What is included in Motal cheese, how is this product eaten? Features of preparation, useful properties and contraindications to the use of cheese. Culinary recipes using Motal cheese.
Motal cheese is one of the many varieties of Armenian and at the same time Azerbaijani cheese. The product matures in goat wineskins with thyme leaves, therefore it has an incredibly appetizing and slightly sour aroma. Motal is a rather fatty type of cheese, it has an oily or crumbly structure. Has no crust and no definite shape. The taste is moderately salty and slightly spicy. Experts consider Motal, like any other sheep cheese, useful for human health, however, they emphasize a number of contraindications to its use.
Features of the preparation of Motal cheese
Armenian or Azerbaijani chefs first learned how to cook Motal cheese - it happened hundreds of years ago. Historians find it difficult to name the details of the circumstances under which the recipe for this product was created. In the modern world, Motal is prepared mainly in its homeland, in the summer and in limited quantities.
It is quite difficult to prepare this kind of sheep cheese at home, because for this you need a wineskin - a bag made of sheep or goat skin. However, difficulties can arise not only with the equipment.
To better understand all aspects of the preparation of the product, check out the step-by-step recipe for Motal cheese:
- Sheep milk must be left to sour.
- A layer of cheese is formed in the fermented milk, which must be salted.
- Squeeze the whey out of salted cheese.
- The cheese must be placed in a sheep's wineskin, which is previously turned inside out with sheared wool. Here Motal will mature for several months (3-4).
- After aging, the cheese is formed into one massive and shapeless piece weighing up to 25 kg, which should be divided into smaller pieces weighing up to 1 kg.
- The sliced cheese is placed in separate packages and sold.
The main feature of Motal cheese, prepared according to the original recipe, is as follows: during ripening, the product is not affected by artificially added enzymes, but by the substances contained in the skin of the ram. Modern manufacturers do not always use animal skins for making cheese. Sometimes they replace the wineskin with the stomach of a ram, and even more often they use rennet “Gursag Mayasy” instead of animal enzymes.
The fat content of Motal cheese is usually up to 40%. It is customary to eat it wrapped in pita bread or paired with onions and garlic. Sheep cheese snacks are washed down mainly with dry red wine.
Interesting! Scientists have proven that mankind began to cook cheese more than 7 thousand years ago. The earliest evidence that people prepared a fermented milk product was found on the territory of modern Poland. During excavations, archaeologists managed to find a sieve, which the ancient people allegedly used to make cheese. This is evidenced by the molecules of milk protein, which were found on an ancient object and identified using the most complex chemical analysis.
