Heartland Farm: It's Cheese

The pages of the calendar have flipped to the day my first wheel of cheese is to be ready. We have been anxiously waiting for a taste test of our efforts from a month ago. Making it was fun, challenging and a learning process to be sure. Having seen success in a friends efforts with Caerphilly. We decided to jump into the vat with the same recipe for our first official pressed cheese.

It all started 4 weeks ago with a large pot of goat's milk being gently heated, cultured and processed into curds. Every wheel of cheese starts in the same manner. Different temperatures, cultures or setting times is the only difference in making cheese, soft or firm.

This is what "Little Miss Muffet" enjoyed until an ugly spider sat down beside her. Once heat treated, cultured and given time to set. The milk will coagulate into curds = protein clumps. Which are cut into cubes and dipped out of the remaining whey. By the way ~ Whey is useful for many things. I've been known to feed it to the chickens and the dogs think it's the grandest treat ever. I've given it to my tomato plants to ward off blossom end rot, after all it is full of calcium. Adding it to my loaves of bread, boosts the nutrition and gives them a softer texture too. But one of my new found joys is to make Ricotta out of it. I can't describe the wonderful flavor and texture of a batch of fresh made. Very creamy unlike the store bought version. A diffinent treat eaten on crackers or by the spoonful if I'm feeling generous to my self. Plus it is out of this world atop a plate of pasta.

Once sufficiently drained the curds are packed into the cheese press for increasingly amounts of time and pressure. After the pressing process which can take up to several hours to overnight. The cheese is aired dry for a couple of days. Before being aged in a specific temperature and humidity for the variety of cheese being made.

We were proud with the first wheel we had made. It made an impressive picture to me. At this point we don't know if we have succeeded or not. As sometimes looks can be deceiving. Waiting to eat it will be hard.

I was sure to mark the calendar for the end of the 4 week aging process. But choosing to wait one more day till Lon could be home for the unveiling and tasting. During the last few days of air drying before aging the wheel. We had to tackle a renovation in the kitchen that couldn't be put off any longer. In doing so, I failed to monitor the cheese as closely as I should have. Waiting what the recipe described as the needed drying time was too much. But we didn't find this out until after it had been aged for a month.

The wheel was pretty to look at but came out dryer than we had planned. Lesson learned, don't always rely on recipes written for generalization. Every one's kitchen and house has varying degrees of moisture and temperatures in them. Even having a fan circulating air can make a difference in the final outcome. Cheese making is an art to be sure. With each attempt one would hope to get closer to making a classic batch of cheese.

Since ours came out too dry to cut easily for eating on crackers. We decided after tasting what seemed to be a Parmesan flavor. That the best way to use the cheese would be to grate it.
That way we could use in on top of homemade pizza, pasta dishes or sprinkled over salads.

Which took minimal effort with a good crank grater. Yielding 3 jars from our first hard cheese attempt. We tried it over some pasta with a home grown medley of squash, tomato, garlic and onion the same night. Yum, Yum! What some would deemed a failure tasted like success to us.