About a month ago I had some extra milk and said "oh, why not finally try a cam?". So I did. I used the recipe from 200 Easy Cheeses, except I didn't wrap at all, I left 'em in the ripening container on the mats, flipping and patting them down daily once I got the full growth. That recipe says ripen at 50-55 and they'll be ready in three weeks - I knew from all the accumulated knowledge here (
) that it really should be lower temp for longer, but I wanted to experiment and watch what would actually happen doing it the recipe's way. They started to get nice and fuzzy within about 3-4 days, and full coverage within 7 days.
At three weeks I knew they weren't ready yet (only outside edges were soft, centers were still quite firm, but I cut one open anyway to see what it was like. Weird part was that the unripe center tasted like .... cheddar. The outside edges, though - ooh la la! Very yummy and quite perfect, to my mind (and taste buds).
Cut a second one at 4 weeks, again just to see the difference. Center portion tasted less like cheddar and slightly more like cam. I sinned and carved out the firm part and used it in a grilled ham & cheese sammich. Now THAT was yummy! The ripe portion I ate straight, didn't even bother with crackers, why dilute the taste?
Anyway, the 4 week one was starting to get a little ammoniated, so I broke down and adjusted my cave temp down to 48/49F and put the last two from that batch in a smaller container and into the cave at the beginning of this week. They'll be 5 weeks old this coming Monday, so I figure I'll have to wait at least another 2-3 weeks, probably longer. Fortunately I have two more batches in the works - one with Flora Danica and another with regular meso but extra cream, and will be doing another (hopefully) with FD and extra cream, so I should have plenty to play with over time.
Oh, and I also made a couple of Bries as well, again following 200 Easy Cheeses. Those developed slip skin on the sides at the 53/54F temp fairly quickly, even though I was flipping and patting them down daily. One is much worse than the other, so I'm thinking about just pulling off the slip skin and letting it regrow on that one - again, just to see what happens.
So here are my few pics of the first cam batch - the first is of just a couple of them (there were 4 in the batch), and based on the date I think they were just beginning to grow their fuzzies, but I don't think you can really see that in the pic. Second pic is of the one I cut at 3 weeks, and third pic is the one I cut at 4 weeks (sorry for the fuzziness of these, apparently I forgot to stop breathing when snapping the pics - heh).
Overall, I'm quite pleased already with this first attempt, and even with the Bries, dreaded slip skin aside. At least I know what to do about it, thanks to you all! Somehow something magical seems to have taken over my kitchen - even though there have been a few stutters along the way, both those Stiltons and these cams and Bries have come out almost effortlessly. Perhaps I'm really just destined to do moldy cheeses instead of all those cheddars. Hmmm ... although the Havartis came out nice too. Well, I guess I'll just have to do them all, then.
