Bloomy Robiola - A Bloomin' Delicious, Low-Faff Cheese

I happened upon Bloomy Robiola by accident.  And what a delicious accident it turned out to be!
On the day I made it, Camembert was the original plan, but strangely my Penicilium Candidum was MIA.  Not sure how a cheese culture can go missing from the freezer, but somehow, it did.  So I flipped through my trusty cheese-making book for another bloomy rind cheese that didn't require my AWOL cheese bacteria.

Bloomy Robiola - Ready to Eat!

Bloomy Robiola was relatively low-maintenance to make in that it required only a few hands-on steps and otherwise seemed to like being left alone for long periods of time.  Critically, it doesn't need Penicilium Candidum - only a meso starter culture plus Geotrichum Candidum. Unlike a lot of other recipes, for this one, you add both the starter and secondary cultures at the same time and immediately follow with rennet (rather than allowing the milk to ripen before renneting).  It also doesn't require cutting of the curds.  The affinage, or ageing, process was also pleasantly straight-forward.

Beyond the fact that this cheese recipe seems to have fewer steps than most (so less can go wrong), another contributing factor that could have made this cheese such a success is a good tip from Andy (a very advanced and far-more-hardcore home-cheesemaker and blogger (http://handyface.wordpress.com/)).   He advised me try using less culture than I was previously using.  The recipes in my book all seem to call for anywhere from a fourth to an eighth teaspoon for roughly 9 litres - and I wondered if this was too much.  Since the general cheese-making guidance is to use as little culture as possible, I was happy to try Andy's tip of using just a pinch instead - especially for 4-5 litres of milk.

Here's what I did (slightly tweaked from original recipe)

Ingredients:
4.5 litres milk (used Jersey Gold Top)
A pinch of MM100 mesophilic starter culture
A pinch of Geotrichum Candidum
1/8 t calcium chloride diluted in 1/4 cup filtered water
3 drops rennet diluted in 1/4 cup filtered water
Flake Salt

- Slowly heat milk to 35C (95F) - I turn my kitchen sink into a water bath which speeds up this process and makes it easier to  maintain temperatures over long periods of time

- Once at 35C, sprinkle the MM100 and Geotrichum Candidum over the milk. Let stand for 5 minutes while it rehydrates.
- Mix well
- Add Calcium Chloride (in diluted water) - stir
- Add rennet (in diluted water) - stir.



- Cover, and maintain temp at 35C for 12-18 hours or until curds give a clean break (mine seemed to give a clean break much sooner - within maybe 5 hours).

- Place a draining rack over a tray with a cheese mat on top.  Place Camembert molds on the mat.  With a slotted spoon or ladle, gently place curds into molds.
- Let drain at room temp for 8-10 hours.
- Sprinkle flake salt over top of each cheese (still in molds)
- Leave them for 10-12 hours
- Unmold cheeses and flip, sprinkle salt on  top of each cheese and leave to drain for 2 more hours.
- Place cheeses on a cheese mat in a ripening box, place a wet paper towel in with them to give it 90-95% humidity.

- Ripen at 25C (77F) for 2 days (I put mine relatively close to the radiator)
- Every 8 hours (ish) - lift the lid to give air circulation
- After 2 days (or once the whey has stopped draining), place in fridge at 10-12C (50-55F) - maintaining humidity

- Flip cheeses daily, wipe away any moisture within the box
- After 5 days, white mold on surface will start to appear
- Cheese is ready in 3-4 weeks when center of cheese starts to feel soft.

The resulting cheese was really quite good - both texture and taste!  My biased husband said it's the best one yet which is quite promising.  Best compliment of all was hearing a friend say: I would buy this! (Admittedly, she's pretty biased as well, but hey.)

Given how laid-back this cheese is in both the making and the ageing, I reckon it will become a regular on cheese-making weekends.  I never did find that Penicilium Candidum in the end - but I'm glad it went missing so I could happen upon this delectable cheese.

If Cheese Could Talk

My success rate for homemade cheese is about 20-30%.  For every good one I manage to make (and age, since that seems to be my downfall), there's another 3-4 bad ones.  The trouble is, often it's not until you've aged the cheese for many weeks or even months that you find out it's all gone horribly wrong.  And even then, the cheese stays silent as to what went wrong in the process.

Was it something I did while I was making you? Too much culture?  Too little heat?  Or was I neglectful when you were ageing?  Too dry or too humid?  Put me out of my misery and just say something!!

