Cheese is a kind of meat

This weekend is my birthday present from Marty - a cheese-making course. Super exciting. Now all we need is a cow.

Last night was the first introduction to making cheese. Simon Domper, our teacher, is a character. As well as making cheese, he makes musical instruments out or stuff he finds. Eg he has a double bass made out of a 40 gallon drum and a piece of clothes line and a few different horns made out of pipe and bungs. Anyway, last night we made a yoghurt culture with raw milk and Easiyo which is used in each of the cheeses we are making.

This morning we were back at 9am and began by scraping the sour cream off the top of our culture and storing it for use in the stroganoff tonight.

We then added some of the culture to a big pot of milk each and a bit of rennet in order to make 'junket'. Once it had all set we cut it up with a cheese knife which was a lot of fun. Hugely satisfying the way it splits...

Once it was nicely chopped into pieces we got stuck in with our hands and filled up a few little containers with holes in them to start the feta...

We left that to drain and tottered off for a lovely lunch inside. The homemade instruments came in handy when calling us all back to the cheese workshop....

Once we were all assembled inside again we got started on the baby gouda. We placed more curd into moulds and set them up in the cheese press with the 'gravity-powered silicon chips' as Simon called them to add some weight. Really they were just rocks...

We also flipped the feta over to let it compact in the other direction.

Once that was all done we combined our leftover curd and drained off the whey to make mozzarella. We added salt and squeezed out some of the excess liquid through a cheesecloth and then left it to hang for a while...

Then it was back to the gouda to flip it and place it back in the cheese press so that it was even...

Now all we needed to do was wait so there was a musical interlude....

Last ont he agenda for today was ricotta. We got more milk and heated it up to 80 degrees. We added vinegar to make it curdle....

And then took the gouda (pictured below) out of the press and everything is being left over night. Tomorrow we will put the gouda and feta in brine and the gouda will have to sit for a few weeks. The feta and mozzarella will be ready tomorrow as will the ricotta.

The equipment for cheese making is great. I love all the presses and cheese cloth and moulds. I think Marty is going to make a press. He has a diagram to go from so I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, feeding time at the zoo.

Ciao

K :)