Cheese-Making at Home... First up, Ricotta

   Now that I've successfully made my first cheese, I'm asking myself why it's taken me so long to give it a go!  Granted, I've started with ricotta, famously easy and with no requisite fancy ingredients, but still...  For me, my cheese-making journey called up images of Twain's A Tramp Abroad and his hilarious ascent of the Riffelberg - the initial level of intimidation I experienced far outweighed the actual task in the end.  This morning, I woke up and my mind was made up - I was going to make cheese, no matter how trying it might be.

   I headed to the store and picked up gallons of milk, some double cream, and some lemon and vinegar... one way or another, even if it required numerous attempts, I was going to produce cheese today.  I combined the approaches and recipes of a few books and online blogs I'd been reading and am proud to report that making cheese (at least fresh cheese) is not difficult at all and the result is absolutely delicious.

   Milk, from what I can tell, is at the heart of a great cheese - the recommendation is to try to get the freshest you can.  Down the road, I'd love to work with unpasteurized milk; but for now, the only milk I have easy access to is what's stocked at the grocery store (which is pasteurized).  A lot of recipes call for whole milk, but I read online that whole milk hasn't been consistent this year and a recommendation by a cheese-maker was to use semi-skimmed milk in combination with double-cream.  I took this recommendation and it worked really well!

   The ricotta I made is not the true traditional way of making Italian ricotta...  The true Italian way requires whey in combination with milk.  As this was my first cheese to make (and you get whey as a bi-product of cheese-making), I didn't have any whey on hand.  Even still, this ricotta was delicious and I will be making it again.

Ricotta (makes 1 cup or 250 grams)

Ingredients: 

2 cups (500 ml) semi-skimmed milk

1 cup (250 ml) double-cream

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons sea salt

What else you need:

butter muslin

candy or digital thermometer

plastic slotted spoon

strainer or colander

In a saucepan, slowly heat the milk, cream and 1 teaspoon of salt, stirring occasionally until it gets to 190 F or 88 C.  This should take around 20 minutes.  I started on medium-to-low heat and slowly turned it up to get to the desired temperature.

Take the saucepan off the heat and add the lemon juice.  Give it a slow stir 1-2 times to make sure the lemon juice gets distributed throughout.  Let it stand for 5-10 minutes.  The citric acid in the lemon juice will instantly coagulate the milk - separating the curds from the whey.  

Line a nonreactive strainer (colander) with two sheets of muslin and place over a large nonreactive bowl.  Pour the curds and whey into the strainer.  Let stand for 5 minutes while the majority of the whey drains.  

Now add the last teaspoon of salt to the curds (at this time, you can apparently also add any herbs or spices as well if desired).  Carefully fold the salt through (with hands or plastic spoon) - trying not to break up the curds too much in the process.

Tie two corners of the muslin together and then the other two corners of the muslin together in order to make a draining sack.  Slip a wooden spoon under the knots and find a place to hang it where the whey can continue to drain (the sink is a good option).  You can put a bowl under it if you'd like to save the whey.

     

Drain for 1 hour if you like the ricotta to be very creamy.. up to 2 hours if you like it to be dryer in texture.

Once finished, you can either place in a bowl and serve immediately (room temperature and just made is when it's at its best) or place in a tupperware.  It should keep for 3 days - but likely will be eaten up well before that!

The ricotta from this recipe is creamy with a hint of lemon - I served on toasted baguette and it went down a treat.  Enjoy!!

Baby Steps with Heston

Last Autumn, some good friends had us round to their place for dinner.  This wasn't just any dinner - this was a triumphant feat of endurance and tenacity... and more to the point, 9 hours of cooking (!!!).  Heston's spagbol - the taste, the texture, the aroma - is now cemented into my taste buds' subconscious... it was one of those memorable meals that will continue to make my mouth water with even the slightest recollection of it.  And I'm afraid no other spaghetti bolognese will do now (with a genuine apology to my mother who will likely read this at some stage).

I've always enjoyed Heston's tv shows and all the geeky experiments and exploratory journeys he takes for the sake of good eating - but 9 hours seems a little overkill if it's me in the kitchen.  This is why I was a bit reticent upon receiving my very first Heston cookbook, Heston Blumenthal at home...  I'd happily go for a Heston meal cooked by someone else, but wasn't sure I was ready to commit to the apparent toils that come with producing such paradisiac pièces de résistance.