The good news is, there are some good self-help guides I can go to on the web that often shed some light on the most likely reasons for the inedible results.  And while some cheeses that have fallen to the waste bin will remain forever a mystery, others have helped me along on my cheese-making adventures to hopefully do better on the next ones.

So here's to all my failures (many more not pictured):

Top Left: Dill Havarti - texture was drier than it should be and it was way too salty.  Kind family and friends still ate it.  I love them.

What I Learned: Don't overdo it on the brine solution or leave the cheese brining for too long.

Top Right: Rosemary Cheddar (Bandaged at this stage) - super dry.  I think I didn't age long enough and didn't give it enough humidity.  The bandaging still is a puzzle to me - lots of black mold was growing on the outside which freaked me out so I just pulled it all off and cracked into early, for fear the mold was growing on the inside (it wasn't).

Learning: I guess the bandaging was working and I should have trusted it - but more humidity next time, so keep it in its own ageing box (these cheeses are sure high maintenance!!)

Bottom Left: Gouda - the texture was more like parmesan when we cracked into early (maybe a little over 2 months old). Taste was far too mild for an aged gouda.

Learning: More humidity so it's not so dry too early.

Bottom Right: Trappist Cheese - this one was actually quite tasty. Texture and taste were everyone's favourite.  BUT, the recipe had coriander seeds in the middle section of the cheese and this caused blue mold because the seeds left air pockets.
Learning: Next time, leave the seeds out.

Given the Trappist Cheese was the winner, I decided a nice confidence boost was in order.  Go with one you KNOW will work.. So I made it again, sans coriander seeds.  From the picture (right), it actually looks quite nice.  Then you taste it and it was DIS.GUST.ING.  What went wrong on this one still remains unsolved.

Awhhh. And Alas, R.I.P first-attempt at blue cheese.  Was looking good after a few weeks... Smelled like blue, looked like some nice blue veins.  But I think I left about 2 weeks too long ageing and in too humid conditions. What results is a stinky (not in a good way) cheese with greyish veins running through.
Learning: Don't go away on holiday assuming these cheeses will happily age themselves gracefully.  Contrary to popular belief, this is not the case.


**All my recipes came from Artisan Cheese Making at Home by Mary Karlin.  I've really enjoyed a lot of her recipes and she explains things very simply.  (Despite their simplicity, it seems there's still plenty of room for error!)

Between Jobs with Heston

There are probably a lot of noble things I could be doing with 1 month off between jobs, but somehow I find most of my time spent in the kitchen - either making and ageing cheese, or trying out new recipes.  What can I say, it's relaxing.. and delicious.

The extra time has given me a chance to dive in even further to Heston's cookbook promising "classic home cooking", Heston Blumenthal at Home.  His fondue worked a treat in the past and wasn't terribly difficult.  But what about some of his other recipes?

I'm still reticent to try, say, his Szechuan Broth with Duck Dumplings, where the recipe begins with: "This has lots of wonderful Asian flavours. It requires a bit of planning and preparation - you need to start at least two days in advance in order to ice-filter the stock..." (Not sure what it says next, as that's when I turned the page.)  But there do seem to be a fair amount of more reasonable feats.

In the last week, I've tried out these three:
Haddock with leek and potato sauce (recipe below - definitely a winner)
Pea & Ham soup (this was good, but not worth all the time required for sieving!)
Crab Lasagne (deserves a separate post, also a winner but a labour of love)

Admittedly, "leek and potato sauce" sounds rather dull, but the taste was nothing short of restaurant-quality goodness.

The sauce was easy to make but tasted very complex.  It takes 30 minutes to make the sauce, +5 minutes to cook the fish - and meanwhile I made a carrot/potato puree and chilli broccoli as sides.  I doubled the sauce so I could freeze half for a future supper - fingers crossed it freezes well!

For leek and potato sauce:

50 g Peeled and finely sliced potato (approx 1 small potato)

10g Unsalted butter

35g Peeled and finely sliced onion 

160g Cleaned and very finely sliced leek (this was about 6 leeks for me, but depends on size)

1 bouquet garni (thyme, celery leaf (I omitted this), parsley, and bay leaf - tied with a string or strip of leek)

200g Fish stock, warmed

10g Whipping cream

10g Whole milk

Salt and white pepper (white pepper instead of black makes a big difference)

For the fish:

Groundnut oil (I used olive oil)

2 Haddock fillets (also could be cod or halibut) - weighing 150-200g each

Chives, tarragon, to garnish

For the leek and potato sauce, rinse the sliced potato under cold running water for 30 seconds, drain well

Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat and cook the onion and potato for 10 minutes, stirring regularly.  Add the leeks and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Add the bouquet garni and warm fish stock and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Remove the bouquet garni and liquidize the sauce before straining it through a sieve into a clean pan.

