Well today was a surprise. I had pretty much written this cheese off as a loss/failure but hadn't thrown it away. I was trying to forget about it, trying to forget that I started this thread, hoping everyone else would also forget, but something kept reminding me. Oh yeah it was the smell. The ever increasingly pungent smell of geo. I peeked in on it several times and could see nothing growing on it except geo. Well last night I went out for a beer and ran into a guy I know, who apparently is living in the same building, on the same floor, and across the hall and a few doors down from me. He commented on how the girl's apartment across from him was beginning to smell pretty bad. Nonchalantly I asked, "oh really, what's it smell like?" A bit of a hidden snicker on my part but the message was clear, it was time to toss the lactic, geotrichum infested mess I had created. Now mind you it was at room temperature for a Looooooong time, 2 weeks I realize as I look at the date of my original post, just ripening there in my room temp cheese box, well it was certainly ripe. Now this had never drained enough by the time I salted the curds (if you can call them curds, more like thin cream cheese/thick sour cream) and put it into molds. They did drain a bit more in the molds, but slumped some within a day of unmolding them. Well now as I examined them, some had split, some were intact and covered by the thickest geo coat I have ever seen. I flipped one off it's mat and examined it, smelled it, tasted it a bit. Wow, funk, smelly funk, but kind of a good funk in a smelly cheese sorta way, and it tasted good, not mature, still quite lactic, but good. Now has anyone stopped to ponder how weird it must seem to the rest of the world when we look at a moldy hunk of curdled milk and say or think "wow, that looks really good!", or smell the same mold infested gob of curdled milk wreaking with a scent most folks would find somewhat reminiscent of "eau de diaper pail", and yet we inhale deeply the sensuous waft and exclaim, "Yum!". So it was that sort of moment that faced me now, and I instantly realized, "this cheese can be saved". So I rounded up some appropriate minicaves and some storage containers for the ones that had split and set about to rescue the cheese, well actually before I did I took a few oz of it, placed it on a plate, sliced some bread, smeared it on, and enjoyed it fully. Good but it has a ways to go yet, still need the candidum to take over. So as I write this I have this in the fridge. some to just finish maturing, and others to be remolded and then set to finish maturing. I was amazed, I had completely given up on this one but in the end it showed me that it knew how to become cheese. And so I resurrect this thread that just a few hours ago I was hoping would "slip quietly into that long night". These lactic coagulated cheeses are pretty weird creatures, and I am beginning to appreciate them.
John
