Wednesday 14 January 2009

First Try at Cheesemaking

After following the instructions in this handy little video
How to Make Cheese -

with our usual raw milk from the farm around the corner, which had gone off and needed to be used up (although I did add 500ml of organic yoghurt and what was left over of the clotted cream and whipping cream we had in the fridge from the holiday season) I ended up (after a night in an unheated, decidedly chilly bedroom, in a pot under a 10kg weight - by which I do not mean that I spent the night in said bedroom, in said pot) with a very edible soft cheese - actually it was more like an immature, unripened Wensleydale, not as spreadable as the one in the video because it had probably drained for longer, but really tasty, nonetheless.

One of these days I'm going to get hold of a Dutch cheese press, and make my own hard cheeses. I'm sick of buying plastic wrapped cheese - even organic cheese comes wrapped in some kind of plastic - quite apart from the unwanted packaging, homemade always tastes nicer, it's fun and more satisfying to make oneself, and one doesn't have to worry about the gender-bending endocrines getting into the system any more than they absolutely have to. Back to basics.

1 comment:

K said...

you crack me up! I need to get that picture of you sitting in that pot out of my head now! kind of anne geddes, only more weird. ;)

btw, I love your idiomatic language (hope that's the correct term for what I'm thinking of). Love! Love! Love it!