Add the cream and milk and warm through.  Season with salt and freshly ground white pepper and keep warm.

To cook the fish, heat a thin layer of oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Season the fish fillets on both sides with salt and place in the pan.  After approximately 2 minutes, flip the fillets over, cook for 2 more minutes and remove from heat,

Place the fillets on warm plates then, using a hand blender, froth the sauce and ladle it around the fish.  Chop the herbs and sprinkle over fish.

And there you have it - a restaurant quality sauce in 30 minutes - exactly what you'd hope to create with a cookbook like this.  Heston also says it would be great on scallops - think he's probably right (he's rarely wrong... unless you count including his Szechuan broth recipe in his "classic home cooking" book.)

Bun Bo - Yummo!

I've learned something.  In the match between life and blog, life wins.  I'd threatened self with: "If it's not done in the next two weeks..." - but somehow the fire wasn't hot enough.  As a 1-2 week follow-up from my last post on Hanoi, I'd meant to write a companion post sharing a tried-and-tested recipe for Bun Bo Xao - that delicious dish I first encountered in Hanoi.  Best of intentions, et cetera, et cetera... over a month later, but here is that companion post.

To try and replicate the dish, I went over to a good friend's who has an insatiable appetite for Vietnamese food and a rather handy knack for making it, too!  The good news is that our first attempt at Bun Bo Xao was a smashing success!
Bun Bo Xao is a noodle salad with beef and lots of fresh herbs and veggies.  It's healthy and full of mouth-watering flavour.

I heavily borrowed from Helen's recipe on www.danangcuisine.com but did make some modifications.
Here's how we made it (served 3):

Ingredients:
500g rump steak
4 cloves garlic - finely chopped
1 stalk lemongrass
Herbs (1 small bag of: mint, basil (preferably thai, but normal is fine), coriander) - all roughly chopped
1 carrot, shredded
1/2 cucumber, sliced and halved
1/2 onion (yellow or red), sliced
1.5 T oyster sauce
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3 T vegetable (or rapeseed) oil
Rice Noodles (enough for everyone to have a large portion)
crushed roasted peanut (2 T per person)
Fried shallot (1 T per person)
4 T Fish Sauce
4 T sugar (regular or cane)
1 Lime
1 Small red chilli pepper (or more if desired)

1. Slice the rump steak very thinly and against the grain (Helen's suggestion as she says it keeps it tender)
2. Place the meat in a bowl and add 1/2 the chopped garlic, the lemongrass, 1 T oil, the oyster sauce, pepper, salt.  Mix well and let marinate for 20 minutes or more.
3. Meanwhile, prepare other ingredients and place in bowls or on a plate.
4. Heat 2 T oil in pan till hot - add one chopped clove of garlic and the onion.  Cook for 1 minute and then add beef.  Cook until brown all over - we left it pink on the inside.
5. Cook noodles per package instructions.
6. Prepare the salad dressing (Nuoc Cham) to be drizzled on top of the dish:  Mix 2T fish sauce, 2T sugar, 10T water (proportion always 1:1:5).  Then add final chopped garlic clove, chopped chilli, and juice of one lime
7. Once everything is ready, place everything on the table for people to build their own Bun Bo.  I placed a hearty portion of noodles at the bottom, then added fresh herbs, shredded carrot and sliced cucumber.. then the onion and beef.. and topped with crushed peanuts, fried shallots, and a few tablespoons of Nuoc Cham.

The result was delicious and took me right back to that bia hoi where I first enjoyed Bun Bo in Hanoi.
There is a fair bit of preparation for this dish, but it's very very simple to make and will, no doubt, be a regular in our kitchen from now on.

Ăn ngon miệng! (Enjoy!)

Playing Frogger in Hanoi

This time a year ago, we went on a blissful trip to Asia for a few weeks.  Our arrival to Vietnam wasn't the smoothest.  Despite being a huge planner and researcher before any trip, I somehow missed the fact that Vietnam requires a visa to enter the country.  While everyone else was getting out their organised folders and  visa photos as our flight descended into Hanoi, we began calmly breaking a sweat and pondering the delicacies of Vietnamese prison food.  Thankfully, the airport mercifully offers an "expedited visa," with a very formal process of looking you up and down and naming their price... I'll call this the idiot tax - if you're that stupid to get to the airport without a visa, you rightfully owe the idiot tax.

