Inspired by AnnDee I had to make some of these beautiful little balls of taste and delight. When I first looked at them they didn't seem to make sense but after watching the video of a Chef using a truffle shaver to shave them onto a dish they made perfect sense. Small cheese with immense flavor. I used the recipe (https://www.cheesemaking.com/BKnolle.html) from New England Cheese Making and even used their packets of Chèvre. Picked up a gallon of raw milk from my local source (http://blackjackvalleyfarm.com). Ordered the fine Pink Himalayan salt, which it turns out you can buy almost anywhere, and picked up a fresh head of garlic.
Following the recipe I heated the milk to 86° F and added the packet of Chèvre. I then removed the pan from the heat and covered it to allow it to sit overnight or for 12 hours. At the end of the 12 hours I lifted the lid to find a beautiful cylinder of curd floating in its whey.
The coolest thing about this make is, because it's only a one gallon make and it forms such a beautiful cylinder of curd, you can cover the pot with a sheet of butter muslin, place the colander on it, upside down of course, and flip the entire thing over in the sink catching the curd in the muslin and colander while dispelling the whey. No scooping!!
I gathered up the four corners of the cloth and tied them off so I could drain the remaining whey from the curd.
After hanging the curd to drain I turned my attention to the garlic and salt. The recipe calls for three cloves but, as I couldn't get three nice size cloves, I improvised and cleaned what I thought would equal them. If you lay these on a chopping board, lay a chef's knife on top of them, the side of course, and smack it really hard all of the skin can be removed quite easily.
Next step is to crush the garlic with the salt into a paste. This is actually done quite a bit in cooking as the grains of salt help to grind the garlic much the same as sand paper would.
Okay, with the curd drained, I probably should have drained it a bit more, I placed the ingredients into the mixer using a spatula to make sure I got everything.
Now for a good mixing. I used the second speed setting on my mixer, not very fast, and it seemed to whip up quite nicely.
With that done I put the entire contents into a piping bag and piped out six semi-equal piles onto parchment paper.
I've placed the cooking sheet into my drinks fridge where I will let it set and chill until it reaches a firmness that allows me to form it into balls and coat it with roasted pepper. This is something that Kern found in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZor1-wJGZs) showing the pros making these.
So with the cheese rolled into balls and tumbled in the pepper they are ready to finish drying out in the cave and age to perfection. I hope!! Thanks again to AnnDee for showing me this neat cheese and Kern for helping to sort the details!!
Al, take a peek at the video (around the 4:23 mark) and you'll notice that the peppered balls sit in a slightly warmer and drier room than the cheese cave and get fanned for a couple of days. This really firms up the outside. I did this with my earlier makes and probably could have done them longer: After a couple of weeks in the 55/85 cave they developed some blue mold spots. I found the mold this morning and now have them out of the cave under the fans to chase the blues away. The make of three days ago is now in the cave. I'll watch this closely and if the balls seem to be getting damp they will come out for a day for some of fanning. There is no way to wipe the blue mold off with all the pepper on the ball. :(
Yes, I remembered that and moved them into a 70 degree room with a fan. Should be fine for a while. ;D
So far, this is where I am on my new batch of BK. I am using raw cow milk and flora danica following Kern's recipe but I follow NEC on the steps of the make.
Well I left mine with a fan blowing on them overnight and you can see the crust starting to dry. The room they're in smells incredible by the way! :P
Quote from: AnnDee on February 13, 2016, 03:49:02 AM
So far, this is where I am on my new batch of BK. I am using raw cow milk and flora danica following Kern's recipe but I follow NEC on the steps of the make.
How long do you drain yours Ann? I think I need to drain my next batch longer.
Al, I drained my last batch until the ball of curd in the drain cloth pretty much held its shape when unwrapped. At that point make a ball, set it on a flat surface and see how much it slumps in five minutes or so. I also found that mixing the curd my every few minutes in the final state of draining helped get more whey out as did lightly squeezing it. I doubt that you could make it so dry by bag draining that it would not stick together as a ball. Save a little drained whey in case you need to add some back to make it a bit wetter.
I'm on my #4 make right now attempting to duplicate the make in the video. The main difference between this and #3 is that I doubled the rennet to 12 drops per gallon (3/16 tsp) and decided to cut the curd at a pH of 4.8. I'm at this spot now. If this doesn't work they I am questioning whether the Belper Knolle in the video is really made in a lactic process with a rennet assist. I do know that I get a very white curd in my semi-lactic process. I looked at the video again and the curd in every clip had a distinct yellow cast - characteristic of a rennet curd cut at a more or less normal time. More later.
