Cheese Making

Well, for our anniversary this year, noa and i decided to take a cheese making course. It was offered by a cheese maker who lives on Mayne Island, yes, its a real island in the gulf islands, i have never heard of it either. Every once in a while he offers class at UBC, and we had been talking about learning how to make cheese for a while, so we went.

The class was 4.5 hours long, and we learned how to make Yoghurt cheese, paneer, and a camembert/brie type cheese.

I don’t have any pictures from the actual cheese making course, we mostly watched and listened and tried cheeses.

The thing that really struck me was how easy it is to make cheese at home. it is pretty amazing that more people don’t do it. and it all turned out so tasty. and i learned so much about how different dairy products become different cheeses. i finally know what quark is, and why paneer is used in curry, and all kinds of fun cheese related facts.

anywho, so, this inspired us, so that following weekend we went around town looking for Rennet, which is an integral part in making anything but fresh cheeses, and cheese forms. i found the rennet, but had to end up ordering the cheese forms. then we got a boat load of milk from whole foods, and off to the kitchen.

ohh, i should add that that weekend we also finally got pasta rollers for the kitchen aid mixer, and boy, are they nice…. we also ended up making linguini that same evening. action packed. so theres pictures from all these events following.

First, i attempted a yoghurt cheese. super easy. buy yoghurt. put in cheese cloth. hang. eat.

here it is draining. thats whey in the bottom of the pot
[flickr id=”7253483086″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

and what it looks like after its sat for 24h draining whey.
[flickr id=”7253485898″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

next lets look at some pasta.
here are the beautiful sheets that we finally got to thin out. every other time we always had issues doing this.
[flickr id=”7253483688″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

and cut into linguini. those are about 6-8 ft long pasta noodles!!!
[flickr id=”7253484136″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

we saved some for later. the next day
[flickr id=”7253484676″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

and the delicious fresh pasta sauce we had the noodles with
[flickr id=”7253485314″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

alright, now to the main event. i attempted to make a fresh chèvre, which is a goats milk fresh cheese

for this you heat the milk to 80F, and add your rennet, and live milk culture, which is usually some yoghurt.
milk on the left, some live culture in the middle, and rennet dissolved in water. in the back you can see my refir, which ill get to another day.

[flickr id=”7253482458″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

then it sat out for 24h so that the rennet can form the these into a large curd.
after that time, this is what it looks like. can you see the whey all around the pot, and the curd in the middle? amazing.
[flickr id=”7253486878″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

then you pull the curd out into a cheese cloth
[flickr id=”7253487348″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

doesn’t that look amazing already. and it hasn’t even had time to drain.
[flickr id=”7253488328″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

and the final step again is to hang it to dry for 24h.
[flickr id=”7253486458″ thumbnail=”large” overlay=”false” size=”large” group=”” align=”none”]

after all the whey had drained out, it looked very much like the finished yoghurt cheese up above, just drier. and its amazingly delicious. some fresh herbs and sea salt on there, ohh my yum.
it was so easy to make, did not take a lot of my time, and is so much cheaper than buying cheese. next I’m going to attempt a brie, but before i do i need to make sure i can find the right type of cow’s milk. pretty exciting though.