Hard cheese with cranberries

One of two recent cheeses I made in November - one with sage and this one with cranberries. Both were better than previous ones, even though this one is a bit bland. Toasted cheese with this one, though, is scrummy - slightly sweet. I bought a 10l saucepan so that I could warm bigger amounts of milk than just the 4,5l which I'd been doing previously, and the resulting cheese size is far more satisfactory, and probably more cost effective. Some herbs - sage and lovage, which I cut back in early October to dry and keep. I have to shred the leaves and jar them soon. Should have done it long ago but writing the book on Jezebel was taking up all my time last autumn.

I also harvested the stevia rebaudiana plant, dried it, and then pounded the leaves to powder. It's now in a little pot. I use it for putting on muesli instead of suger or honey. It's amazingly sweet.

SFG May Update

Have also made my first goats' cheese. Same method as with the cheddar - worked beautifully. The curds are a lot softer though, and break up into very fine pieces. It sat under a press for three days and I took it out this morning to begin maturing. It's whiter than the cows' milk cheese, and tastes quite creamy. We'll see how it turns out.

I'm finding that cheese-making is a question of experimenting. So far, each cheese has tasted somewhat different. Maybe I'm too much of a creative chaotic to be rigidly disciplined every time, and follow exactly the same rules. I find experimenting a lot more fun. Two weeks ago I made a cheddar with sage and mediterranean herbs in it. It smells gorgeous. Both this and the previous cheddar are now maturing in the cellar (which isn't ideal as far as its temperature is concerned, but it's the best I can do. Both are covered with a yellow cheese wax to prevent drying out and bacterial attack.

I've also reorganised the cellar and made room for food storage. Our larder in the kitchen is merely a small cupboard into which relatively little food will fit, so it makes sense to have enough room somewhere else. I would LOVE to have a walk-in larder one day.

Today I bought an aubergine plant, a Stevia, and a beefsteak tomato plant. I moved some chard seedlings together - no idea how big they'll get, but it was taking them so long and I decided to use one square for radishes, which I soaked and sprouted beforehand. The spinach is coming on well, and so are the red cabbages. My cocktail tomatoes look very happy, as do the cucumber, pepper and pepperoni plants. The sugar peas are dong well too. And every day I can already harvest a bit of lettuce. I use a few beetroot leaves in salads as well. I read somewhere that they're good to eat, and they are, at least I've only tried the baby leaves. I only have two kohlrabis but they're very boisterous and taking up more and more room in their square. I now also have four celariac on the go. I can't wait to get harvesting. Started another cheddar three days ago. The last one was made in a hurry and I didn't put enough salt in the curds, plus the milk had gone off just a bit, so it was rather sour tasting. I used it grated on pizzas though, and it was fine. 4.5l of raw milk from the farm around the corner costs 2,80 Euro. That makes 720g of cheese, which would probably cost three times the amount in a shop. Even grated cheese costs quite a bit, even though one is also paying for the air in the packet, so I reckon that even if the cheese is a bit of an experiment, and doesn't necessarily always taste brilliant the first few tries, you can always cook with it, so nothing's wasted and one's probably saved money. I don't HAVE to use mozzarella. She's too fat anyway. ;) I've been experimenting with different forms. This time I decided not to use the old biscuit tin. The cheese turned out rather flat, and took up too much room in the fridge. So this time I used a large yoghurt pot (the ones which contain firm Greek yoghurt and have a handle - bought expressly for the purpose of cheese-making and not for the yoghurt, of course) - and stuck holes in the bottom to let the whey run out. It works perfectly, the shape is fatter and more compact and will look better once it's cut, I trust. Better for putting on bread too. I've ordered some cheese wax (yellow) which will prevent the cheese from drying out and growing unwanted mold. It'll ripen longer that way, I hope. Also ordered a berry picker which will be jolly useful for blueberries, bilberries in the woods, and hopefully our own jostaberries, this summer.

Drove my other half down to G. this afternoon for a meeting (so he could work in the back of the car to meet an important deadline) and while I was waiting for him I picked a trug full of dandelion heads.

I've got some preserving sugar left over from last year, and H. inspired me to make dandelion jelly again. We haven't had any for a long time and have run out. So they've been boiling in water in a large saucepan and tomorrow I'll get jelly-making.

I would really love to try making dandelion wine, which my mother used to make (turned out like a rich sweet sherry - yummy), but I haven't plucked up the courage yet. A very kind friend (he's quite experienced at it already) gave me a booklet on wine making, so I'm going to have to try it out. Actually we're not eating jelly or cows' milk cheese at the moment. We're doing the 'Maker's Diet' again - started 5 days ago. So, no carbs for 2 weeks, loads of berry fruits, veggies, clean meat, seeds, sprouts, goats and sheep cheese - (my next experiment is to try goats cheese). Feeling better already. Oh yes, and our potatoes are sprouting! Very exciting.

