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May. 10th, 2010 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe Story of Cheese!
Cheese comes from cows. Or buffalo or goats or sheep. But this cheese, it comes from a cow, a named cow, whose name is Horns. Horns had a calf last weekend which has been named Sutherland, "South" for short. This is why Horns is making milk. Cows do not make milk just as a matter of course. They make milk, like other mammals make milk, to feed their babies. In order to have milk, cows must first have a calf. (You who are rolling your eyes have NO IDEA how many people in this world do not know how cows work.)
The milk gets out of Horns and into a bucket by way of human hands, which milk the cow by hand twice a day. Horns currently gives about 3/4 of a five gallon bucket of milk morning and night. That is a lot of milk. In order to get the milk for the cheese project, I had to help milk the cow. Now, I am pretty much a disaster at milking the cow. I don't have a cow at home. I didn't grow up milking cows. My people bought their milk at the STORE in proper plastic containers. The horse people, of course, are very good at milking cows by hand because they maintain a real cow on the property and it has to be milked twice a day. They get a lot of practice. Making me help milk the cow is primarily useful for entertainment purposes, but the horse people don't have cable and must get what entertainment they can from real life. For the cheese project, I needed a gallon of milk from Horns the cow. About a quart of that (I'm being generous) was milked out of the cow by my hands. My friend La did the rest of the little gallon bucket and then sent me off to strain that milk so that she could finish milking the cow without me "helping". I'm as useful as a four year old in that department, anyway.
Milk from the cow that is not being consumed by calves is strained through a paper towel into a glass gallon pickle jar. Helpful hint: do not use the perforated "half sheet" kind because the fucking things perforate at the perforation and let unfiltered milk into your container. V. frustrating.
I got the cow milk for this project on Saturday night, but, due to other activities (We'd been drinking shots when it came time to go milk the cow. This did not improve my poor cow-milking skills and I didn't figure I was up to measuring and checking temperature and whatnot in that state, either.) I didn't get to the milk project until Monday night after work and after pony.
The book suggests to pasteurize the milk, but that sounded like work given that it only keeps for a week (if pasteurized) and I figure it's going to be eaten that fast. Also, horse people do not currently die from drinking the stuff out of the cow and unpasteurized. That Pasteur fellow, he's dead anyway. What the hell does he know? I skipped that step.
Heat 1 gallon milk slowly to 88 degrees F. Meanwhile add CaCl2 solution diluted with 2 Tbsp water, also add citric acid. Stir in gently. At 88 degrees F, stir in half rennet tablet dissolved in 2 teaspoons distilled water. (They say distilled b/c chlorine kills rennet. I do not have chlorine in my water so chose to take my chances with adding giardia and coliform bacteria -- allegedly in my potable water supply -- to the cheese. We country people, we have astounding immune systems... those of us that live past infancy.)
Continue to heat slowly to 105F, minimal stirring if any. At this point my milk was split into a white-ish curd (sank right the hell to the bottom) and a greenish-yellow liquid which is called "whey". (I don't know about all ya'll, but I'm of a scientific bent so I tried out the "curds n whey" when I was allowed to touch it. Miss Muffet was out of her fucking mind. NOT TASTY. ICK.) If your milk splits at that point, you measure the temperature on the whey, the which I did, and then remove from heat at 105, again the which I did. Set aside for twenty minutes, so I did.
Remove curd from whey. The directions acted like this would be a business of repeated scooping to "make sure you got it all" but my cheese's curd was one honking big lump of lumpiness and came out in one go. Strain, mashing with a spoon, to make sure that you get all the whey out that it is possible to get out.
Then the world diverges Sneetch-like into Those Who Have Microwaves and Those Who Do Not Have Microwaves. Guess which group I'm in?
Divide curd into four balls. Put one ball into a bowl.
Heat whey to 175F, having added 1/4 cup of salt to it. The directions say flaked salt. My house only has regular Morton's iodized salt, which I use for everything except pickles. Salted caramel recipe calls for "flaked sea salt"? Morton's. Bacon recipe calls for artisanal rock salt? Morton's. Salt, to be honest, is salt. I used Morton's with no problems.
Pour some of the whey over the ball of curd in the bowl. Work (wearing gloves, using the back of a spoon, or toughing it out) the curd in the hot whey until it gets all smooth and shiny and stretchy. It really does do this.
I did one ball and then another and then another and then another so that none of them got all the way cold in my exceedingly chilly house. Cheese did not suffer from being done in stages. I added more hot whey (you get a LOT of whey, a lump of cheese about the size of a small grapefruit) to warm things up several times.
Cheese got appropriately salt from the salty whey.
Cheese is done in about an hour, if you are not wimpy and soft about kneading balls of hot proto-mozzerella. It took me longer this go-round because I didn't know what I was doing. Cheese tastes like mozzerella, only with more cow. This is like the butter project from the previous year, where it was a very buttery thing, but with more cow than you're probably used to. The cow flavor is like what you get from marrow in marrow bones. It's the flavor of cow. I don't know how else to explain it.
I think it would be very interesting melted on, say, bagel halves or english muffins or something similar that I could pretend were mini pizzas. I will have to see about that at the grocery store. (Yes, I could make my own bagels. I've done so in the past. Not gonna waste 'em as a vehicle for mozzerella if I do, though.) I will also need some spaghetti sauce -- this is a low-tech undertaking because I don't have any need to get fancy with my taste-tests until I have fresh basil and real tomatoes.
Cheese comes from cows. Or buffalo or goats or sheep. But this cheese, it comes from a cow, a named cow, whose name is Horns. Horns had a calf last weekend which has been named Sutherland, "South" for short. This is why Horns is making milk. Cows do not make milk just as a matter of course. They make milk, like other mammals make milk, to feed their babies. In order to have milk, cows must first have a calf. (You who are rolling your eyes have NO IDEA how many people in this world do not know how cows work.)
