The Ease of Goat Cheese

Finally! Something I can sink my teeth into!

Having no fortune (so far) with my hard cheeses, it's nice to finally make something so simple that comes out incredibly awesome. Well, after the first try anyway.

For any of you out there interested in making cheese, I highly recommend goat cheese. It is so easy, so tasty, so mmmm....The only challenge involved is finding the right milk. At first I looked for goat milk at my local natural foodie-type stores, and all I could find is produced by Meyenberg and to my chagrin, ultra-pasteurized. (If you haven't been keeping up, UP milk is bad - doesn't lend itself to making cheese of any sort due to denatured proteins.) But I decided to try it anyway. "I'll just add a bit more rennet, I thought," though I now can say that it doesn't work that way.

Soon after realizing that I would have to resort to making goat cheese with powdered goat milk in a can, I found real non-UP goat milk at my local Trader Joe's. This was actually shocking because TJ's is a sort of prepared foods-type market commonly known for it's "Two Buck Chuck" (cheap wine) selection and I never expected it to be my only source for goat milk. As an aside, I do not intend to trash-talk the powdered goat milk. For some it is the only option and as such should never discourage one from making goat cheese. (I bought the can. I have it in my pantry. And though I haven't yet tried it, I have every intention of doing so.)

The first time I made this was actually back in June; I haven't written anything about it until now because there were no pictures or fun stuff to go along with it. This was such an instant gratification cheese that it never lasted more that a few days. This stuff rocks!

The very first batch, yes that one wherein I decided to kick up the rennet, even that one turned out okay. Great flavor for a cheesy goat spread - that whole denatured protein thing kept it from becoming anything more substantial than that. The next batch was a "Fresh" goat cheese meaning that the culture itself was a fresh culture, not a "Chevre" culture. I did cheat though. I didn't have the patience to prepare a fresh culture; too involved - sterilization and mason jars, no thanks. Instead I added a direct set (meaning not prepared) freeze-dried culture that I read was sure to give me the same results. Not only did it work, but YUM! Curiously enough, this cheese had a very light and creamy texture and flavor. It wasn't like the drier and firmer texture of store bought goat cheese and it didn't have that tang. While I enjoyed it, I missed that goaty flavor I am accustomed to. I chalked it up to a lower quality goat milk (= less flavor). It wasn't until I made my next batch with a "Chevre" culture that I realized just exactly what role a culture plays in the process. This cheese tasted like that stuff you get in the stores, it even had the texture I expected. Ya think maybe those all of those books out there that suggest beginning with softer cheeses, playing with vastly different milks and cultures (lemon juice to vinegar to fresh to direct set) did so for a reason? Nah. But I was wrong (gasp!). It wasn't poor quality milk, it was fresh culture that left that cheese tasting so...fresh; and the "Chevre" culture is what made that other cheese taste like...Chevre!

And talk about easy! This stuff is nearly foolproof and so simple to make! All you need is to heat the milk to a particular temperature (depending on the culture), add said culture, cover, and let it sit! When the curd has coagulated, you gently scoop it into either plastic molds or butter muslin and allow it to drain. No problemo! Someday, I will take pictures of this process for all to witness its ease.

And what could be better than goat cheese-wrapped goat cheese, you ask? In this recipe, a pie crust-like pastry was made of goat cheese and flour and wrapped around more goat cheese. I sprinkled chopped thyme over the surface of the goat cheese round prior to wrapping and gave it a brush of egg wash before baking. I baked this sucker forever and it never really browned. (I'm still looking into that one.) Next time I'll drain the goat cheese even longer; I believe it was the steam emanating from the baking cheese that created this gooey canyon, and the cheese itself seemed to separate. Piping hot, this actually wasn't that good. The cheese was too watery and the delicate flavor of the pastry didn't come through. After cooling significantly, I found this treat to be at its best slivered like a piece of pie and eaten out of hand with no accompaniments necessary.

Did I say YUM?

That' salata Love!

In a previous life working as a restaurant manger, a couple once (okay, it happened more than once - though not with the same couple) sent back their soup because it was too salty. Very graciously, the young woman declared that the Chef must be in love. There I stood with a perplexed look, not sure what to say, when she continued, "We have a saying: A Chef who cooks with too much salt is a Chef in love." Ahh, the French.

As for me, I have a love for cheese; an over-salted, pungent love.

Let's talk ricotta. Ricotta is a natural by-product of cheese making; it is made from the whey. What is whey? When you add culture to milk, it acts on the proteins in milk separating it into curds - the solids that will later become cheese, and whey - a cloudy yellowish liquid. Interestingly enough, the word ricotta translates as "recooked." (Ah-hah!)

