Finally a complete failure / completely new cheese kind
I wanted to make a blue du queyras. I tried to use the recipe from the 200 easy homemade cheeses. I am not sure if anybody noticed but it has the following hilarious/horrificic description of Rennet "The most commonly used coagulant is rennet, which is composed of enzymes found in the stomach of calves and kids, and is extracted at the time of slaughter."
Mmmmmm. I don't have kids but also would not slaughter one to make cheese.
Anyway....
In the mean time I would like to ask a question. The book also mentions that a starter culture can be kept in the freezer for a maximum period of 3 months. Is this true or can it be stored longer?
I went to the melk tap and bought 5 litres of raw cows milk. That is probably the only thing that I succesfully managed to do.
I put an ice cube of meso starter in a glass of milk and started to warm up the milk. I added the culture and later the rennet. (hopefully (?) of a dead calf)
When it was time to cut the curds I found that there was not much to cut. It was still milk. I realized that the starter was not very active since I made it only 1.5 hours before starting the cheese making.
I waited and waited but I could not get a clean break. I added some more rennet because I thought that 1 ml was very little.
After waiting half an hour more I decided that I should add some more heat because the pan cooled down.
Then a friend of mine showed up and we had a nice conversation about how we should see each other more often. I gave him some colby that I made recently and at that moment I realized I was making cheese.
Which was about 60 degrees C at that time!!!!!!!!
There was no curd to cut but there was something which was between yoghurt and solid. I put everything in 2 forms and pressed it a little by hand. I added the leftover start culture because it had not been heated and would still add some life.
I treated it more or less like camembert. Leaving it to drain overnight and turning it now and then.
To my surprise it actually looked like a cheese when it came out. I salted them and put them in the wine refrigerator with its buddies.
I am very curious about how it will turn out but I would like to hear some suggestions about when to eat them. I prefer cheeses to be aged a bit but is it possible with these
I am still planning to make them blue but I have no clue.
Hansadutta