Adventures in Cheese Making

Vegetarian.

I came across this New York Times "interactive feature" called DIY Cooking Handbook, and immediately focused in on two things I consume quite a bit of: cheese and kimchi. Looked simple enough, and I had always wanted to experiment with cheese-making, so I loaded up my trusty bike with supplies and got to work!

The recipe is as follows:
1 gallon whole milk (the fresher and less-pasteurized, the better)
1/4 cup cultured buttermilk
1 tablespoon rennet solution (I got tablets and used 1 tablet)
Salt for flavor

Warm the milk and buttermilk over the stove, on low heat, to about 80 degrees. After removing it from the heat, toss in the rennet, cover it loosely, and let it sit at room temperature for about 8 to 12 hours.



Once you get back to it, it should have formed a nice layer of curd over the top, with the clear whey below. At this point, you want to line a colander with a cloth (I used cheesecloth folded over into 4 layers), and with a slotted spoon start scooping in that wonderful curd. Once you feel like you've gotten all the curd in there (if it's anything like my experience, the curd got all mixed in with the whey), you need to fold up the cheesecloth and tie a rope around it, then suspend it and allow the whey to drip out the bottom into a bowl. Leave it overnight like this.



Once you get up in the morning it should have solidified a bit, and look like this:



At that point salt it to taste.

As I mentioned above, I had a problem skimming the curd off. That left a TON of liquid in my pot...notice how tiny the amount of cheese was. This stuff really just tasted like bland yogurt, so I put it all in tupperware and shoved it in the fridge. Tonight I'm going to experiment by pouring in some of that leftover and seeing if I can coax more cheese out of it. However, if you're not necessarily interested in more hanging but don't want to trash it, I would recommend keeping it as a yogurt substitute, and for baking. In fact, this morning I made myself some nice fruit smoothies with the stuff, and they came out great (even the ferret approved):



And what of all that leftover buttermilk, you say? Well, my friend, check out the picture above for a tasty suggestion...see you in the next post!