BTW, don't take this the wrong way but your balls look pretty good. :P
The four photos below show my #4 make in progress. The first shows the pot at a curd pH of 4.81 before it was preliminary drained to get rid of the clear whey that had separated. The second shows the curd cut into ~1 inch cubes. Note the whitish whey in this photo. The third photo shows the cut curd after 45 minutes of resting. Note the fracturing and soft curd below the firmer cubes. The fourth photo shows the pot dumped into the cloth lined draining pan.
These results were quite similar to my Belper #3. Even with twice the rennet the presence of firm(er) curd only occurred on the top portion of the pot. I am now convinced that the Belper Knolle in the video is a standard rennet make with the curd drained in a normal fashion and then stacked in a vat awaiting a pH drop to around the 4.6 level. I can see no path to doing this using a lactic or semi-lactic process. You simply can't get enough curd integrity this way to fit into what is seen in the video. That the video curds have a yellow cast and mine are white is a further indication that the now commercial Belper Knolle is made via a rennet process. As I mentioned elsewhere it may have started out this way but growing sales required that a different faster route be chosen.
Pretty sure their milk and the lighting is what is causing the yellow tinge. All of the cheeses I've seen in videos are pure white inside. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O_EHKDMOPo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O_EHKDMOPo) BTW, apparently these are known as "Swiss Truffles".
Al,
I think that the curd is yellow and whitens up as it dries. I found no less than 14 places in the video where the color of the wet curd can be compared with white objects. The curd appears yellow against white vats, aprons, hats, etc. Even the hosed on plops appear yellow (see the video at the 2:42 mark). I shoot a lot of video and won't argue that white objects can appear yellow in different lighting, backgrounds, etc. My point here is that the wet curd is consistently yellowish against many expected white objects. This discounts lighting as a source of yellow. It may well be that the milk itself is yellowish. It likely comes from Simmental cows, a rare breed here in the US, but common in Switzerland. You are also correct that other videos show Belper Knolle as having a bright white paste - at least when fully dry. So do many photographs. Curiously, those on the NEC website show a browish-gray curd against a white plate at the bottom of the BK recipe.
The first batches of cheese I made a year ago were Feta. The first batch was made with P&H milk. The drained curd was white and after a year of aging the paste is still bright white. The second batch made two weeks later used our local Twin Brooks whole milk (Jersey cows - vat pasteurized, non-homogenized). It was white coming out of the bottle, made a slightly yellow drained curd and now has a well developed yellow cast. So, color likely is more an indicator of the milk source than anything else. I have no idea how Simmental cow milk behaves from a color standpoint. Maybe this explains the color change, if there is indeed one.
But this is missing the forest for the trees. Unless I am not seeing something, the process shown in the video is not a lactic process for the simple reason that a lactic process does not create a curd with the strength of the cut curd shown in the video. Belper Knolle may have been made using a lactic process initially but it does not seem to be made this way any longer. Keep in mind that according to the recipe on the NEC website that this is a newly created cheese (maybe 15 years old). I've corresponded with Jim Wallace of NEC about BK. Jim said that he visited the BK creamery when the BK was made using a lactic process and I'll take his word that it was once made this way. Jim did not explain how the video could be reconciled with a lactic process.
Perhaps only Swiss cows can yield milk that through a lactic process will make a curd with the strength of those in the video. Jersey cows are certainly not able to do so. It would be interesting for one of our European members to make Belper Knolle using Simmental cow milk using a lactic process. My next batch will be to go the rennet route, cut the curd at the appropriate time, drain when firm enough not to shatter and stack it in a vat until the pH drops to about 4.6 and finish as in the video. I'll report the results in a new thread.
Update: 02/14/16:
Last night I had a flash of inspiration and I think I now know how the cheese in the video is made. I want to "prove" this is the method but won't get time to do it for a couple of more days. Sorry for hijacking this thread. Back to you, Al! ;)
Kern
I used raw cow's milk and to my surprise, it drain pretty fast...under 6 hours. It can go longer but I was worried it will be crumbly when I mold it together. And this time, I don't have to put the curd in the cold fridge to get the right consistency.
But that can be due to higher room temp here or as I said before because I used raw milk.. The pantry (cheese lab) which I am making all my cheeses is draft free and even when I put the aircon on (which I always do) it doesn't go below 26-27C (around 80F) in the afternoon.
