Characteristics and preparation of Aper Shik cheese in industrial and home conditions. Energy value, benefits and harms. Cooking Uses, History of Dessert Varieties.
Aper Chic is a French gourmet processed cheese with a layer of walnuts. Smell - sweetish milky; color - white, with a yellowish tint around the filler; taste - creamy, nutty; the consistency is soft, elastic, although creamy, without unpleasant stickiness. It is produced in food-grade plastic packages with a transparent top, in "tablets", packed in a foil mold. "Souvenir" packaging looks attractive - the pieces are more like candy. Each one is pressed into various types of nuts - walnuts, hazelnuts or hazel.
How is Aper Chic cheese made?
This variety belongs to gourmet ones, therefore only a mixture of expensive hard varieties - Parmesan, Cheddar and Beaufort is used for melting. Sometimes the composition is changed, but what remains unchanged is that heads with an expired shelf life are not used.
In order to make Aper Chic cheese, only high quality products are used. The raw materials are cleaned from the crust, even if it is edible, soaked in whey. It is crushed, loaded into boilers, melting salts are added, acids - more often citric and phosphoric, are closed with a lid. After 30 minutes, add the remaining ingredients - cream and sugar. Reinstall the lid and leave for another 2-3 hours.
This process is called "ripening", during which the salts are distributed over the feedstock. Only then the homogeneous mass is sent to the melter - the boiler, in which the main stage of making the Aper Shik cheese takes place. The temperature is raised to 80-95 ° C, excess liquid is pumped out with a vacuum pump. Unpleasant odors are removed along with the air flow.
Cooling is carried out directly in the melter. The cheese mass cooled down to 60 ° C enters the filling machine, where the common monolith is divided into pieces, which are packaged in trays or packed in foil. If the packaging is in the form of triangles, then the nut mixture is added directly on the conveyor. In the case when "souvenir" baths are made, the nucleoli are pressed into each tablet by hand.
Products are cooled in a special chamber or in a tunnel machine at a temperature of 8-10 ° C. Under the same conditions, Aper Shik is stored until shipment to retail outlets.
In modern dairy factories, processed dessert cheeses are made in a thermo-cutter - a vacuum device equipped with a grinder and stirrer. All processes take place simultaneously, in one installation. Melting is also carried out in it - heating is carried out with the help of steam. This method of making Aper Chic cheese is much more convenient. The cheese mass is cooled and fed through a special valve, the diameter of which can be adjusted.
Artificial essences are not used to improve the taste of dessert varieties, but stabilizers and a gelling agent are added to improve the texture. Homogenization under pressure is also not used, which is carried out without fail to improve the consistency of sweet varieties.
Nuts, which are poured into a thermo-cutter or melter, are pre-processed. They are cleaned, partitions removed in an installation reminiscent of a fan in the flour milling industry. Then they are dried at a temperature of 210-220 ° C for 20 minutes and crushed to the desired fineness. That is why the nuts harmoniously combine with the cheese mass and emphasize the taste.
How to cook Aper Chic at home:
- Bring 1 liter of milk to a boil, cool it a little, pour in the same amount of kefir, but do not wait for the formation of a dense clot - kale.
- Maintain a constant temperature. It should not boil too much, the formation of bubbles inside the container is enough. During this time, the curd raw material melts and begins to stretch. The duration of the process is controlled by evaluating the quality of the curd pieces. They should not be crumbly, but at the same time, when you try to stretch the cheese threads, they quickly break.
- Stir in sugar - to taste, bring it to dissolution, let stand for 10 minutes.
- Throw in a colander, covered with gauze, strain out the serum.
- It is wrapped in cloth, squeezed by hand, and then transferred to a mold. The most convenient home packaging is small cupcake tins.
- Pieces of nuts are pressed into the future heads, cooled to room temperature, and then put into the refrigerator, covered with cling film.
Taste after complete cooling. If stored for a long time, the cheese mass will thicken and it will be difficult to bite through.