Now, I have used whey in bread and pizza dough, and nearly every time I've made cheese, I've tried making ricotta from straight whey. And while the recipe promises 1/2 pound of ricotta, so far I've been lucky to yield a tablespoon. It's the best damn tablespoon of ricotta I've ever tasted, but are you kidding me? Surely it should make more than a spoonful!

Well, I gave up on this whey stuff. It's still something I use for baked goods, but for ricotta it seems you're just better off going whole milk, especially if you would like to share your efforts, as a tablespoon only goes so far. So I decided to take this one step further and make ricotta salata, or salted ricotta. This cheese is simply fresh ricotta that is salted, dried and aged.

Fresh ricotta itself is relatively easy to make (see below). All you need is milk and citric acid (and a pot to cook it in, cheesecloth, etc.) which you can find online very easily if you don't live near a shop catering to brewing and vinification (wine making). For ricotta salata, the drained curds are lightly pressed for about 12 hours before moving on to the drying stage. In this last stage, which can last anywhere from 2-4 weeks, the surface of the cheese is lightly rubbed with salt in the first week.

And then there's my version. I decided to age this ricotta in my cheese fridge. I've told you about this contraption, haven't I? Well, I have a little dorm fridge that I keep at approximately 55 degrees - a temperature that will support the aging of cheese better than the colder temperature of an everyday fridge. And in this cheese cave (if you will) at the time I had a variety of things going on in there, one of them being mold. Yes, I was trying to do some mold-ripened cheeses at the same time. (You haven't heard about those because I quickly turned them into little hockey pucks that went straight into the round file.) My recipe for ricotta salata said nothing about keeping this particular cheese in the warmer environment of my cave, but I thought it would be a grand, really add to the flavor of my cheese. But what my recipe did say was that if unwanted mold appeared on the cheese (as it did, often, due to the mold-ripened cheeses it was sharing space with) to rub it off with cheesecloth dipped in salt water, or if it became soft with moisture to towel it off and rub the surface with salt again.

I rubbed this dear thing with salt for not only the first week, but several times again over the three after that. I was so excited to try it. It aged for a month, and I babied it. It was loved. It was gross.
It was SOO salty. And it had this slightly off, ripened in the wrong way, flavor. Hmm...why not put it in pasta?! It's perfect for pasta! I'll make sauce without any added salt, I'll boil pasta in unsalted water. There are probably reasons why no one espouses ways to compensate for severely over-seasoning things, because you can't (do understand the operative word here is severe), but I tried nonetheless.

The pasta was good, I salted the water. I can't make pasta without salting the water. Then I made a sauce with stuff I had around the house: canned tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms, and garlic. Add a little garnish of the saltiest cheese you'll ever have, eh, not so bad.

Will I do this again? Yes. Will I do it differently? You bet. I'll keep you posted.



Whole Milk Ricotta
adapted from Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll

1 Gal Whole Milk (not ultrapasteurized)
1 tsp Citric Acid (dissolved in 1/4 c. cool water)
1 tsp Kosher Salt (optional)

1 large non-reactive pot, preferably stainless steel, glass or enameled
1 instant read thermometer (you can find this in any cooking store, some markets, and online)
1 colander
1 bowl (to go under the colander)
3 sq. ft. (more or less) butter muslin or fine cheesecloth
twine*


1. Combine the milk, citric acid solution, and salt (optional).

2. Heat the milk to 185-195 degrees (F) but do not boil. Stir frequently to prevent scorching.

3. As soon as the curds separate from the whey (be sure this whey is a clear yellow, not a cloudy white), turn off the heat and allow the pot to sit undisturbed for 10 minutes.

4. Line a colander with clean butter muslin (rinsed in cold water), and carefully ladle the curds into the colander. Tie the corners of the muslin together in a knot and hang the bag of curds for 20-30 minutes depending on the consistency you are looking for. You're done! Enjoy! (It keeps in the refrigerator, covered, for 1-2 weeks.)

*Though twine is not necessary, I found it to be easier to tie up a muslin bag with twine. After tying the corners of the muslin bag together, forming a knot, I tie a long strand of twine around that knot and use the twine to hang the bag from a cabinet handle - it is far less messy than looping wet, milky cheesecloth over my kitchen furniture (as that is my only option). A word of advice if you try this method...be sure you have strong twine. And, as a protective measure, I keep a colander over a catch-bowl under the cheese; that way, if the twine should break, the bag of curds does not go plunging back into the liquid that just drained from it. (Of course, this, I learned the hard way.)

I Don't Know Jack (Almost)

Shortly after my first four batches of hard cheese, I had grown tired of the farmhouse cheddar and decided to move on to Monterey Jack.

