I do feel like a part time Artisan My fridge has cheese ripening on every shelf. There is hardly any room for any other food. But I do not mind. Because the best thing about the cheese-filled fridge is that – it is all home made. I am very happy about that.
Over the past few weekends I have spent hours in the kitchen with Maslin pans, a digital thermometer and a variety of bacterial cultures. I have heated and stirred gently, added a variety of liquids to the milk and waited as the magic happened to turn liquid into solids.
After all of my labours, I have quite a variety of cheese in the fridge. Ripening in boxes, the cheeses are:
Back row from left to right: Two waxed round Cheddars which will be ready from December to March depending on how long we can wait for this to age. there’s a large waxed cube of Lancashire style cheese which should be ready to break into in November, there’s a round flat Tomme-like cheese which will develop a hard crust and be ready in December. finally the round flat Danish Blue style is going nicely mouldy and will be ready in mid November.
In the front row of the image from left to right there is: the last remaining Neufchatel cream cheese which is aging in the box. Neufchatel only takes 14 days to ripen so we’ve already started to eat this batch and have not yet made another batch. Then there is a round Stilton style cheese which will be ready in December, a round of crumbly Havarti style, ready in November, two round Camembert style cheeses, which are starting to get white fluffy mould on the outside of the cheese. These will be ready in late October.
Every weekend I inspect all of the cheeses. I turn the waxed cheeses upside down so that the trapped whey migrates down to the bottom of the cheese again, keeping it moist. I check the humidity in the boxes, drain any whey off, and I remove any unwanted mould – a difficult job on the Stilton and the Danish Blue style cheeses as some of the moulds are supposed to be there.
Each cheese you can see took one gallon of ultra fresh pasteurised, organic full cream milk to make. For the Tomme, I used semi skimmed milk to make it more authentic. The Cheddar, was pressed much more firmly to drain the whey off the curds, took two gallons of milk. I have saved all of the whey that I drained from the curds and these are in the freezer — ready to make creamy soups.
I have made all of the cheeses during the last few weekends. It is a labour of love and I am determined to create my own Christmas cheese board with my own home made artisan cheese.
I’m feeling rather pleased with myself at my efforts and really looking forward to trying these semi hard cheeses. My soft cheeses, such as my cream cheese, Halloumi and Mozzarella styled cheeses taste lovely so I have high hopes for these older dairy chunks.
I am already imagining all of these cheeses at room temperature, ready, runny, and ripe to eat. I shall carve a hunk of freshly baked still-warm sourdough and break out some home made chutney. My fist bite will make all of that hard work worthwhile…
