Mohant

Mohant is a semi-soft cheese which is being produced in the Bohinj region for quite a while. It is a typical cheese with a typical aroma and taste. The dough is even, smooth, partially elastic, hard to spread, kneaded, some balls may appear. The aroma and the taste are aggressive; both extremely strong. The taste is savoury, pungent, but not hot, sometimes a little bitter. The colour is off-white yellow. Mohant in traditionally made of milk that is obtained in two or three milking operations. The cream is skimmed by hand. The milk is heated in bigger pots on fire and constantly stirred. Appropriately heated milk is moved away from fire. The process of acidification takes from 20 to 40 minutes. In the past, the rennet was made at home from stomachs of calves that were not older than 3 weeks. The curdled milk is stirred, cut with a wooden knife or similar thing to the size of wheat grain or corn grain and heated up to 37o C and left 30 minutes to thicken and settle to the bottom of the pot. Some whey is decanted away; in the remaining whey a ball is made, then lifted and put into »štecl« - a mould covered with a special cloth. The curdled mixture is pressed by hand until the whey flows away. After that it is turned over and dry salted. The turning over and pressing may take a day or two. The loaves of mohant are being dried from two to three days on a wooden sticks construction. The dried loaves are put in the wooden buckets – »žehtnjeki« in layers of three or four loaves. The filled bucket is covered with a cloth and a wooden cover and weighed down with the stones so the whey is pressed out. The whey is decanted away every day. When the whey stops to separate, the cover is nailed up and left until the Mohant is ripe. During the summer the process of ripening of the cheese is faster, that is why it is made out of full fat milk; during the winter the skimmed milk used. In the summer the ripening process takes at least six weeks, in the winter up to three months. Mohant could be eaten as a side-dish to several dishes, very often it is eaten with a spoon together with the unpeeled boiled potatoes.

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