I have a recipe requiring pot cheese. It needs to be “drained”. As best I can tell pot cheese sound similar to cottage cheese or ricotta cheese. Is this accurate, or way off base?
Any help would be appreciated.
It’s like Pot Noodle. You add boiling water, y’see, and…
Eh. I got nothin’.
Miss Purl, I am trying a recipe called paschka. After reading about it there are various spellings for the dish. There’s pot cheese, unsalted butter, some sugar and an egg or two.
The recipes emphasizes that the pot cheese must be well drained, or the mix will not set up. After the ingredients are combined they are place in a mold. I don’t have a real paschka mold, but it says a clean, unused clay flower pot will do, when it is lined with cheesecloth. The flower pot has the advantage of having a hole in the bottom, so that as the mix sits it can drain even further. When unmolded it is decorated with strips of candied fruit.
Paschka is said to be a traditional Russian Easter recipe, and as I may be attending Easter services with some Orthodox folks in a couple of weeks, I didn’t want to come empty-handed for the meal after the vigil service.
That sounds delicious, Baker. Kind of like a dairy Jello. Let us know how it turns out, okay?
I’ll do that! I’ve been trying to find a picture of it online, but so far I haven’t. There is a picture in a Time-Life Russian foods book, and it looks lovely, and sounds very rich. Almost pure white, the colors of the candied fruit decorating it really stand out.
I’ve seen two other pictures, and one just had the fruit making flower patterns, while the decos on the other were more abstract, save for the “X B” patterned on the side, standing for the words Kristos Voskres, meaning Christ is Risen.
Thanks for that photo, but actually that’s not the item I’m making. But it did look tasty!
The paschka I will make is, when unmolded, a free standing creation, not a single serving in a ramekin, and it’s the size of a medium sized flower pot.
Be that as it may, that looked like French in that article, and I wish I read it, as it looked good. Thanks for sharing.
This is a pretty sad lookin’ dish, but it claims to be a picture of a “pashka.”
www.lancewood.co.za/ recipes/cot_pashka.htm
Fixed link:
www.lancewood.co.za/ recipes/cot_pashka.htm
Looks closer to what Baker’s describing, and even includes the recipe.
(Obviously, Baker, you’re going to have to take a picture when it’s all done to let us know what it really looks like!)
I’ve seen a lot of recipes for paschka; it’s a very traditional Russian Easter dish. The cheese you are talking about is called tvorog in Russian, and something phonetically like it in Polish for which I can’t remember the spelling. It’s usually translated into American English as “farmer’s cheese;” I think “pot cheese” is the British equivalent; does your recipe have other UK spelling/terminology?
Good luck, and let us know how it comes out! I’ve always wanted to try making it.
Show off.
Couldn’t just bring a store-baked cake, could ya? 
Sounds yummy, except I’m afraid of recipes that call for eggs. Let me know how it turns out and if you can taste the eggs. I loathe eggs. I won’t even touch a creme brulee.
Store bought cake? I don’t need no steenking store bought cake! 
Seriously, events like these are the only chance I get to try the more elaborate recipes. When you live alone and cook for one, big items last forever, or until they go bad in the refrigerator. So I love potlucks, parties, and so on.
Well, since it sounds like using drier cottage cheese will work, although I’ll still have to drain it, that’s what I’ll try. Orthodox Easter isn’t for two more weeks, so that will be plenty of time to plan it, and buy a pot to mold it in. I’ll take a picture if it comes out okay, although I’ll have to have my sister scan it, as I don’t have a scanner.
I thought it was the stuff I used to see in my cookware in college after leaving it on the counter for a few days…
Are you making kulich to go with it?
Also, if you’re having trouble finding pot cheese, it’s perfectly ok to replace it in the recipe with cream cheese. After six weeks of no dairy, nobody’s going to care that the pascha isn’t 100% authentic.
I’m thinking about the kulich, but I need to find a can to let it rise in. I have made kulich before, just not the paschka. And I have plenty of fruit and nuts to go in it.
I imagine you’re right about the end of fasting. I gave up meat for Lent, and the Western Easter is past. But my Orthodox acquaintances told me about the restrictions, no meat, fish, dairy, or olive oil. Really, it’s pretty much a vegan diet, except even the vegans can do olive oil I figure.
Pot cheese sounds very similar to farmer’s cheese. In any case, farmer’s cheese is a much closer equivalent than cream cheese, which some here have recommended as a substitute. You won’t find farmer’s cheese in most grocery stores, but a well-stocked cheese shop should have it.
My in-laws were immigrant Ukrainians and made 2 different kinds of what they called pashka. One was a cheese-like substance like what’s being discussed here. My FIL used to make pounds and pounds of it. It took a long time to make and IMHO tasted nasty. My MIL made a cake she called pashka, which was dry and had little taste other than yeast. She baked in coffee cans to get a cylindrical shape and decorated the top with white icing and jelly beans. We used to take some home to be polite, but we usually fed it to the birds.
Fortunately, both of these items were made only once a year. I think the word pashka may actually mean “Easter,” thus there was pashka cheese and pashka cake.
Hope your creation turns out tastier than what my in-laws served.
Yes, it does. The cake that normally goes with *pashka *is called kulich.