Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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• Curd cheese in the old-fashioned cheesecake

  I'm planning on baking the old-fashioned cheesecake from Kitchen this weekend but I cannot find any curd cheese (I was shopping in Tesco and looked everywhere in the supermarket!!). Could you please advise me which shops curd cheese can be found in or which easily-found alternatives I could use? Thank you very much, Sandra x

  Posted by stfrench. Answered on 15th Mar 2011 at 12.00

  From the nigella team:

  Unfortunately the availability of some products can vary by area, however we suggest trying Waitrose or Ocado for curd cheese (they stock the Devon Gold brand) or Sainsbury's stores or home delivery (they stock the Kingdom brand). If you can't see curd cheese on the shelves of your supermarket you may also try looking on the deli counter instead. 

  We wouldn't particularly recommend a substitute for the curd cheese. Quark's fat content is too low and reduced fat cream cheeses have a different flavour to curd cheese and also many contain stabilizers which can affect the finished cheesecake. You could try draining full-fat cottage cheese overnight (stand a muslin-lined sieve over a bowl in the fridge and drain the cottage cheese in this) then blending it until smooth. However we have not tested this so cannot vouch for its suitability, and cottage cheese can be slightly salty which could also affect the flavour of the cheesecake.

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