Ok, this was the biggest newbie cheese debacle in the history of newbie cheese debacles. I am used to making fresh-ish/simple cheeses, feta in particular. But I miss bloomies so much, my Stateside fridge almost always had a (store-bought) cam or brie in residence. So I knowingly and rashly decided to hop-scotch the hard cheese step and proceed to trying a cam. Especially after seeing Ozzie’s inspiring posts, and Andy’s.
So excited to make a Malabert! Finally had all the pieces together, got my shipment from the US with cultures, moulds, molds. Unpacked my new PH meter. Tried to calibrate it, couldn’t. Spent the next hour trying to figure out why it was not working, manual didn’t help, online didn’t help. Think it is a lemon, gave up for the time being and decided to go based on time.
Make ingredients:
4 liters raw afternoon milk purchased from the milk truck an hour previously, then thermized. 300 grams who-knows-what-type cream (see below).
¼ tspn FD
1/64 tspn PC/ABL, 1/128 tspn geo 13.
¼ tspn NECC animal rennet in 1/8 cup boiled distilled cooled water.
1/16 tspn CACL in ¼ cup boiled distilled cooled water.
Unsure about the cream here, it is allegedly “fresh” and 40+% fat. Refrigerated. ZERO information re process (eg, whether pasteurized/UP, etc.), ingredients (eg, emulsifiers, thickeners) or really anything else. Tastes cultured/tangy, not sweet like US cream. No idea what that will do to PH/acidity when added to FD. Take cream (liquid but some lumps) out of fridge to mix in the lumps. Mixed for a minute or so with a fork. Starts to thicken to a thin sour cream like consistency within 15 minutes at RT (80 deg. F). Put back in fridge.
Process
Began make after thermizing (30 ms at 145F). As temp dropped, added in cream at 110 deg.F. Like a dummy put FD, PC and geo into teeny steel bowl, tried to crush FD with a spoon because of forum posts recommending it. But it was sticky, ended up with all three mixed in tiny aggregated lumps. Ended up scraping into vat at 90F, spread out/”sprinkled” as best I could. Let sit for 5 ms, could still see beads of FD in the beginning, tried stirring for a couple of minutes, seemed to dissipate after the stir. Ripened for 90 minutes.
Realized with ten minutes left that heat had dropped to 88F, tried to raise it and overshot to 92F. Added cold water to bottom pot of double boiler and put vat in sink with ice water and quickly got it to 90F. But definite heat fluctuations during ripening.
After 90 minutes added 1/8 tspn CaCl in 1/8 cup distilled/boiled/cooled water. Stirred, left to rest for 15 ms. Added ¼ tspn rennet in ¼ cup boiled/distilled/cooled water, stirred 1 minute, stilled milk.
Added rennet at 6:10 pm. Checked flocc 6 ½ minutes later. Already solidly flocc’d, bowl was still as death. Not sure how much earlier flocc actually occurred. Used multiplier of 5.5 as per Ozzie, resulting in total of 35 ms from rennet to cut time, which would be 6:45pm.
Checked for clean break after 25 ms since actual flocc time might have been before I checked. No clean break, somewhat mushy. Ozzie directions say to wait for clean break/no mushiness so I did. Checked at 6:45, still slightly mushy. 6:50 ditto. Fridge repairman came after that so ended up not cutting until 7:10, still slightly soft but cut anyway.
Cut to ¾ inch vertical and horizontal as best I could. Not a good job. Ended up smaller, closer to half inch (some even smaller). How does anyone cut the horizontal curds evenly without a curd harp??? Mine always suck.
Rested for 5 ms. Stirred gently 15 ms. Let sit 15 ms. Tried to keep heat at 90F, with short bursts (gas stove.) Kept between 89.5 and 90F although almost set insulating towel on fire.
Ozzie directions say to drain whey to curd level, but whey is already almost at curd level so didn’t. Also, much of pot covered with spots of gelled looking ghee-like buttery substance (see pics) afraid this will all get poured off with whey. Stirred again a little to mix before beginning to ladle. Not very successful. Proceed to ladle/filling molds.
Supposed to get 3 cam molds out of this 4 liter milk/300g cream batch. Started filling 3 round robin style, quickly becomes very clear there would not be enough curds. Put the curds from the third mold into the other two. They were still only half full. Left them that way rather than consolidating into one because I thought (a) maybe they wouldn’t drain that much given how few were left and (b) putting all the curds into one mold would produce a Malambert doorstop.
After flipping for a second time, there are some tiny pools of butter in the mesh marks of the molded curd. Curious to see if they will be absorbed. Pic attached.
Will go ahead and see where these go just for the experimental value, although my dogs were very excited about them and I almost let them have their way. Despite the terrible results, it was still fun going through the process. Plus, with so many mistakes the next one can only be better, right? Famous last words.
Any advice/thoughts gratefully accepted. Mockery also fine, so long as gentle