Crisis expensively averted, we held on for dear life in the taxi to our hotel.  Despite a mild mention of the swarms of motorcycles, Lonely Planet couldn't have prepared me for the chaos that was Hanoi.  Stepping out of the hotel was like a very advanced game of Frogger for people with a death-wish.  We were advised to walk confidently at a constant but slow pace and cars / motorcycles would drive around you. Here's some demonstrations - none performed by me or my now-husband as we never quite mastered the art of crossing a street in Hanoi.   An estimated 30 people die per day in Hanoi due to road accidents.  This video we took explains why (watch the various people take a leisurely stroll across!):

Street chaos aside, Hanoi was an enjoyable place to begin our exploration of Vietnam.  The food and nightlife were excellent - with some very memorable meals.

In search of the highly-reputed street food of Hanoi, we sought out Bun Bo Nam Bo - famous for the one dish on offer - Bun Bo, a bowl of rice noodles, beef, lots of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, fried onions, crushed peanuts and a small amount of beef broth.  Locals and tourists lined up for this dish and sat side by side at long tables.  You wait your turn, order (one? two? five?), then sit at the table until a hot bowl of Bun Bo is placed before you.  There's no atmosphere to soak up - just a functional cafe to feed hungry, busy people as they buzz through the day.  But that doesn't mean there isn't time to sit there and savour every morsel of the Bun Bo and wash it down with a Bia Hanoi - the local brew.

Haven't yet tried to replicate this dish yet - but I think it's high-time I did! 

Cheese-Making Course at Abbey Home Farm

While learning how to make cheese through books and online forums (and good ole trial and error) has yielded some positive results, there's nothing quite like having hands-on training with an experienced cheesemaker.  This is why I was ecstatic for November 24th to finally arrive - a long-awaited birthday gift from friends (given to me back in May) meant that I was spending the day in Cirencester at a beautiful farm, learning from a pro.

We arrived around 9am and enjoyed walking round the well-presented organic food shop - full of fresh fruits and veggies picked from the farm.  We had a coffee in the cafe and met Clive, the award-winning-yet-incredibly-humble cheesemaker who would be our teacher for the day.

How Now!!!!

Follow me! He said - and so we took a rambling walk through Abbey Home Farm, passing some friendly cows on our way.  We followed Clive to where the magic happens - a cheese-making facility full of large-scale cheese gadgets - and instantly my list for Santa was filled with ideas!  

Once there, we put on some science-lab looking jackets and sexy smurf shoe covers.  Note to self: Must look into obtaining similar garb at home to increase quality (and success rate) of my cheese.

The class was great for beginners as well as people, like me, who may have done some dabbling in the kitchen before.  Clive was excellent at explaining things very simply, but then was quite happy to field the 20-30 questions fired at him by me and my fellow classmates in our childlike curiosity of all things cheese.

Our sage , Clive

We warmed milk, added the special secret blend of cultures (not so secret in the end as Clive did share with us the list of cultures it includes), and let it stand for a while.  With time to kill, Clive offered us a tasting of all the cheese he makes - oh, go on then!  One of the cheeses was Dancys Fancy - his award-winning soft-cheese.  Instantly a favourite, it was welcome news to find out this was the cheese we were making today (assuming we were suitable pupils).  

We next warmed the milk again slightly and added the rennet to ripen the cheese.  Since we had more time to wait while the curds separated from the whey, Clive showed us how to make butter.  As an aside - butter making was quite interesting to watch as the cream transformed - at one point looking very similar to scrambled eggs.  We each had a go at shaping some butter using the grooved butter paddles.  (Dropped my butter once which was only 1 more time than anyone else.)

After butters were shaped and stored in the refrigerator (until the end of the course when we could take them home), we checked on the cheese which was ready to be cut.  We cut our curds, let them rest for just a bit, gently stirred them with our hands,and then it was time to place the curds into moulds where they will reside until the cheese is ready to be eaten!

    

We headed in for lunch - made by the organic cafe. It was a hearty vegetarian meal with a large side of Q&A with Clive - he sure had plenty of patience dealing with my many questions.  He also showed us where the cheeses are stored and gave us a taste of a few cheddars in different stages of ageing. It was really interesting to compare the mild, simple taste of a 3-month old cheddar with a nearly-ready, strong 16-month old cheddar.

We visited our cheeses, now in moulds, once more to bid them farewell and wish them good luck in the ageing process (which I've been told is where a lot of things go wrong).  Clive will look after them until they are ready to be eaten at which point he'll send them to us!  With any luck, they'll be ready (and more importantly, tasty) just before Christmas...

