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- #281
freemotion
Food Guru
With two gallons a day of milk coming in and all the kids sold, I'm making cheese like a maniac. I've been freezing chevre for the winter and making lots of feta....no more room in my brining jars! I have a batch of caerphilly that needs brining, it is sitting in the fridge right now until I figure out what to do with it....gotta rig up a third brining crock until some of the fetas are ready to wrap and freeze. I ran out of feta this spring, so I need to make LOTS.
I saw a client last night who grew up in Portugal. Both of her grandmothers lived in the country and had goats and sheep and both made cheese. She LOVED it. She gave me many details about what they did, enough that I can probably duplicate it.
One grandmother used tuna cans as molds, cutting the bottoms off. These would be placed on a mat or something flat and filled with curds to drain. The mold would be flipped several times until the cheese was firm enough to remove from the molds. Then they would be air dried until a rind formed, maybe a couple of days, with a light airy cloth over them to keep the flies off. They were dried on a shelf made for this purpose and designed to hold the netting off the cheese. They were turned often.
Then they were placed in a jar and covered with olive oil. This would keep at room temp for over a year! The cheese needed to age and develop flavor for at least six months. The size of the molds need to be chosen with getting the finished cheeses in and out of the jar in mind. I'm thinking I can use a bigger mold and quarter the cheeses for the rind formation stage.
My client's favorites as a child were the littlest cheeses made with the tiny, one serving size tuna cans.
The cheeses were served with simple rustic homemade bread. Sometimes a fresh one would be eaten on bread without aging, and was spreadable. Probably like a fresh chevre that we are used to.
I saw a client last night who grew up in Portugal. Both of her grandmothers lived in the country and had goats and sheep and both made cheese. She LOVED it. She gave me many details about what they did, enough that I can probably duplicate it.
One grandmother used tuna cans as molds, cutting the bottoms off. These would be placed on a mat or something flat and filled with curds to drain. The mold would be flipped several times until the cheese was firm enough to remove from the molds. Then they would be air dried until a rind formed, maybe a couple of days, with a light airy cloth over them to keep the flies off. They were dried on a shelf made for this purpose and designed to hold the netting off the cheese. They were turned often.
Then they were placed in a jar and covered with olive oil. This would keep at room temp for over a year! The cheese needed to age and develop flavor for at least six months. The size of the molds need to be chosen with getting the finished cheeses in and out of the jar in mind. I'm thinking I can use a bigger mold and quarter the cheeses for the rind formation stage.
My client's favorites as a child were the littlest cheeses made with the tiny, one serving size tuna cans.
The cheeses were served with simple rustic homemade bread. Sometimes a fresh one would be eaten on bread without aging, and was spreadable. Probably like a fresh chevre that we are used to.
