This recipe is pretty damn simple, but it is just a test. No guarantees are implied by any of this ;) - I really am making this up as an average of all the other cheese recipes on the internet.
Ingredients:
- Milk: Whole - 2 Pints
- Live Yogurt: Yeo Valey - 2 Tablespoons
- Rennet: Vegeren - 20 Drops
- Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
- Pan - To warm milk.
- Pan lid - to keep flies out of warm milk.
- Thermometer - that does blood temperature (100F / 32C).
- Muslin - To wrap cheese in when draining and squeezing.
- String - To hang wrapped cheese.
- A cheese press - Details to follow.
Acquiring the ingredients:
Milk: Picked this up from my local corner shop. Regular full fat two pint job. 98p.
Live Yogurt: Found at lunchtime at Co-op. They had tons of the stuff. It's the Yeo Valley Bio Yogurt, as recommended by a few websites.
Rennet: The most difficult item to find, although, in the end, it was stocked by my local Sainsbury's.
I couldn't find it on the shelves, and the first shelf stacker I asked didn't know what it was, She asked a supervisor with a hand held computer, (we live in the future.) He couldn't find it on the database, (apparently not that far in the future,) but I suspect that his spelling (like mine) was probably off. He asked his supervisor, who thought he had seen some once, and after some scouting around found a single bottle, mixed in with Gelatins.
The type they had was Vegeren by 'Just Wholefoods'. It was a lonely bottle, with an expiry date just 4 months in the future. Now, I don't know if that's because it goes off quickly, or it had been waiting for me for years.
Salt: A celler
Stage 1. Assemble the goodies - and get the Yogurt going.
I picked up the Thermometer at Millets Farm store.
That Jam jar contains the muslin, (its butter Muslin, not sure if that's a problem yet.) - Also from Millets Farm Store near Oxford.
The Two boxes at the back are my cheese press plates.
In the front is the nice and easy to use thermometer.
Begin!
That's what a pan of two pints whole milk looks like. Exciting huh?
Warm the milk and add two large tablespoons of the live yogurt.
I brought it up to 100F (32C) as that's apparently the ideal temperature for the Yogurt culture to start breeding (and hopefully out-breed any E. coli that may be in there)
Then. Wait. I gave it 45 minutes or the yogurt to do something.
This gave me time for a quick DIY interlude to create my Cheese press.
Oh and yes, I probably got it too warm - at about 105F - oops.
Also, I did mix it around three or four times during this 45 minute period.
Stage 2: Rennet, Curds and Whey.
So, after the 45 minute wait of the yogurt stage, it's time to mix in the rennet.
The instructions on the Vegeren box say 10 drops per pint of warm milk. So I dutifully shook the bottle (it takes a knack) until I had droppered 20 drops for my two pints.
I then put the pan back on the heat to bring it back up to 100F (32C) and stirred it all in for 20 seconds or so.
I then realized i had stirred it while it was setting, so I had made something like lumpy-crumbly custard, which looked like this:
It had rapidly shrunk, and created a mat of floating semi-solid goo. I believed it to be the Curds.
I decided to leave it another 45 minutes to allow whatever process the rennet was making happen, happen.
Stage 3: Cutting the Curds
After leaving it for the 45 mins of stage 2, it had shrunk further:
I then got the knife out, and as so many cheese making websites instruct, cut it into 1cm cubes, and heated it to 105F while giving it a good stir.
What actually happened was that it all broke up into a suspension of small white grains of bland solid yogurty bits (I tasted them,) it was crying out to be strained.
How could I resist?
Stage 4: Straining and Hanging
To separate the curds from the whey, I got a colander, stuck it in a pan and lined it with the muslin cloth.
Then I dropped all the mixture into it. The whey took about a minute to go through. after which I was left with what as basically bland cottage cheese in the cloth:
I drew up the four corners of the cloth, tide some string around it, and hung it in my spare fridge with a bowl underneath to catch the drips.
Here it stayed over night dripping away. until the next morning, ready for the next stage:
Stage 5: Pressing
So I being as this was all an experiment, I didnt want to spend money on a press, so I built my own:
DIY Cheese press 1
This was the point that I was expecting to put the press into action, but frankly, it barely seemed to need it.
After retrieving the cheese curds from the little bag. I put them in a new clean bowl and mixed the salt into if and mushed it all in. I am hoping that this salt will slow down and eventually stop the bacteria from multiplying to crazy (toxic) numbers.
I washed out the cloth, and wrapped the cheese as tightly as I could. placing it in the box with the holes in the bottom. Then the other box went on top, trapping it and squeezing it. I placed a large pan full of water on top, expecting to see some extra whey get squeezed out. But, alas, not a drop. A day later? - Still nothing. But there it is right now, being squeezed, but not giving in. - It will have to move aside for the next cheese soon:
Anyway, Stay tuned for results of leaving it for a 'few' weeks to see what happens.
There may soon be a link to my memorial fund after I try the results!
Edit:
- See the waxing.
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