There was going to be a video. I carefully documented everything via video. But let’s be honest, with all the grand adventurous things that are going at the moment, making a video about cheese is low on the priority list.
But one exciting Saturday months and months ago (October, I think?), The Fourth Quarter, Lina and I made cheese. Actual cheese. From Milk. MILK!
It was pretty easy, and has alot of sitting around and wait for milk to be hot moments where we all hung out and just gossiped. A pretty amazing day, with some pretty amazing people.
It was actually pretty amazing. I can’t remember the exact recipe, but it goes something like:
* Take 10L of non-homogenised milk and put it in a water bath and heat milk.
* Add culture and rennet (we used vegetarian rennet, yay!)
* Leave it alone for 40 minutes to become cheese. Yeah!
* Cut the wobbly elastic-y stuff on top into 1cm cubes. This was tricky, and my cutting skill was not awesome.
* Let it sit some more
* Scoop it out into cheese cloth, and put into a press. (Handy fact: 10 Litres of water is apparently the same as 10kgs!)
* Add vinegar to the whey, and as it becomes cheese and floats the top, scoop it up and put it in a cheese cloth.
* When you’ve got it all, let the cheese drain (this is the ricotta!)
* Once the pressed cheese is pressed, cut into squares.
* Salt one half (yeah, this is the feta!)
* Heat the whey, and put the other half in. When it’s done and is floating to the surface, take it out.
* Sprinkle with salt + mint on one side, and then fold it in a half. (This is the Haloumi, woo!)
The final product: Feta, Ricotta, and Haloumi.
We pretty much fried up the Haloumi and ate it straight away. The Ricotta went soon after. We had enough feta to last us for a while, so we left the feta for a day. Resalted it, and then put it in jars with sun-dried tomatoes + rosemary to eat later. Looked like this. And let me tell you, it was SO GOOD.
And you know what? Cheese is absolutely tastier when you’ve made it.
Hurrah! Number 75 on The List, done!
