Peeking in from out of the shadows, un autre newbie from Ohio, USA

[tomteresa]

Hi Mosburn:
We read your first message and noticed about the making of some Fontina Cheese. Tom,
my husband is the cheesemaker and we would like to know if you can send us the recipe for making Fontina Cheese and is this a Thermophilic Starter your mother made from the piece of Fontina?

What are the steps to make this starter from the piece of Fontina?

What are the steps after the curd is set up?

We use yogurt for a Thermophilic Starter.....but the aged cheese sounds better.  Or do you use both?

We are new at this.....
Thanks so much, 
Tom and Teresa

[mosborn]

Hi Teresa,

I'm a novice at cheesemaking, myself, so I don't have much expertise.  We didn't have a fontina recipe, so we used an emental recipe from the Home Cheesmaking book.   We used thermophilic starter, and my mom cultured the fontina by chopping up about half an ounce of fontina cheese and blending it with milk, and letting it sit in a warm place for a few days.

Mom babied that cheese, it was the first one she ever made, and she opened it at Christmas, which was about 2 months.  I'm pretty sure it was supposed to age at least three months, but anyway...        The cheese tasted like fontina!  It was very hard, though, even grating hard, like a fontina flavored parmesan.  in only 2 months!

She didn't have a cave for it.  she kept it in her pantry the whole two months.

[mosborn]

That picture that is my avatar is the second or third cheese I made.  It's a giant-puffball-mushroom-infused Swiss.

I was going to open it on my birthday, which was Monday.  But I went to a philosophy meetup on Monday, so I was saving it for Tuesday, when my mother and sister were making a birthday party for me.  I forgot to take it to the party.  I remembered to take some beef liver for us all to make chopped liver together, but I forgot the cheese I had been anticipating for months!

So today I opened it.  Voila:

[mosborn]

Also: To answer Pavel's question about what I eat for $4 a day, I started a website at http://www.RealCheapFood.com.   

[DeejayDebi]

Nice link hon! I love it!