Back in the spring, I spent a Saturday making Traditional Cheddar. Apparently, I didn’t document the experience, and I don’t seem to have a clear memory about it. It took all day, but most hard cheeses do. Six months later, I opened it up for tacos last week and discovered My Best Hard Cheese Yet. The other cheeses, the gouda, the jack, the colby – they each came out ok, if harder and drier and sharper than expected. But the cheddar Actually Tastes Like Cheddar! I’m rather pleased about that. So the plan for next spring is to make as …
Category: in the kitchen
Pumpkin muffins! Save
Things I did today: – made a batch of experimental pancakes. The blueberry sauce helped make them a bit more like breakfast and less like raisinless oatmeal raisin cookies. Caitlyn didn’t like that we told her she couldn’t have syrup on them. – made some colby cheese. This cheese was less than 6 hours from initial pot sterilization to cheese in press. Either this recipe was simpler or I’m getting better at this. We’ll know in 2 months after this one is done aging. – finished assembling 3 dozen confetti eggs. Must remember to take a picture of them all …
What’s new in the photo above?
I opened up one of the half-rounds of the Monterey Jack cheese I made in March. It doesn’t taste anything like Monterey Jack cheese. It’s not bad, just dry and crumbly and on the extra-sharp side. And it’s only been aging a month. I don’t know if I over-heated, or heated too fast, or over-handled the curds. It could also be the effect of letting it sit in the press three extra hours, but I doubt it. I seem to remember thinking that it was pretty dry when it went into the press. Also, there was some mold on the …
Today’s results: yogurt, Irish potato brown bread, an almost-spanikopita (to be completed tomorrow), and Monterey Jack cheese. We should have made this cheese for our first hard cheese instead of the gouda we made last November. This was easy, if hugely time consuming. There’s a lot of waiting that happens in cheese-making. Bring the milk to temperature, add something, wait, repeat. Cut curds, wait, repeat. Curds and whey. Drained and salted curds. We got 6 quarts and 3 pints of whey out of this. (Local people: want some?) And this is where it’s at right now, pressing at 10 lbs, …