patandchickens
Crazy Cat Lady
I can now vouch for this being worthwhile:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm
It is a simple hard cheese using buttermilk (regular ol' cultured buttermilk from the store, just buy a pint and there ya go, recipe only uses a couple Tbsp so plan on pancakes or whatever too, mmm) as the culture, so you do not have to buy any special starter culture from exotic mailorder outlets. You do need rennet tablets or liquid, and a good dairy-type thermometer (accurate in the vicinity of 30-40 C) (sorry, do your own Farenheit conversion
).
It was quite easy to make -- I used my canning kettle as the outer part of a double boiler, with the rack in it to keep the stainless-steel pot I had the milk in up off the canner bottom. I was initially pretty unhappy with the results though, as it tasted like (surprise) buttermilk, which I love in pancakes etc but not on its own.
So after a few days' salting/drying/turning, I wrapped it in cheesecloth and put into the meat drawer of fridge and basically ignored it for a month (should have waxed it, but didn't). Ran out of cheese tonight when preparing scalloped potatoes, so I cut into the buttermilk cheese -- it doesn't taste particularly like buttermilk anymore! It is crumbly (probably partly b/c I did not wax) and very cheesey-tasting and rather sharp, I suppose I would compare it in a general way to an older chedddar. Nice!
So, even if you don't have a goat, as long as you can get reasonably fresh not-too-hotly-pasteurized storeboughten milk, it's a hard cheese recipe worth trying IMO.
Have fun,
Pat
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese98.htm
It is a simple hard cheese using buttermilk (regular ol' cultured buttermilk from the store, just buy a pint and there ya go, recipe only uses a couple Tbsp so plan on pancakes or whatever too, mmm) as the culture, so you do not have to buy any special starter culture from exotic mailorder outlets. You do need rennet tablets or liquid, and a good dairy-type thermometer (accurate in the vicinity of 30-40 C) (sorry, do your own Farenheit conversion
).It was quite easy to make -- I used my canning kettle as the outer part of a double boiler, with the rack in it to keep the stainless-steel pot I had the milk in up off the canner bottom. I was initially pretty unhappy with the results though, as it tasted like (surprise) buttermilk, which I love in pancakes etc but not on its own.
So after a few days' salting/drying/turning, I wrapped it in cheesecloth and put into the meat drawer of fridge and basically ignored it for a month (should have waxed it, but didn't). Ran out of cheese tonight when preparing scalloped potatoes, so I cut into the buttermilk cheese -- it doesn't taste particularly like buttermilk anymore! It is crumbly (probably partly b/c I did not wax) and very cheesey-tasting and rather sharp, I suppose I would compare it in a general way to an older chedddar. Nice!
So, even if you don't have a goat, as long as you can get reasonably fresh not-too-hotly-pasteurized storeboughten milk, it's a hard cheese recipe worth trying IMO.
Have fun,
Pat