The milk gets out of Horns and into a bucket by way of human hands, which milk the cow by hand twice a day. Horns currently gives about 3/4 of a five gallon bucket of milk morning and night. That is a lot of milk. In order to get the milk for the cheese project, I had to help milk the cow. Now, I am pretty much a disaster at milking the cow. I don't have a cow at home. I didn't grow up milking cows. My people bought their milk at the STORE in proper plastic containers. The horse people, of course, are very good at milking cows by hand because they maintain a real cow on the property and it has to be milked twice a day. They get a lot of practice. Making me help milk the cow is primarily useful for entertainment purposes, but the horse people don't have cable and must get what entertainment they can from real life. For the cheese project, I needed a gallon of milk from Horns the cow. About a quart of that (I'm being generous) was milked out of the cow by my hands. My friend La did the rest of the little gallon bucket and then sent me off to strain that milk so that she could finish milking the cow without me "helping". I'm as useful as a four year old in that department, anyway.
Milk from the cow that is not being consumed by calves is strained through a paper towel into a glass gallon pickle jar. Helpful hint: do not use the perforated "half sheet" kind because the fucking things perforate at the perforation and let unfiltered milk into your container. V. frustrating.
I got the cow milk for this project on Saturday night, but, due to other activities (We'd been drinking shots when it came time to go milk the cow. This did not improve my poor cow-milking skills and I didn't figure I was up to measuring and checking temperature and whatnot in that state, either.) I didn't get to the milk project until Monday night after work and after pony.
The book suggests to pasteurize the milk, but that sounded like work given that it only keeps for a week (if pasteurized) and I figure it's going to be eaten that fast. Also, horse people do not currently die from drinking the stuff out of the cow and unpasteurized. That Pasteur fellow, he's dead anyway. What the hell does he know? I skipped that step.
Heat 1 gallon milk slowly to 88 degrees F. Meanwhile add CaCl2 solution diluted with 2 Tbsp water, also add citric acid. Stir in gently. At 88 degrees F, stir in half rennet tablet dissolved in 2 teaspoons distilled water. (They say distilled b/c chlorine kills rennet. I do not have chlorine in my water so chose to take my chances with adding giardia and coliform bacteria -- allegedly in my potable water supply -- to the cheese. We country people, we have astounding immune systems... those of us that live past infancy.)
Continue to heat slowly to 105F, minimal stirring if any. At this point my milk was split into a white-ish curd (sank right the hell to the bottom) and a greenish-yellow liquid which is called "whey". (I don't know about all ya'll, but I'm of a scientific bent so I tried out the "curds n whey" when I was allowed to touch it. Miss Muffet was out of her fucking mind. NOT TASTY. ICK.) If your milk splits at that point, you measure the temperature on the whey, the which I did, and then remove from heat at 105, again the which I did. Set aside for twenty minutes, so I did.
Remove curd from whey. The directions acted like this would be a business of repeated scooping to "make sure you got it all" but my cheese's curd was one honking big lump of lumpiness and came out in one go. Strain, mashing with a spoon, to make sure that you get all the whey out that it is possible to get out.
Then the world diverges Sneetch-like into Those Who Have Microwaves and Those Who Do Not Have Microwaves. Guess which group I'm in?
Divide curd into four balls. Put one ball into a bowl.
Heat whey to 175F, having added 1/4 cup of salt to it. The directions say flaked salt. My house only has regular Morton's iodized salt, which I use for everything except pickles. Salted caramel recipe calls for "flaked sea salt"? Morton's. Bacon recipe calls for artisanal rock salt? Morton's. Salt, to be honest, is salt. I used Morton's with no problems.
Pour some of the whey over the ball of curd in the bowl. Work (wearing gloves, using the back of a spoon, or toughing it out) the curd in the hot whey until it gets all smooth and shiny and stretchy. It really does do this.
I did one ball and then another and then another and then another so that none of them got all the way cold in my exceedingly chilly house. Cheese did not suffer from being done in stages. I added more hot whey (you get a LOT of whey, a lump of cheese about the size of a small grapefruit) to warm things up several times.
Cheese got appropriately salt from the salty whey.
Cheese is done in about an hour, if you are not wimpy and soft about kneading balls of hot proto-mozzerella. It took me longer this go-round because I didn't know what I was doing. Cheese tastes like mozzerella, only with more cow. This is like the butter project from the previous year, where it was a very buttery thing, but with more cow than you're probably used to. The cow flavor is like what you get from marrow in marrow bones. It's the flavor of cow. I don't know how else to explain it.
I think it would be very interesting melted on, say, bagel halves or english muffins or something similar that I could pretend were mini pizzas. I will have to see about that at the grocery store. (Yes, I could make my own bagels. I've done so in the past. Not gonna waste 'em as a vehicle for mozzerella if I do, though.) I will also need some spaghetti sauce -- this is a low-tech undertaking because I don't have any need to get fancy with my taste-tests until I have fresh basil and real tomatoes.
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Date: 2010-05-11 09:05 am (UTC)we always stopped at the straining stage just left milk out to seperate and used the curd like cream cheese. This sounds more exciting.
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Date: 2010-05-11 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-12 05:46 pm (UTC)sounds like you were more successful than I was to start out, but then again, I know you pay more attention to detail than I do. So far everytime I begin to heat the milk, something has interrupted the process of watching that thermometer. this does not yield optimal results.
here is the link I mentioned the other day: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/cheese.html
I am also unable to acquire anything other than store-bought milk, so am deeply jealous of you on that front. can't wait to hear if you decide to go with some cream-cheese projects as well. Mascarpone isn't difficult to make even with bought half & half, should be a dream with the jersey cream.