Here's a picture of my make yesterday, I think I made it into smaller balls so I got 10 of them.
Very nice Ann!! Here are my six little beauties resting in their box and with a shell hard as a rock. ;D I'll forego the obvious euphemisms. LOL Getting ready to grate up my parm so I may have more room in the cave for another batch or two of these. I would hate to make two dozen and find out I didn't like them. LOL Oh well, I have a multitude of friends I could pawn them off on. LOL
Your Belper Knolle spheres look great. AC4U :D Watch them in the cave. I've found that the interior moisture will migrate to the shell dampening it. You could get a little blue mold. If the shell starts to feel a little damp pull the spheres out and fan them for a few hours. After a couple of cycles of this the spheres will likely be stable enough so that mold won't present any further issues.
I think that I avoided the eufunisms, right? :P
Quote from: Kern on February 15, 2016, 06:49:33 PM
I think that I avoided the eufunisms, right? :P
Thanks for the cheese. I actually wasn't getting at you but about 1,000 different ones came into my mind and I just had to refrain from succumbing to my, usually rude, sense of humor. >:D Thanks for the info on the dampening.
What euphemism? (Putting on innocent look). ^-^
I think we are on the same time frame, Al... my 'spheres' are in the cave too. Where are you with your batch, Kern?
Quote from: AnnDee on February 16, 2016, 03:27:23 AM
What euphemism? (Putting on innocent look). ^-^
I think we are on the same time frame, Al... my 'spheres' are in the cave too. Where are you with your batch, Kern?
Have to love a lady with a sense of humor! ;)
Quote from: AnnDee on February 16, 2016, 03:27:23 AM
What euphemism? (Putting on innocent look). ^-^
I think we are on the same time frame, Al... my 'spheres' are in the cave too. Where are you with your batch, Kern?
I just pulled mine away from the fan and they are now in the cave cooling off. (Goodness, gracious great balls afire!) I am starting my fifth batch tomorrow. I think that I've figured out the process of making these as per the video and will have pictures and a procedure to post in two days if successful. If not success then the white flag of surrender. Right now I have 23 BK spheroids and don't even know if I'm going to like the cheese. :o
I still haven't gotten a chance to try making this recipe ... but now I don't know if I'll be able to -- so many euphemisms will be running around in my brain the whole time ... :)
Well it's only been 8 days and these things feel really hard. Letting them age out in the cheese cave in their own little storage bin. ;D
Kern you had said that you were trying these at different aging times. How are they at 1 month?
They are starting to get interesting. My first three batches got infested with blue/gray fuzzy mold and had not fully dried. I liked the flavor but could see that the paste needed more time aging. I have now been aging these outside the cheese cave in a plastic box with the humidity around 75-80%. This seems to have kept the mold in check. I believe that the mold spores came in via the bulk whole black pepper (Tone brand). Initially, I had toasted the pepper then forgot and simply ground it right out of the container. I've gone back to toasting in a very hot non-stick pan keeping the pepper moving for about two minutes. I think that this will kill any spores.
I noticed that the mold started on the bottom where the balls were sitting on the grate which was in close contact with the plastic tub bottom. This likely created a little cubic humidity chamber that fostered the growth of the mold. I now raise the grate off the bottom to get air circulation around the entire ball. None of the mold penetrated the cheese itself. It was only in the pepper.
I tried one of mine few days back, it has a pleasant taste but it hasn't reached the flavour that I like. I age them in a box too but I alternate between opening the lid and closing it. No mold so far.
Kern, I had spots of the same mold in the same places. I brushed it off with a small brush and misted them with cognac, as I had some in a spray bottle for my Manchego, and it seemed to kill it off. I was keeping them sitting on paper towel in the box but have removed that and sat them directly onto the plastic rack in the box. Have to check them this evening to see if the problem is solved.
AnnDee, Thanks for the info on the flavor. I was wondering what they would be like after a month as mine are now rock hard. I assumed the flavor would intensify with age but didn't know if it would be acceptable at one month.
I took your suggestion, Al, and tried brushing off the blue mold. Easily removed it with a toothbrush. Clearly, the mold is on the pepper and not in the cheese. As I did not mist the mold-cleaned pepper-rind with cognac I have some to enjoy with a fine cigar the next warm evening we have here in the Puget Sound area. 8)
Oh I have some left! LOL