The Art of Cheese

Last year we met a very accomplished gentleman by the name of Graham, whom not only was fully proficient at building furniture and kitchen cabinetry, tiling, replacing windows and demolishing floors but amongst these and other talents he also knew how to make a mean cheese.  After sampling several of his handcrafted cheeses, washed down by some of his equally delicious handcrafted ales, I might add, we were inspired to jump on the cheese wagon ourselves. 

Katherine in action

And so I gave Dave the gift of a day long cheese course for Christmas.  Naturally I also gave myself one, and one Saturday in late summer we headed off to the Epsom Community Centre for a day with Katherine Mowbray, author of the book "Cutting the Curd", who demonstrated, in very interesting and able fashion, how to make fresh cheese, liptour, quark, gouda, and camembert.  It goes without saying we ate well at the lunch break.

 

At the conclusion of the course we bought some of the basic gear, some cultures and bacteria, thermometer etc and her book, which we took home and perused at leisure before heading to the shops the next day to buy "the hardware" - stock pots and sieves, draining spoons, racks, cheese cloth, pipettes, curd knife etc.  And a handy little gas burner to give a higher degree of control than electric hobs can offer.  We were ready!

 

 

Another few weeks passed before we could find an entire day free to designate to cheese but arrive it did, and we made our first cheese, a Neuf Chatel.  We'd had this one at Graham's place, and loved its pungent (strong some would say) runny centre that oozed out with a decadance that should almost cause alarm but somehow was just perfect.  Our first two were quite gorgeous, they didn't stand a chance really - we ate them at two and three weeks.  The extra week really added a punch to that pungency!  Sublime. 

Next up, our next big cheese was Camembert.  So impressed were we with the ease of method and result, that we almost immediately (2 weeks later) repeated the exercise with more most excellent cheese.  Interspersed between these were a selection of "quick & easy's" - cream cheese, haloumi, and ricotta.  The cream cheese has been a consistant crowd pleaser, and has a permanent spot in our fridge these days, for swirling through soups, spreading on scones with homemade jam or just melting over broccoli.

The Blues

Time for something different, so we decided to try Blue Stilton type.  Quite a bit more work, but its shaping up really well, and in two months will be nicely whiffy, if the book is to be believed.... meanwhile we have started to stockpile camemberts ready for our onslaught of overseas visitors who have all decided that October is THE month to visit New Zealand....

 

The Camembert - batch two

 



Homemade Pumpkin & Coconut Soup with a dollop of Cream Cheese
and Basil with my own Soda Bread