Jack is a washed cured cheese, meaning that hot water is added to the curds (replacing the whey) during the near-final stages of the cheesemaking process in order to wash away some of the lactic acid, therefore softening the texture and flavor. The process itself is quite involved and not for beginners, which would be why the recipe is always in the advanced part of just about any book on cheesemaking that I've seen. (Duh, I'm an expert.) Determined not to be discouraged, I plucked another cheese out of the cave this weekend.

How surprised was I to find that this one was not so bad? Allow me to elaborate. At first glance, you can see that the curds did not fully bind together at the surface of the cheese, a result of pressing tepid curds. A little disappointed, I expected to cut into a block of cheese that had simply not come together because the temperature was not maintained carefully enough. What I found inside was a rather smooth texture, disturbed only by a few small holes. Again, I found that these holes were most likely caused by a low temperature pressing; they did not at all resemble the little bubble-like holes in my first cheeses that would later come to indicate a certain yuck factor.

Now for the sample. As smooth as this fine specimen appeared, it was rather dry but not unpleasant, and the creaminess came through in the mouthfeel. But still it was sour. (OK then, maybe those holes were caused by a little bit of both the chilly curds and excess gas created in the fermentation process.) Though probably the least sour and most cheese-like of all hard cheeses I've made so far, it still isn't good enough to just eat a hunk of. Arrgh! What good is making cheese if you can't eat it, I ask you?! Will I ever create something worth ingesting, let alone enjoyable? Stay tuned to find out...

In other news, this poor thing died while waiting to become something new, something delicious. Its caretaker is being sought for questioning.

What Was I Thinking??

So, my original plan was to become an expert cheesemaker with the first batch. Each week I sought to make a pair of cheeses using the same recipe with different milks so I could compare flavors and textures. Eventually, I would start experimenting with cultures and such on my own, to create my very own cheese recipes. Yes, I wanted to become a professional dancer before I learned how to walk.

Just three batches of cheese into my new profession, I created a 2# batch of organic milk farmhouse cheddar. This was also the last cheese produced without the help of some sort of cheese mold. I was using a ricotta mold, which is much like a basket with very little structural support, especially when applying weight, so I did experience some difficulties getting this one to settle down. The two batches prior were half the size of this one, an advantage I wan't aware of until it was too late. In the end, I had literally babysat this cheese for several hours, standing over it, trying to keep the weights level. Yes, I even used a level. When it was all said and done, I waxed it up to put away for a couple of months.

The following week, I made the same recipe with raw milk, this time using my brand new cheese mold. I was so excited! Until it was time to press, and that quickly became not so fun. This one is affectionately known as the "angry cheese." The now-retired makeshift cheese press consisted of a cutting board with two 10# dumbell weights balanced on the board. It had worked well with the two 1# cheeses, and only moderately well with the first 2# cheese, though I had blamed that on the cheese mold not being sturdy enough to balance such weight. Well, after a broken plate and dented linoleum (the weights fell off once or twice or so) the cheese was relocated several times before finding it's home in the sink where the seemingly inevitable descent of the weights would be padded by empty plastic milk cartons. Much to my dismay, this arrangement only created probably one of the most horrible sounds one person could ever be awakened by, especially at 4 in the morning. I can only imagine what the poor souls living below must've been thinking. [A cheese press was purchased shortly after this experience.] I cleverly decided to bandage this cheese; the last attempt at waxing proved too troublesome with the available quantity of wax, and I already had enough trouble with this one.

One of these days I'll slow down enough to read the directions.

I didn't bandage my cheese with two layers of muslin as directed. In theory, the bandage prevents any mold formation from actually penetrating the cheese and allows for its quick removal along with the bandage when it is time to enjoy the aged mass of curds. As the cheese molded over, "OOOH, it's growing," I'd elate. I almost couldn't wait! I had to see, to taste! I knew this one would be good. Until I came across a little snippet in a book sent to me by a Dedicated Fan entitled What Can Go Wrong with a picture very similar to my angry cheese and the first line reading "Look at this ugly thing!" I was aghast! I ran to my cheese cave to retrieve the poor mistreated little thing, ripped off its bandages and proceeded to "salvage" my tasty treat, as per the instructions in the book, before it was too late!

Well, this weekend I open up this pair of cheeses, and what I found was remarkably similar to the first pair I opened up just a few weeks prior. Once again, the raw milk cheddar had tiny little bubbles inside, though it was not accompanied by that "off" odor; in fact, the odor was quite pleasant. If only it had tasted that way. It was sour, almost bitter. The texture was dry, though I expected that due to the bandaging technique. (Bandaging does not provide an airtight seal such as wax.) The pasteurized cheese had a smoother, more buttery texture, but no flavor and a slight sourness. Bummer.

So what did I learn this time?

1. Cheese does not take well to balancing 20# on its own.

2. Don't make any hard cheeses when you have to work the next day.

3. It's time to go back to the basics, get on all fours and start crawling.