged just a couple of weeks.
We have a couple of giant fig trees in our garden and I wanted to give this cheese a try!
- I heated 1 lt of milk around 70 c (I eyeballed)
- I cut a green fig branch and took the leaves off and white sap started to ooze out from the nodes and the end of the branch. I made a vertical cut on the branch
- I broke off 2 leaf stems in 2-3 parts and put them in the milk
- I started to mix the milk with the branch I cut off.
- Rested the branch inside for 3-5 minutes.
- First nothing seemed to happen and I went off and gathered a couple of unripe figs to put in.Then when I started to mix again, the milk was coagulated in a nice and creamy way!
The taste is very pleasant with a creamy feeling.It didn’t have a bitter taste.
(I think the bitter taste develops when the figs are maturing and when you put too much fig latex in the milk)
The cheese can be strained off lightly with a perforated spoon and eaten right away like this
(they serve pampanella in fig leaves) , or it can be strained with a cheesecloth to obtain a more solid form.
Never throw away the whey! It can be used to make bread,cake,soup or drank after work out!
Cacioricotta is put in cheese baskets to be strained,then salted and aged for a couple of weeks.
Try it! It’s easy to make, quick, fresh and delicious!
