If you have ever watched the movie, The Emperor’s New Groove, you would know that the beloved character Kronk, the clumsy cook and henchman of the movie’s villain, prizes his spinach puffs. I just watched this movie last night, and I could not get the steaming, buttery-looking cartoon spinach puffs out of my head, so I set out to make my own.
I found a decent looking recipe on the Youtube show, Binging with Babish, which uses three cheeses: cream cheese, parmesan, and feta. Feta adds the tang, parmesan the saltiness, and cream cheese the creaminess.
Note. I deviated from the linked recipe in three ways: (1) I added a couple spoonfuls of sour cream, (2) substituted onions rather than shallots, and (3) used a pinch of dried dill rather than 3 tbsp of fresh dill. In the end, I overstuffed the puffs so they became more like little pizzas - a tasty mistake!
One question I had while cooking this was, “how can milk be transformed into seemingly endless varieties of cheese?” We need to ask cheesemakers, who are essentially microbiologists and chemists since they have perfected the different biochemical reactions that result in the many flavors and textures of cheeses.
Let’s start with the main ingredient: milk. Cow’s milk is about 88% water and 12% fat, proteins, and sugar. This seemingly small 12% is largely responsible for the varied flavors of cheese. Some cheeses like feta are made from other animal milk like sheep’s milk, which has twice the fat of cow’s milk.
Regardless of the type of milk, the initial steps of cheese making is similar. Cheesemakers first add starter cultures (e.g., bacteria and/or fungi) and special rennet enzymes to the milk. These two components cause the milk to curdle. Specifically, starter cultures include lactic acid bacteria (LAB) which convert lactose, a milk sugar, into lactic acid. The acidity encourages curdling, which is then accelerated by rennet enzymes derived from the stomach of a calf.
Then, the milk curds undergo different steps to become various cheeses. Curds destined to become fresh cheeses like cream cheese are immediately seasoned and prepared for commercial packaging. On the other hand, aged cheeses such as feta, parmesan, and blue cheese ripen for several weeks to several years.
When cheeses age, the bacterial and/or fungal cocktails which began the curdling process interact with the curds to produce myriads of flavors and textures. This aging, or ripening, process has two main steps.
First, the LAB bacteria continues to convert lactose into lactic acid. The longer a cheese is aged, the more tangy and “sharp” it becomes. That is why “extra sharp cheddar” is more expensive; it takes longer for the bacteria to create that extra sharp flavor. Additionally, some cheeses have fungi, or molds. For example, blue cheese contains the mold Penicillium, which makes the cheese extra creamy and contributes to the tangy, strong blue cheese flavor. These molds are safe to eat because they do not produce chemical toxins in the conditions in which the cheese is made.
The second process is called proteolysis, the breakdown of milk proteins into amino acid compounds. Just like in the Maillard reaction (read my previous article!), each amino acid compound contributes to a different flavor such as smoky or nutty. In soft cheeses like Brie, for example, proteolysis causes an ammonia flavor.
Once cheeses develop their unique flavor, they are ready for us to savor. In these spinach puffs, tangy feta, salty parmesan, and creamy cream cheese are enveloped inside crispy and buttery puff pastry. I doubt that Kronk would have known or even cared about the science of cheese, but -call me cheesy- I think Kronk would be proud of my spinach puffs.
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