Whey to Go

This is the first attempt at making cheddar, which I miss. It's expensive to buy here in Germany and I haven't found any native equivalents. I started at about 6.30 on Saturday evening, which was far too late, because you actually need a lot longer for this kind of cheese. I knew this, but circumstances prevailed against me. I had a lot of other things to do as well, so things got a bit drawn out.
So this is 5l of raw cows' milk heating up slowly in a sterile saucepan to 32°c.

I then added a teaspoon of animal rennet (bought online because although I was told I could buy it from an Apotheke, no-one wherever I inquired even knew what rennet was. Incredible how ignorant we all are these days) in a small cup of cold water. Stirred the milk. It was nearly midnight by this time.

I sat the saucepan on the night storage heater for 30 minutes, after which time the milk had coagulated and turned to a thick junket, providing a clean break when I stuck a finger in to test it. Getting really excited now, I then cut the curds with a palette knife -to 1cm wide, and stirred with a whisk to separate curds and whey. I'm not quite sure what the point is of cutting the curds in the first place, if one has to separate them even more with a whisk afterwards. Perhaps it's supposed to make it easier to cut them really finely if one does it with a knife first. If anyone knows, please tell me..

You can see the cut curds here. It works!! All the info and videos

on the net couldn't quite take away my anxiety that I maybe hadn't done everything correctly.






Then I heated the curds and whey up to 38°c and stirred slowly.
It is fascinating how different the
curds are this time, compared with how they look when I coagulate the milk with lemon juice or vinegar. They are so creamy, as opposed to clumpy. Then I poured off the curds slowly into a cloth over a bowl, keeping some of the whey for cooking. Making a cheese this big, there's so much whey left over, that there's no way (pun unintended) we could use it all, so I am ashamed to say that I pour a lot of it down the sink. I know this is awful, but I don't know what to do with the rest. While the children are not at home, no-one eats cereal in the mornings... We haven't a dog or cat or livestock. Ideas welcome.
I then added three teaspoons of salt to the curds and mixed it in thoroughly.

Here I placed a bowl under this strange looking metal stand - I can't remember what it's for, originally, but it has some very useful holes in the top, which the whey can drip through while the cheese is being pressed. The curds are in a cloth, in the old biscuit tin, with my husband's weights on the top. They stayed like this in a cold bedroom (thanks Ben) overnight. Went to bed and dreampt of cheese.
(The cake in the background is a carrot cake for Sunday.)

This was the next morning after the first pressing. I then turned the cheese over and pressed it again in the same way for another 24 hours. When I took it out this morning it was much firmer and uniformly smooth all the way round. I turned it once again to press for a further day. Tomorrow morning I'll take it out to put it in the fridge to mature. I don't know if I have to cover it with cheese wax - I don't have any and I don't have the necessary equipment to melt enough with which to cover the cheese. So I'll see what happens. All very exciting.

This is the results of the third effort at making cheese using lemon juice /vinegar as a coagulating agent. You need more of either for a cheese of this size, which was made from 4,5l of raw cows' milk. I formed the curds in a cloth in a bottomless biscuit tin, which works perfectly. My husband's 5kg weights fit neatly over the cloth and tin bottom which cover the cheese and press the whey out through the cloth, (and a metal stand with holes in it - which has been sitting in the cellar for years, and whose proper purpose I can't for the life of me remember) - into the bowl underneath.
The last cheese I made using this method, (see last cheese entry) I soaked in a salt bath over night. It was tasty, (creamy yellow rind on the outside and a firm white soft cheese on the inside) but perhaps a little too salty. So this time I only salted the curds slightly and salted the outside. I made this three weeks ago and since then it's been sitting in the fridge, gradually giving off moisture and developing a firmer yellower crust. Can't wait to try it.

Next Cheese-making Adventure

This time I used 3.5 litres of fresh milk straight from the farm. Heated it up slowly and at just before simmering point, added lime juice (didn't have any lemon left) and finally a bit of white wine vinegar. The moment everything suddenly curdles never ceases to astonish and delight me. Huge great lumps of white curds. Poured everything into a linen tea-towel and hung it up on a hook on the ceiling to drip all night into a bowl. This morning I pressed the resulting lump (a good 750g, at least) in the cheese pot, (under my husband's lifting weights) for a few hours. A short while ago I took it out again and put it into a salt water bath. It's sitting in the fridge. Not sure how long I'll keep it in there, but perhaps for a few days, after which I'll take it out and have it sit in the fridge to mature a bit. I'm not sure what kind of cheese it'll be; will have to look it up.