Meow! – Miau!

Hal’s conversation with a cat at 3 a.m.. Too funny!

Quark reactions

Wow, I hadn’t expected such enthusiasm for Quark!

However, Jeff, I can assure you that Quarkspeise is something different than Teletubbie Custard!

John, did you try Buttermilch, Dickmilch or Kefir while in Germany? Ah, the great things one can make from milk…

Belated thanks for the wishes upon my weblog’s first birthday to Steven Vore of Mumble Daily, whom I just found in my referrers. Nice to meet you!

Alles Quark!

Since Helena mentioned that she was dying to know what Quark – curd cheese – is, I dug up some info on Quark.

Basically, Quark is the earliest stage in making cheese. You take milk and add a certain kind of bacteria (I think it’s called rennet in English) that makes the milk curd. When you take out some of the water, you get Quark.

It tasted similar to cottage cheese, but it is smooth, not lumpy. Quark is thicker and dryer than joghurt and only slightly sour.

The best website I have found about milk products is Cheese.com. They have a page that explains what Quark is and how it is made.

I also found a recipe for Quark, in case you want to try to make some yourself. (I have never tried this!)

If you want to try Quark, maybe you can get it in a good cheese shop. Or a shop with German or Austrian food? Quark is called ‘Topfen’ in Austria, by the way. And I found this page on how to find Quark in Canada and the USA.

You can use Quark, like we did last night, to make a dessert: I opened a glass of cherries that my mom had canned, added the cherry juice to the Quark to make it more creamy and then added the cherries. Done! This is called Quarkspeise, and I like it a lot! Of course it also works with other fruit, or you can just add a bit of sugar and vanilla.

In my family, we also eat Quark on bread. As you may know, most people in Germany eat bread or rolls for breakfast. I like to put quark and some kind of jam or marmelade on it, e.g. strawberry jam. Yummy!

Quark is also great on baked potatoes. Just mix some herbs in the Quark and put it on the potato. (In Germany, you can buy pre-made Kräuterquark, herb curd cheese.)

And you can also use Quark to bake Quarkkuchen or cheese cake. These are my favourite uses for Quark, but I guess you can do a lot of other things with it as well.

Oh, and one more thing: You can say ‘Quark’ instead of ‘Quatsch’ – ‘Nonsense’ in German as well.