Cheese

Adventures in Cheese Making by Rose

Lately I’ve been feeling a need to revert to the land for my food. Maybe it’s the place, maybe it’s the people, or maybe it’s just the next step in my own evolution- who knows? Growing up it was always important in my household to sustain our harvest throughout the year by growing veggies for canning, sprouting shitake mushrooms, making jars of homemade pickles for the pantry, picking gallons of blueberries to freeze, grafting fruit trees, smoking/canning fish, raising chickens, maintaining a beehive, and so many other things that I used to take for granted in this over-processed, red dye #40 world. While I doubt I could ever reach the level of craftiness my parents have, I’ve been experimenting with a few awesome recipes. Tonight I decided to make cheese. Surprisingly it took less than a half-hour and tasted delicious! Here’s a few simple steps you can follow...

Step 1: Pour a glass of wine for yourself. While this doesn’t directly affect the quality of the cheese produced, I have a strong theory that anything cooked with wine and love tastes significantly better.

Step 2: Pour a gallon of milk into a BIG pot. (I used half a gallon of milk, but that’s only because I wasn’t about to go to the store again... it turned out fine, but next time I'll use a gallon for sure.)

Step 3: Heat milk to 55 degrees F, then add 1 ½ tsp citric acid powder dissolved in ¼ cup room temperature. Stir. (Note: I just poured it directly into the milk… bad idea. Don’t do that.) Harvest natural foods carries citric acid powder.

Step 4: When it heats up to 88 degrees F, add ¼ tsp liquid rennet OR ½ rennet tablet dissolved in ¼ cup room temperature water. There is no place in Del Norte (that I know of) that carries rennet tablets- I even tried Rumianos, but they only had professional grade condensed stuff. I had to buy mine on amazon.

Step 5: Keep stirring. You’ll see the curds start to fleck off (as shown in the picture). This picture is of the milk just starting to curd up. When the “milk” separates COMPLETELY between curds and yellow liquid (around 95-105 degrees) stop stirring and take it off the heat. This will be obvious, because the liquid will look really yellow and clear- not like milk at all. LET THE POT SIT FOR 5 MINTUES WITHOUT STIRRING IT! Pour yourself another glass of wine, put on a movie, clean up the kitchen- just don’t touch the pot or you’ll ruin the cheese.

Step 6: This is where you have some options. You could pour it into a strainer with cheesecloth (which is what I did)… or if you want to be lazy about it, you can use a big spoon with holes in it and just put the curds in a bowl. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. Drain off as much water as you can. If it’s not already in a bowl… put it in a bowl. Stick it in the microwave for 60 seconds. Drain the excess whey, if there is any. Microwave again for 30-40 seconds. Fold the cheese. Add some salt. Put it in the microwave again. 

Step 7: At this point your cheese should be really really freaking hot. If you try to pull it and it breaks- it’s not hot enough. Just through it back in the microwave until it stretches. Stretch it once or twice. 

AND THEN VOILÀ… CHEESE!

Post Script- I made this recipe the easy way. If you don't want to use the microwave there are other recipes, but they take much longer. See this website for the hard way:

http://fiascofarm.com/dairy/mozzarella.htm