Waimea Blue Fog Cheese for Daring Cooks

Sawsan from chef in disguise was our March 2013 Daring Cooks hostess! Sawsan challenges us to make our own homemade cheeses! She gave us a variety of choices to make, all of them easily accomplished and delicious!

I was happy to jump onto this latest challenge, due to my long postponed goal of making pressed and formed cheese.  Having experimented with cream cheese, feta and ricotta, I purchased a form and follower (the doo hickey that fits snugly on top) for pressing cheese.  Those items have been languishing in a cupboard, so hurrah, they've been put to use!

Making my own blue cheese sounded fun, despite my granddaughter's dire warnings, mentioned in an earlier post.  So using a favorite kefir and cheese site, Dom's Kefir for instructions, I started off with a half gallon of fresh, raw goat's milk, and inoculated it for 24 hours with kefir grains rather than rennet.  For a variety of reasons.  I always have it on hand for one.  You can visit his site for more information than you need or want to know.  I'm calling it Waimea Blue Fog, since I bought the goats milk there in Waimea, on the cooler, North end of the Big Island, known for an occasional fog blanketing its road and green hills.

Making Kefir Cheese or "Grandma you could die!!"

On a recent post about my experience with making kefir at home, I mentioned that my next experiment would be using that kefir to make cheese.  My granddaughter was here, so thinking she might like to be involved, I told her about my plans.  I said, for Brie or Blue Cheese, we can scrape a bit of the mold off some purchased cheese, and use it to inoculate ours. When she heard that I would be MAKING CHEESE AT HOME, it seemed to terrify her.  I hardly knew what to say, I was so shocked by the reaction.  Of course, being on the cusp of teendom, she has been lecturing me on various subjects, so I should have been prepared.   "Grandma, don't you know there are thousands of bacteria out there, how are you going to know the mold is safe???  You could die!  I'm not eating any."  Grandma is known to live dangerously; eating mushrooms growing out in the wild, making wine and yes, cheese.

Feta and Ricotta Making

Ripening Feta

This cheese-making business all started with Isaiah going off to Boy Scout Camp for a week. So, his mother didn't want to take her usual gallon of goat milk. I told the goat guy that I'd like a gallon as I've been wanting to try making Feta cheese. This was my entertainment last week. Turning a large jug of goat's milk into 2 containers of Feta and a little tub of ricotta from the whey. Truly, I enjoyed the whole process. Felt very holeistic. Just so you know, that's sort of like holy these days.

Here you see more whey draining off the curds and a tub of collected whey on the side. I found directions, after searching the interweb, at this wiki site. This seemed the easiest and clearest recipe, with photos.

After the cheese is done, you cut it up in large chunks and put in a salt brine to ripen for four weeks. I have a sneaking feeling that it could have been pressed firmer. I really really need a cheese press. Finally, you can make ricotta out of all that whey you've saved.

This is the curds draining after the whey has been brought up to 200F.
As a great big added addendum, I've added the recipe in full for this ricotta.

Ricotta

Traditional Ricotta Cheese Recipe
Ingredients You Will Need:
2 gallons of whey (or however much you have)
Vinegar

Equipment You Will Need:
Non-reactive saucepan (stainless steel or enameled pots are great)
Colander
Very fine mesh cheesecloth or muslin

Let the whey from your first cheese-making effort sit out covered at room temperature for between 12 and 24 hours to let the acid content of the whey increase. Heat the whey in the saucepan to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Tiny white curds should form in the whey. If the curds are not forming, add a splash of vinegar.

Strain the whey through a cheesecloth made with very, very fine material. If you do not have a fine cheesecloth (also called muslin), use a pillow case or another piece of clean cotton material. You’ll have an easier time straining the cheese if you line a colander with cheesecloth or another material. Let the ricotta drain into a bowl under the colander for about two hours or until no more liquid escapes the cheesecloth. Put the ricotta into a bowl, and salt lightly (¼ teaspoon salt), mixing thoroughly. Use immediately, or store in refrigerator for up to a week.
The ricotta was good. It tasted like goat cheese ricotta and we had some in a salad and some in an omelet with sauteed vegetables.

I would highly recommend this whole process. It brings out your inner chef.