Poor Man's cheese (keshek el fouquara) review
So I made keshek el forquara and it was worth the 4 weeks of life it took from me to make it. The original basis was Hermann's recipe - 500g of bulgur wheat (I used fine) in water with two tablespoons of salt. The jars I had weren't enough to hold the dough together so I split it and on a whim created another jar with boiled white and black quinoa. This jar was chaos fermenting no measurements and I tossed in about a teaspoon of salt. Stirred once a day for the first 2 weeks then every 2 days for the final 2 weeks and milled everything with a mortar in separate batches.
Something interesting happened, one of the bulgur jars smelt sweet while the other was the cheesy funk I was originally going for and the quinoa was the funkiest. So I put jujubes in the sweet bulgur before putting it in oil, coated the stinky bulgur with mixed herbs and the quinoa with garlic.
This is so yummy. The sweet bulgur is milky, buttery and creamy rather like a young brie or extra cultured cream. I paired this with a carrot jam to work with the jujube. The stinky bulgur is light cheesy and is similar to a goat cheese with the herbs and cream cheese plain. The quinoa ended up the star of the show, funky garlicky and perfect on toast though I am thinking of burgers as well.
It takes long but it's with it. I'm eating as soon as 24hrs after going into sunflower oil because others said the oil ageing impact is minimal and to be honest it's so yummy I'll have to work to not finish it within 2 weeks.
Photo 1 - all cheeses
Photo 2 - sweet bulgur with jujube
Photo 3 - stinky bulgur with mixed herbs
Photo 4 - quinoa with garlic
Will be making a fresh batch soon