Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Test Results!
I had very exciting news today. My entire herd tested negative for CAE and brucellosis for the second year in a row! Yeah!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Goat's Milk Cheddar
This new cheese making saga commenced when I had a lot of milk and the kids were at Nama's for the week in August. As anyone with children knows, following recipes, especially detailed, temperature critical ones, can be difficult when you're a mother. I assume I am not the only one who has forgotten the sugar in the cake!
The instructions were from Ricki Carrol's book, Home Cheese Making. The milk from my goats of course! It was absolutely imperative that I try out my new cheese molds that I acquired from L'Alliance Pastorale. My SIL, Lea, so gracious that girl, loaded them into her suitcase for the flight over the Atlantic! Merci Lele.
Little did I realize that the huge amount of milk utilized would only give me enough for one small mold: again I can thank my french family who has supplied me with their leftover molds from commercial fromage blanc. Pretty handy to have them and they're free!
Above is the curd that will soon be ladled into the mold and pressed at various pounds of pressure in my fabulous, last minute cheese press.
Call it your cheap man's press, or really, a press for those who don't have the time to build one and won't buy one when she has a garage full of perfectly good fir! At any rate, what a fun evening trying to keep it stable. Kind of like building a card castle. Yet, it worked. Below is the pressed cheese.
Looks beautiful, but here comes the tricky part! It must be aged in a cave at around 50-55 degrees with a relative humidity of about 90% for a minimum of 3 months. This is where the dorm fridge comes into play.
And yesterday, after weeks of just about forgetting about this nice specimen of bacterial action and transformation, I finally cut it open. The results were pleasing: smooth, a bit dry, but with good flavor. I, of course, had no cheese wax, so had used butter as a covering. It probably wouldn't have dried out so much. It was still good though! It even had a tiny hole of blue mold; wonder where that came from.
I was so happy to enjoy this with my friend, Anna, from Seitview Farm! I thank her tremendously for the photo above. Yum!
The instructions were from Ricki Carrol's book, Home Cheese Making. The milk from my goats of course! It was absolutely imperative that I try out my new cheese molds that I acquired from L'Alliance Pastorale. My SIL, Lea, so gracious that girl, loaded them into her suitcase for the flight over the Atlantic! Merci Lele.
Little did I realize that the huge amount of milk utilized would only give me enough for one small mold: again I can thank my french family who has supplied me with their leftover molds from commercial fromage blanc. Pretty handy to have them and they're free!
Above is the curd that will soon be ladled into the mold and pressed at various pounds of pressure in my fabulous, last minute cheese press.
Call it your cheap man's press, or really, a press for those who don't have the time to build one and won't buy one when she has a garage full of perfectly good fir! At any rate, what a fun evening trying to keep it stable. Kind of like building a card castle. Yet, it worked. Below is the pressed cheese.
Looks beautiful, but here comes the tricky part! It must be aged in a cave at around 50-55 degrees with a relative humidity of about 90% for a minimum of 3 months. This is where the dorm fridge comes into play.
And yesterday, after weeks of just about forgetting about this nice specimen of bacterial action and transformation, I finally cut it open. The results were pleasing: smooth, a bit dry, but with good flavor. I, of course, had no cheese wax, so had used butter as a covering. It probably wouldn't have dried out so much. It was still good though! It even had a tiny hole of blue mold; wonder where that came from.
I was so happy to enjoy this with my friend, Anna, from Seitview Farm! I thank her tremendously for the photo above. Yum!
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