Gjetost, and How to Make It

How to make gjetost, or geitost, or brunost, or mysost, or whatever the hell you're supposed to call it.  Gjetost is a Norwegian whey-based cheese sometimes made from goat's milk.  Wikipedia has an article on it. 

Comments

[Phil]

Call it anything you want, but just don't eat it. I try not to be a moral absolutist, but that stuff is just plain wrong. Might as well add that recipe to the Anarchist's Cookbook.

[Kira]

No. I will leave the cheese making to you, and then you will feed me. Right??? ;)

[Kira]

...although it's incredibly stupid, I think I just started a second blog. Go me. Just thought I'd let you know.

[Marianne]

That stuff confuses me. It looks like the most yummy dulce de leche-y fudge and tastes weird. Too sweet for cheese and yet not sweet enough.

[Joe Eater]

P: You should have mentioned it on the "What Won't You Eat?" post. :)

K: I only made cheese once or twice. Ya need a lot of dairy products. It's kinda not worth it. Now, with the wine vinegars I've made, I can just recycle tag ends of bottles of wine. But regular cheese-making is probably not my bag. :( I wish I'd thought of it when I was a kid and we had a cow, but we actually went through all our milk and cream, and what we didn't eat, we gave away or sold. Mmmm... real butter and buttermilk... mmmm....

M: I ran into it (gjetost) about 20 years ago, and since it was slightly sweet, I'd eat it on toast for breakfast every once in a while. It took a little getting used to, but probably less so than, say, eating goat cheese.

[Phil]

Joe: I didn't think to mention it because my emotional defense mechanisms had purged it from my conscious memory. But otherwise, you're right.

Speaking of food experiences that would gross some people out:

Today I was at the nice, small market near my apartment. The meat selection was pretty interesting. On grimy counters (with birds and other animals flying around), I saw the bits of exactly one slaughtered pig: one pair of kidneys, one pair of lungs, one heart, one snout, etc. It was pretty cool. I'll try to get a photo one day soon. The countertops -- just as non-sanitary as you can imagine. IT didn't seem at all strange that one of the butchers set his customer's 200 peso (~$19) bill on the bloody surface while he fished around his pocket for change. At the next stand, someone was butchering chickens. I saw some parts in there that I didn't realize existed in birds -- they looked like three or four grape tomatoes, except they were yellow. Any guesses?

So of course the market was pretty awesome. For breakfast at a nearby food stand, I had a large ceviche of octopus and shrimp. And a glass of freshly squeezed mandarin orange juice from local mandarin oranges (~30 cents per pound at the grocery store).

Just don't ask me about the toilets there. Or, OK, ask me.

[Maura]

My in-laws have brought gjetost back from Norway several times. It's vile.

[durhamfood]

The yellow 'grape tomatoes' are egg sacs. They eventually become eggs.

[Michael Bacon]

As someone who survived four years in Minnesota, I say: geitost. Don't do it. Ever.