 I decided to start with theory, slowly marinating in the scientific explanations of how and why recipes work.  And while I'm still intimidated by the daunting prospect of making stock the Heston way, which seems like it could take days, I've been pleasantly surprised to also find some recipes that not only seem manageable, but also look (and that is the operative word) like they will take less than 9 hours - in some cases, considerably less.

And so, I began my first practical examination of this book over the weekend.  Two things drove my choice in recipe - time and an undeniable craving for cheese.  Inspired around 5:30pm on Saturday evening to attempt a Heston recipe, it was very easy to choose based on the length of the recipe.  And when I flipped to page 231, Cheese fondue with sherry and cloves, the way forward became perfectly clear... especially as we'd only just received a fondue set as a wedding gift last week.

Heston's recipe for fondue was very clear, easy to follow, and thankfully took perhaps 45 minutes in total to make.  Here's the recipe:

Serves 6-8

450g Gruyère cheese, grated

450g Comté cheese, grated

15g Cornflour

30g Manzanilla sherry

2 Sprigs of thyme

3 Cloves garlic

500g Dry white wine

20g Lemon juice

5g English mustard

pinch of ground cloves

In a bowl, mix the grated cheeses with the cornflour.

Bring the sherry to a simmer in a small saucepan over a medium-high heat. Add the thyme and garlic, remove from the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes. Strain and allow to cool.

Bring the wine and lemon juice to the boil together in a medium saucepan, and add the cheese, a handful at a time, whisking continuously until smooth and creamy.

Add the sherry, mustard powder and ground cloves to the cheese and wine, and continue to stir until the fondue thickens.

Transfer to a fondue pot and serve (with whatever you like - we had bread, green apples, red pepper, and zucchini)

The fondue was delicious - though I couldn't necessarily taste the mustard, the sherry, or the cloves coming through - however, they definitely added complexity to the fondue which I suppose is the desired effect - a harmonious flavour without any one part overwhelming the whole.

It took some time for the fondue to thicken - so it's useful to note that the last step, before transferring to the fondue pot, can take upwards of 15-20 minutes to get the consistency Heston talks about in his intro to the recipe... "You want the cheese to be runny and stringy, not thick and stodgy."  Mission accomplished!!  Maybe this Heston stuff isn't so daunting after all.... though I think I'll shelve the stocks section for the time being....

Cheese Glorious Cheese

It's been a while since my last post - but hopefully getting married is a good excuse for the hiatus!  With the wedding now one month behind us, it's been fun to reflect on the day - the memories of being surrounded by our nearest and dearest, the luck of sunshine for a beautiful outdoor ceremony, the chaotic swirl of limbs that comes with an energetic ceilidh dance.... but what's sticking in the mind at the moment is the mouth-watering goodness that was our wedding cake - a tiered cake of cheese.

We sourced all of the cheese from our favourite cheese shop, La Cave à Fromage.  While they do not (yet) have wedding cakes of cheese as a standard offering, they were quite happy to work with us to identify cheeses that we both loved and would also realistically work as a layer in our cake.  Here's what we had:

Montgomery Cheddar (a cow's milk cheese from Somerset)

Mimolette (a cow's milk cheese from Lille, France - we'd wanted Aged Gouda, but its truckle size and brittle properties made it a lesser candidate for the cake)

Fougeru (a cow's milk soft-cheese from France - the one with the fern leaves on top, which was originally sitting upright but continued to traverse downward, readying itself for the eating!)

Epoisses (a gloriously pungent cow's milk, wash-rind cheese from France - note that we kept it in its plastic container as it would have been a runny mess otherwise!)

Crozier Blue (a sheep's milk blue cheese from Ireland)

Figuettes (French goat's cheeses sprinkled with ash, tarragon, and paprika)

Crottin de Chavignol (goat's cheese from the Loire Valley, France)

Our florist had agreed to assemble the cake and decorate it and she did a terrific job.  Veering slightly away from tradition, we cut our wedding cake immediately after the ceremony to kickoff the celebrations with some cheese and bubbly before dinner.  Our only regret is not finding enough time to actually enjoy it to the degree we would have liked - too busy chatting with guests and getting photos taken....  Ah well, I suppose this is a good excuse to find another occasion to have a cake of cheese... best to consider this one the first of many!