Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Now this is slow food

Three days ago I started some cheese with a half gallon of our organic, grass fed, yada yada, raw goat milk.  We have a goat share - we share the ownership of two does.  I pasteurized the milk for a half hour. Lower pasteurization temperature - 145 - kills bacteria without denaturing the proteins.  After quickly cooling the milk to 76º in a pan in an ice bath, I added  1/8 teaspoon aroma B mesophilic DVI starter.  One could use a couple tablespoons buttermilk or natural live-culture sour cream.  One should have all sterile equipment. Then, one drop of rennet dissolved in 5 tablespoons filtered, unchlorinated water.  I used this 90º bent spatula I have to blend the culture and rennet into the milk, using an up-and-down motion.  I set the timer for 18 hours and waited.

After the 18 hours, I tasted the curds to make sure they had cultured properly.  They had! - a pleasant sourness. I poured the curds into sterile chevre molds, made with cheap plastic Dixie-like cups perforated with a sterilized ice pick.  After filling each about a fourth to a third of the way, I added one or two of the following to each: black pepper, smoked paprika, thyme, green peppercorns, garlic, savory, red pepper flakes, and a smidgen of I-don't remember-now.  Oh, caraway.  Finish filling the little (3 inch high) molds. Place on a sterile rack above a baking pan with raised sides.  Set the timer for 48 hours.  Wait. Waiting. Waited.

The potential cheeses have been draining at too high a temperature - they should have been kept at no higher than 72 degrees.  This is early August, so not much chance.  I should have used this as an excuse to turn on the air conditioner.  If the cheese fails, I will next time.  If the cheese fails, I will probably remove this post.
We are minutes away from unmolding and salting.  Sea salt sounds good, doesn't it?  But cheeses like a 'clean' salt - just sodium chloride, nothing that can give an off taste or discolor.  Sorry.  If I don't salt until serving, though, I can use any fancy salt I want.  A larger textured salt is nice for anything where the salt is applied to the surface of a food.  "Clean" salts would be kosher, canning, or cheese salt.  Kosher has a good texture, less fine than the others.

This herbed soft goat cheese recipe was adapted from Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses.

The cheese can be wrapped in cheese wrap, paper, or cellophane.  They keep about two weeks refrigerated, and they freeze well. 




1 comment:

  1. These sound great! I, however, don't have a timer that goes beyond 1 hour. So, I'm out. The fact that I also don't have a goat share or any of the equipment you described is completely irrelavant compared to that magical timer.

    I like reading about the kitcheny things that you do, though, so keep it up!

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