Anybody who has made the trip from Chicago to Milwaukee probably knows Mars' Cheese Castle, an infamous tourist trap selling products of varying quality to folks desperate for a bit of Wisconsin's legendary cheese. I've been there more than once. But this last week, I made my own real cheese AND went to a bunch of real castles. Take that, Mars' Cheese Castle.
In a previous blog I mentioned that I found rennet readily available in the grocery here. Rennet is simply an enzyme that causes milk to go Little Miss Muffet-style -- it makes milk break down into curds (solids) and whey (liquid). Following the easy steps at this website right here, I made a batch of neufchatel cheese.
I'd made mozzarella before but this cheese was a bit more involved -- it took about two days as opposed to 20 minutes. Add some buttermilk and rennet to regular milk, let it sit for a day whilst it forms the curds and then hang the whole lot up for a day so that the whey can drain off the curds. Salt it, flavor it as you choose, and start eating. It's amazing that all of this is done outside of refrigeration -- I guess it's the bacteria and acid in the buttermilk that protect the milk from other spoilage.
To drain my whey, I needed a makeshift apparatus created from a bar stool, a large wooden spoon, and two cans of petit pois to get some extra height. Boo, the ever-curious frenchie, found the entire process fascination. She also discovered that the whey in the drain-catch bowl was delicious.
The finished product is a cross between cream cheese and cottage cheese but with a certain freshness to it that you don't find in stuff from the store. I divided the batch up and so far have made raw garlic-infused cheese, chive-enhanced cheese, cheese with smoked paprika, and harissa cheese. It's good plain, too, on toasted bread.
All in all, a success. I plan on bringing the rennet home at Christmas to make a fresh batch of cheese whilst home.
Cheers!
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
Charles De Gaulle (1890 - 1970)
Sunday, November 30
Castles Of Cheese
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
The kept man brings Yankee ingenuity to Hereford! What can’t you accomplish with a bar stool, a bowl, and a wooden spoon. If you can’t find a reliable source of duct tape let me know and I might know a guy who knows a guy.
How does that stuff go with Marmite? We had a friend over the other day for a bread and cheese social; the marmite went really well with one of the cheeses, but I can’t remember which one it was.
They have duct tape here; they call it ducth tape. Marmite goes good with everything so it went pretty well. The hotel we stayed at in London had single-serving Marmite packs. I need to get me some of those.
Post a Comment