venta

A couple of weeks ago, in between a slew of jolly nice 40th birthday parties (others', not mine) I tried to make cheese.

ChrisC gave me for Christmas a kit thingy for making mozzarella and ricotta. Ever-ambitious, I decided to go for mozzarella and bought 8 pints of silver top full-fat milk on Friday night.

By Saturday I had realised that what with the parties, and the incoming visitors, and the getting things ready, and the cooking I had to do for party B, I didn't really have time to make cheese. However, not possessing a ginormo-freezer, it was cheese or find some other use for a gallon of milk.

I got the big pan out of the cupboard. "Will it all fit in there?" Asked ChrisC. "Yes," I said.

After mature consideration I said "no", and performed the massively disruptive manoeuvre required to get the preserving pan out the back of thatcupboard and started heating the milk.

I dissolved citric acid in water. I dissolved a rather crumbly quarter-tablet of rennet in more water (and despite having bought a pill-cutter I can assure you it would be a lot easier if they just made the wretched tablets quarter-sized).

See? That's a lot of milk.

You heat up your slightly-curdling milk to ninety degrees. Despite being perfectly well aware that it was a U.S. kit that perniciously used Fahrenheit, the thermometer (included) had both scales, and I was absent-mindedly reading the wrong one. So there was a bit of panic as the rennet-adding stage turned out to have arrived when I wasn't ready.

A few stages of curd-wrangling later it all looked a bit grim... But grim in a way that seemed consistent with the instructions:

I highly recommend, at this stage, not knocking the glass thermometer onto the tiled kitchen floor. It will not end well, and all the magic red will come out. I do appreciate that cheese was invented before thermometers, but as an amateur following written instructions knowing the correct temperature was quite important.

Anyway, I improvised and the curds went into a bowl.

Curds:

And whey:

(Tuffet optional.)

Incidentally, that is a lot of whey. Even allowing for the complicated whey-bath stuff you have to do to make the blobby white goo into mozzarella. Ask me about my newly-discovered range of whey-based soups and smoothies!

Yes, I am measuring the temperature of liquid with a meat thermometer.

Anyway, the whey bath involves cool water and hot whey on the curds until they become firm and stretchable mozzarella.

Or until they don't.

Eventually I cut my losses, and strained the still-fragile curds. What lovely ricotta! I think you will recall I was making ricotta.

Nice ricotta.

I bought spinach and planned cannelloni for tea on bank holiday Monday.

Of course, on Monday we were strolling through Southall and came across a bakery. Which sold naan bread. Freshly-baked, a bag of three for a quid. So we bought some.

That cheese I made really was quite solid. Practically panneer, really. You will remember that that's how I described it.

We drank strawberry milk which the Gurdwara was handing out to passersby, then went home and had (massively inauthentic) muttar panneer for tea instead.

(You can just see the other bowl, of tarka dhal with spinach, so don't worry about that spinach I'd bought.)

The cheese was a bit too soft and melty really (the lumps you can see in the curry are sweet potato). If tasted all right, though.

All in all, a fun cheese-making experience. I'll let you know how it goes next time.