Homemade Pasta - For the inner Italian in all of us

Homemade pasta - sounds like a lot of effort but it's not!  Similar to bread-making, the main thing you need is some extra time.  It's not the kind of thing you're likely to whip up midweek after work.  However, it's equally not something that requires slaving away - the hands-on time is altogether around 30-35 minutes.

Now, I know there are some fancier recipes out there, but this one is easy to remember and hasn't failed me yet:

Ingredients/Supplies:

Tipo 00 Flour

Eggs (the fresher the better)

Pasta Machine (for rolling out, shaping pasta)

Ratio of 100g flour to 1 egg.

Make 100g per person plus 1 extra ratio of 100g flour/1 egg.  So if you are serving 4, use 500g flour and 5 eggs.

In a bowl, pour in flour and then make a well in the middle.  Crack the eggs into the well.

With a fork, whisk the eggs so that the yolks and whites blend together - you can take in some of the flour as you do this.  Once the eggs are fully whisked, use your hands to mix the flour and eggs together.  It might be a little sticky to work with until all of the flour gets worked in.

Once you've formed it into a ball, place it on a lightly floured service and knead it.  

I recall one of Jamie Oliver's books saying 3 minutes would do the trick - maybe if you have the world's strongest hands to knead the dough... For anyone with just average strength, the kneading process is more likely to take 6-10 minutes.  If you've made pizza dough, you'll know how the dough eventually changes in texture to something more smooth and elastic... it's the same for pasta dough... keep kneading until you get to that smooth, elastic feeling.  When you're there, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Now the fun begins!  I have an imperia pasta machine (around £60 from Amazon) - it makes the job of rolling out the pasta super easy and fun.  When my nieces and nephews come for a visit - they enjoy joining in on this part... So it's also a great way to include kids in the process.

Take the dough from the fridge.  You will be working with it in batches - dividing it into the same number of people you plan to serve.  Take one portion and leave the rest wrapped in plastic and in the fridge. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to be roughly 1/2 inch thick with a width of roughly 4 inches.  

You will now knead this piece of dough using the machine.  You won't need the attachment which makes tagliatelle or spaghetti - just the main part of the machine is needed.  Put the machine on the widest setting and run the dough through it.  Fold the dough over itself (end to end) and run it through this setting again.  Then change the setting to 4 or 5 and run the dough through this setting.  Move back to the biggest setting, fold the dough over itself and run it through again.  [If you want, you can at this stage sprinkle some black pepper or dried herbs on the pasta before folding it over itself.]  Keep on going back and forth between the larger setting and the slightly more narrow setting - remembering to fold the dough back over itself before putting it through the larger setting.. Repeat this 6 times... by then the dough is very smooth.  The final step is to put the machine on setting 2 and run the dough through it.

Since I wanted to make papardelle, I next took the long, wide sheet of pasta over to the lightly floured cutting board... Lightly dust the pasta sheet and then widely fold the sheet like an accordion.  Now you can cut the pasta - roughly an inch wide or to your liking.  Lastly, hang each piece of papardelle on a drying rack until ready to use.  It's always best to use it immediately after making but is fine to dry out (If you leave it to dry for a long while, I put a moist paper towel on the drying rack or the pasta will break at the points where its hanging when you later try and remove it.)

Boil the pasta for a little over 2 minutes (3 minutes is overcooked in my opinion).
With homemade pasta, the sauce you make to accompany it doesn't need to take too much time or effort - as the pasta itself is the showstopper!  This past Friday night, I made pappardelle and cooked a simple chicken and gorgonzola cream sauce with chives to accompany it...  but I could have been just as happy having it with some nice olive oil and a bit of grated parmesan.

 No matter what kind of sauce it's served with, homemade pasta stands out - the freshness and the "bite" in it really make it well worth the extra time required.  And every time I make it, I think: why don't I make this more often!?

Bon Appetito!

Cheesterdam

Last month, my husband and I had a weekender in Amsterdam.  While we'd both been there before, we'd never been there together and thought it'd be a fun little getaway.  It was a really nice trip and we managed to take in lots of great sights, meandering among the beautiful canals and wandering through some museums...

 

Tilting our heads at all the slanted buildings and interesting creative license used in architecture and street art...

 

And tasting the delicious cheeses the Dutch have to offer - YUM!  Bring on the aged Gouda!
We came across the mother of all cheese shops - De Kaaskamer van Amsterdam.
If I ever own a cheese-shop, this is the template!!

 Amsterdam is a lovely place for a relaxing weekend - until next time, Proost!!