Half-Goat Cheese and Other Matters

It’s been so long since I wrote last about making cheese, and I missed it so much – almost as much as I missed actually making cheese. Serious Things kept me busy, and away from the cheese, and away from the kitchen. In fact, there was no kitchen. We just emerged from a nightmare called Complete Kitchen Remodeling: two months of preparation, packing, demolition, buying, returning and buying again, planning, re-planning, cleaning, unpacking, and, finally, getting used to our new kitchen. And the kitchen is beautiful, and it looks great, and it feels like it’s been there forever, pristine through all these long forever times.  Perfect for cheese making.

During the no-kitchen months some strange thing happened, good and bad, big and small. For example, my husband bought some goat milk that everybody refused to drink, so it took residence in our relocated fridge, next to the forgotten container of a very expensive and very organic yogurt. The yogurt was, apparently, perfect for growing blue mold – nice and furry, the best I ever saw.  So the logical thing for me was to combine a very unpleasant activity of fridge cleaning with a very pleasant activity of cheese making.

I made a Half-Goat cheese first. I can’t even show you the picture here because it got eaten within two hours of being made. I took the goat milk from the fridge, added an approximately equal amount of the Lifeway Kefir and left it in a warm place for about two hours. Then I added rennet and left it for another 3 hours. I achieved the clean break, but the curds were very soft and fragile. I ladled them very carefully into a colander with a cloth in it and drained. Once mostly drained, I added a little bit of salt, placed my cheese in a mold that looks like an oversized tea strainer and hanged it at a room temperature for 12 hours.  And then we ate it. Very fast. It tasted like a very fresh and very mellow chevre.

Next, I made Rockshire Blue with the forgotten yogurt, mold and all. 

Here’s the recipe:

2 gal of milk warmed to 90 F;

Almost full 32 oz container of plain yogurt with blue mold on top;

Stir the yogurt into milk; keep stirring aggressively to distribute the mold evenly.

Leave for 1 hour to incubate. Add rennet. Wait for a clean break.

Cut the curd into ½ in cubes, let it stand for 10 min.

Slowly warm up the curds to 102 F, stirring occasionally and breaking the lumps.

Let stand for about 20 min.
Drain in a Stilton knot.  

Once drained, cut into ½ inch cubes, mix in 1.5 tbsp of salt and put in a cheese mold, pressing the curds down with a spoon.

I am planning to ripen my cheese Stilton-way, so I didn’t apply any pressure. The curds are beautiful, springy, sweet, and stick together nicely. I have been turning the mold over every 12 hours or so, and will keep on it for another day, for 3 days total till the cheese slides easily from the mold. And then I’ll put it in the cave.

My only concern is – what if this beautiful blue mold didn’t survive the heating?

We’ll have to wait and see.