Bococini Day

Okay, apparently, I've been spelling bococini "the Mexican way" according to RCC (bocaccini) and the correct spelling is b-o-c-o-c-i-n-i, which really just means "little mouth" or small bite.

I got a wild hair (as I mentioned earlier) to make mozzarella as gifts for my co-workers.  RCC suggested we make bococinis instead of the mozzarella logs that I had intended to make.  He's a smart man.  It would have been easier and faster to make the logs than the bococinis, but it would have cost us a lot more, just because it would have required more ingredients.  So we settled on the bococinis that we'll pack in garlic flavored oil with thyme and red pepper flakes (yum!).  Mozzarella being the mild cheese it is will take on the flavor of the oil and be extra yummy.

The whole thing, from beginning to end took Nebalee, RCC and I about two hours including clean up (not including packaging for gifts).  While we were making the mozzarella, we had a pan full of garlic and vegetable oil simmering on the stove to roast the garlic (took just under an hour on low heat).  When the garlic was completely roasted, we just removed the pan from the heat and let it sit.

The curd was cold, so it cooled the water very quickly, despite being drawn from Mom and Bill's instant hot water tap from the coffee maker.  Thank goodness for Auto Bot, who ran her little legs off fetching hot water for the three of us.  The minute the water cooled, the cheese making went south quickly.  Luckily, mozzarella is a good beginner cheese, as it's almost impossible to ruin it.  If something doesn't work (photos tomorrow), strain the curd, add more hot water and start again.  It's very forgiving.

I ordered 10# mozzarella curd from Cheese Importers in Longmont, which ran me $65.00 and change.  We bought the jars from Bed, Bath and Beyond for about $58.00; the vegetable oil, coarse Kosher salt, thyme, garlic, and beautiful hand-saving dish gloves from King Soopers for $22.00.  I spent roughly $145.00 for everything needed and will have gifts for forty people, which works out to $3.63 per person.  If you're like me, and have a lot of co-workers to "buy" for, this is the way to go.  Really, it just takes "sweat equity" and very few ingredients to end up with something very yummy.

RCC and I figured that we'd put about three bococinis in each jar, so we'd need 120 bococinis and we ended up with 137 (more for us!).  We might have had 150 or so if we would have stopped "sampling" the cheese as we made it.