We recently explored making yoghurt, so I’m following up with a delicious use for yoghurt: let’s make it into cheese! (You can also just use a bought one.)
The origin of labneh, a simple drained yoghurt-cheese, is held tight by many cultures. Is it Lebanese? Is it Palestinian? Is it Greek? It’s delicious, that’s for sure, incredibly versatile and so straightforward to make. Adam and I lived in Israel for a couple of months when we were young, on our way home from a working holiday in England. We worked on a family friend’s moshav in the Negev desert, picking cherry tomatoes and grapes. I was fired after a few days because the furry spiders living in the vines kept making me shriek, and I kept making everyone else jump, and it was way too hot for theatrics and how about I just wait back at the house? Perhaps because of our (wonderful apart from those vine spiders) time spent in Israel, our preference here on the farm is to eat labneh the way we were introduced to it there: smooshed onto a plate, sprinkled with Za’atar, drizzled with good olive oil and eaten with flatbread.. Yum.
Makes 250 gm
Ingredients
500 g natural yoghurt (or as much as you like)
½ teaspoon salt (optional)
Method
Add the salt to the yoghurt, either in a bowl or straight into the jar or container.
Pour or spoon the yoghurt into a muslin (cheesecloth)-lined colander.
Drain at room temperature for up to 24 hours, and then in the fridge for up to an additional 4 days, depending how dry you want it. For spreadable labneh, one day is sufficient. For ball-able labneh (below) drain for a minimum of 2 days, first day at room temperature and, after that, in the fridge, until it feels really firm when poked. If you live in a very hot climate I’d recommend only leaving the labneh out at room temperature for 12 hours, not a whole day.
A note about sweet labneh: You can sweeten your labneh with honey or maple syrup before draining, if you choose. A teaspoon of honey or maple syrup to 500 gm yoghurt works well. Stir it into the yoghurt and then put it into the lined colander to drain.
Marinated Labneh
Golden jars of balled cheese. So good. Such a fantastic gift. It’s such a good way of lengthening the shelf-life of yoghurt. Once you drain whey out of yoghurt it lasts longer anyway, and then when you submerge it under oil it lasts about twice as long again. All cheese is really milk’s leap towards immortality – cheese under oil exemplifies this deliciously.
Makes 2 x 300 g jars
Ingredients
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
dried thyme leaves
250 gm pre-drained labneh (as above) from 500g yoghurt drained for about three days
250 ml (1 cup) olive oil
500 ml (2 cups) Australian canola oil or other neutral oil
Method
In the bottom of two jars put the garlic, peppercorns and thyme.
Form the very firm labneh into balls with wet hands.
Place the balls into the jars.
Cover the cheese with oil at a ratio of about 40/60 olive oil to canola oil, or any other seed or vegetable oil – straight olive oil will set solid in the fridge, but with a split of oils it should stay liquid. If it doesn’t, just allow half an hour for the jar to come to room temperature before serving.
Labneh stored under oil keeps, refrigerated, for at least 6 weeks (longer, really).
Yoghurt Maple Balls
Yoghurt maple balls. *sigh*
I’m finicky about recipe provenance. I always try to credit anyone and any recipe that has influenced one of mine. This one is a wee problem though.
Adam and I stayed at a friend’s weekender in the Blue Mountains one weekend many, many years ago and I found this recipe in a magazine. I wrote the recipe down but didn’t think to write down which magazine it was in. So, I’m sorry to the original inventor of this recipe, whoever you are, you creative genius. I’ve been making and teaching this recipe for over 10 years so I feel vaguely proprietary about it, but the original idea was not mine. I’m reproducing it here because it is perfect and needs to be shared.
These little yoghurty nutty mapley things are gorgeous. Enjoy.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
1 kg plain (natural) yoghurt
125 ml (1/2 cup) maple syrup
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar
70 g (½ cup) hazelnuts, roughly chopped and toasted
Method
Combine the yoghurt and the syrup in a bowl and stir together well.
Pour or spoon the yoghurt onto a large square of doubled muslin (cheesecloth) (do this over a bowl) and gather together tightly with string.
Loop the string around a chopstick and suspend over a bowl or container in the fridge for four days to remove the liquid.
Form tablespoon-sized balls with wet hands and roll in a mix of cinnamon and sugar, then toss to coat in the hazelnuts.
Aaahhh… *gargle in back of throat*
They are fabulously dense and not too sweet and totally delicious.
You can omit the maple syrup and the sugar to make a perfectly keto version, and you can also substitute whatever nuts you like.
Recipe adapted from Fiona Weir’s book “From Scratch” published by Hardie Grant 2022, photography by Alan Benson