Lessons in Cheese Making....Let Nature Get Involved

Sometimes we don’t plan on creating a masterpiece…it just appears out of nowhere, as if the conditions are ripe for it. This word (masterpiece) is not used lightly either….I am seriously pleased with myself!

During the past week I had saved up my 3 liters of milk from our goats with the grand plan to make some cheese for the weekend. One morning I proceeded to take it out of the fridge and then forgot all about it until late that night….

Because I was going to make cheese with it, I just left it out and thought I would get it sorted the next morning. It’s been busy this past week or so with the garden, goats and market - and you know how time just slips by.

So, the next morning, I got the milk into a pot and inoculated it with the bacteria (once it was at the right temperature) and then waited and waited and waited…until another 24 hours had passed and nothing.

The milk did not curdle into curds and whey. But by this time it was starting to thicken and go a bit sour….so I thought, oh well….just throw some rennet in there and hope for the best?

That is exactly what I did. Only I added such a tiny amount of rennet (because less is always more for me!) it might or might not work to separate the milk into curds and whey…..

After about 5 or 6 hours I checked the pot and I had a nicely formed thickish yogurt like curd. I had read somewhere that this might make a nice cheese…so I scooped it out and let the whey drain off for a few more hours.

Even as I was scooping it out – I was thinking how I liked the texture of this and it smelled wonderful! I let the liquid whey drain out for the next few hours or so and then placed the cheese into a dish, salted it and as an after thought, added some cranberries….

24 hours later, we tasted it – the best cheese I have made so far! It has a lovely texture, wonderful flavour and is better then anything I have ever bought from a shop.

Lesson for me here….let nature get involved….don’t push things because we are running short on time or want to hurry things along. The milk had already grown it’s own bacterial culture, adding the few grains of rennet just gave it a little boost and voila –

Beautiful cheese!!

April

Homemade Chevre on wholegrain toast....Yumm!

You Can Make Anything With...The Basics

These past few days I have been thinking of making a cake, however I held off, mostly because we had so many other goodies to eat first. But, then again I caught myself thinking I needed to dig out my recipes in order to find something to make.

Today I could smell very ripe bananas in the kitchen (that sticky sweet banana smell) and knew something needed to be done with this bunch or I would lose them to compost. Of course, the most obvious choice is to make a banana bread.

So, I started to go and look up my recipes - but then stopped myself. This is simple, making ANY bread, any cake, any dessert can be a basic, simple start with just 3 or 4 ingredients, then we just add on from there to provide different tastes or textures. Right?

I mean, think about it - the basics for any cake or bread are; flour, water or milk, baking soda, salt, and then butter or oil, perhaps something sweet if needed. If we only put 2 cups of spelt flour, bread soda and salt into a mixing bowl - this could be the start of nearly anything!

Bananas in flour

Well, that is just what I did. I took 2 cups of spelt flour, 1 teaspoon of bread soda, some sea salt, 1 cup of goat's yoghurt/milk and a duck egg. This was my basic cake mixture to start off with. I wanted to make a banana bread, so to this I added 3 mashed bananas, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and nutmeg, a little more yogurt and kept stirring.

Then I looked around the kitchen to find something nice to put into the bread. I really like the taste of apricots and walnuts, a handful of these went in as well. By now, it was looking very much like a cake batter, smelled great and had enough flavour packed into it, so I just added a little date syrup to sweeten it.

I then poured this mixture into a loaf pan lined with unbleached parchment paper and put it into the oven at 180 degrees for nearly an hour. And voila! Here we have it....

Banana loaf cooling on rack

It was the nicest banana bread I have ever made and there is hardly a crumb left right now. It was fragrant, light, tasty and very moist. Perfect in every way, I have never had one turn out so well. I think it was because I completely followed my internal 'recipe', the same way I make my spelt bread. 

No measuring, no thinking, just intuitively listen and follow your heart - all the way home. 

Have a lovely day,

April 

Banana bread slices