technique:Cheesemaking

Stilton: Day 4

Stilton! Day 4! Still no blue’ing…

Stilton: Day 3

My stilton (There are two rounds. I’ve named them Lord Stilton the First and Lord Stilton the Second) is looking a bit yellower/darker than yesterday*, but no blue has started to appear yet.

*I need to figure out some way of calibrating the photos d:

Stilton: Day 2

My Stilton, on it’s second day…

(I’m calling the day that most of the making took place day zero; the unmolding took place on day one, and the beginning of aging started; so I guess this is day two. I think that makes sense (: )

Stilton

I’ve made my first Stilton! I followed the recipe on Jack Schmidlings cheese recipe page. I’m interested to see how it turns out; but having a two month wait to get feedback is a little nerve-wracking.

It’s important to have tools cleaned and sanitised.

This is the milk, with the culture, rennet and mold. It has already started to coagulate together.

After the culture and rennet have done their thing, the curds are ‘cut’ then allowed to rest; then placed in cheesecloth to drain. This gets rid of most of the whey. Next, the curds get squished for a couple of hours in this jury-rigged cheesepress.

These are the curds once they’ve been pressed, then broken into pieces to be salted before being placed in a mold (It turns out that a 500g yogurt container is pretty much exactly the right size for the amount of cheese produced by two litres of milk).

The next day, the cheese was unmolded. I opted to split this into two shorter rounds – it seems to be a bit easier to handle that way.

Ricotta

Ricotta is suprisingly easy to make (:

Take the whey that drained off the chevre (or just about any kind of cheese); and heat it until almost boiling with a little bit of vinegar. Then, strain it through fine cheesecloth or a tea-towel.

That’s it. (!)

Chevre Phase II

Last night, I did the first part of chevre making: heating of milk and the addition of cultures and rennet. Tonight, I embarked on the second part of chevre making: draining off the whey (and making ricotta, as a nifty side benefit).

This is what I came home to. The milk turned into distinct curd and whey parts. Astonishingly so.

I spooned some of the curds (and a bunch of whey) into a cheese mould. This was full, and what you’re seeing is about an hour or two of draining. There’s still quite a bit of whey to drain off.

I had a bunch of curds and whey left; so I put them into a colander with cheesecloth. The cheese I drained in this manor was ready in a few hours.

Chevre Phase I

I have a new hobby: Cheesemaking.

This is the first part, of my ~~first~~ third cheese (I’ve made paneer and mascarpone before; but nothing too far into the realm of cheesemaking). I’m making a chevre (or fromage blanc) from goats milk. The recipe that I’m using lives at http://fiascofarm.com/dairy/chevre.htm. I’m curious to see how it pans out (:

I got the out of the ordinary cheese ingredients from Curds & Whey who are based in Auckland, NZ.