Homemade Chèvre Cheese....Yumm!

It has been an interesting few months experimenting with cheese making – and I am learning/discovering so much about this lovely wonder of nature. Hopefully I will soon get it right every time.

What I am finding is how it is temperature sensitive, environment sensitive, cannot be rushed and responds even to the most subtle changes. Perhaps it’s me as well – the milk even seems different from day to day too.

Of course I am using our own raw goats milk – so depending on what the goats are eating over the course of a few days their milk might be a little more or less thick with fat.

And, most of all I am being shown so much about nature, how the environment interacts with the animals and then how they respond to us and us to them. Their care is so important for our daily food…

I have been doing this (involved with meat, food, farming etc.) a long time and yet I am learning or perhaps broadening my understanding of food production each and every day. But all that aside….

Learning how to make these new foods is the most fun I’ve had in a while. My cheese making is not the success I hope for each and every time I go to make it, but the end result is always edible.

So far my best cheeses have been the feta and this week I made a chevre that is gorgeous (if I do say so myself!). The feta cheese I salted and then brined for about 1 week before it was placed in olive oil.

This time with the chevre I wanted something a little different so I formed it into a mould with my favourite fig and orange jam. It is so lovely! The chevre cheese is slightly sharp, so when paired together with the sweet jam is such a nice combination.

Who knows what I will be doing next….

April

Chevre goat's cheese with Fg and Orange Jam