Month: February 2020

When you make cheese, you inevitably learn about the ‘cultures,’ which are various combinations of the various bacteria (Lactobacillus. ssp, Leuconostoc, etc.) that convert lactose (milk sugar) in the milk to lactate/lactic acid and other things.  They are generally the first step in cheesemaking, so you add them to the milk and over the course of maybe an hour, they add the initial acidity, and some continue to work as the cheese ripens.   There are a few companies that repackage cultures for home use, but mostly you’re using the same product that commercial cheesemakers use, like this one:

CHOOZIT MA 4002 LYO 25 DCU?  It’s a whole code to learn.   Then you get to know the producers of the cultures, Abiasa, Chris Hansen etc.

A cheese I just made called for L. casei 431, which I wasn’t familiar with, so I used  a substitute.  The sites that sell cultures to home cheesemakers are pretty variable, in terms of how much info they give you, so if you want the down ‘n’ dirty, it’s best to go directly to the manufacturer’s site.

Okay.

Wait.

What?

It’s not really a question of food safety, more a question of process:

• Do Chris Hansen employees go door to door and ask, “I’m making some cheese. Can I have some of your infant’s feces?”
• Or is it more of an internal employee thing, and if so, if your infant’s feces make better cheese, do you get a promotion?
• Did CH identify that there was a missing ingredient in their cheeses and look for better feces?

The cheese will probably be YUM! even without the infant feces.

-R

It’s the first cheese I made with ash, so pretty!

And enthusiastic mold!

It should have been ready three or four weeks later, but this is what happened . . . is this the mythic slip skin?

(In any case, the curd next to the rind was pretty much liquid, and the rest slipped out of the rind).

So t’others went into the fridge. Now forgotten and almost three months old, let’s leave one out at room temperature and see what’s up with them.

Someone’s eager:

Despite that eagerness, this was nothing like how the curd was after the first month. It was now of an even softness throughout, and slowly falling out of the rind, as a proper camembert should. The pepper didn’t do much.

But at this point it was pretty ammoniacal, so we had to leave it to breathe and consume over time. Next time I hope to catch it in the middle.

Yum-ish!

-R

They are so pretty, so here are a few pics:

-R

The REIDEA thermometer/hygrometer (top right) was my first ‘reference’ hygrometer, i.e. I took it to be correct. Then I bought a few others, and it’s at least 7% higher than all of them, including the $1.25 cheap-ass units from Amazon, and an Inkbird humidity controller.

I used the REIDEA to ‘calibrate’ (i.e. a sticker on the back listing its deviation from the ‘correct’ reading) the little el cheapo models, and that’s what I’ve been using in my cheese ripening boxes.

Maybe I’m blaming it for my own lack of skills (a poor workman blames his tools), but honestly, there are enough variables in cheesemaking that you shouldn’t have to worry about something like this 🙂

The REIDEA unit is no longer available, unsurprisingly.

-R

There isn’t much kit needed to make your own potato chips, but unless you have strong arms and a steady hand, for slicing them I’d highly recommend a mandolin (not the musical instrument) or its just as effective and much cheaper Japanese equivalent, a “Let’s Have Daily Crisp Vegetables” Benriner.

Screw it in as tight as you think will still be effective, and slice the potatoes ’til you can see through them:

Carefully wash them, carefully, since they’ll still be fragile at this point. Spread about 1 tsp. of salt per potato, then rub it in, gently.

Add enough water to cover, and leave them for at least 1/2 hour. Drain. Now they should be limp.

Limp, but still wet, and that won’t work in the hot oil. The easiest way to get rid of the excess water is to use a salad spinner:

Then dry them on kitchen towels.

The easy part is to cook them in 350 degree oil, stirring constantly, until they’re done. Salting is easiest in a large bowl or tray, so you can spread out the salt (and a little pepper if you’re adventurous), then shake the chips on top.

They’re lovely, but honestly, this is a lot easier:

Yum!

-R

Barbecued pork with green beans & Sichuan flavor bacon, potato salad with dill, cornbread with honey butter, lemon curd tard with blueberries.

Yum!

-R

I made two batches, on successive days. Why? Because the curd from the first batch seemed too firm, according to the guide in the recipe on cheesemaking.com, and I was concerned it wasn’t knitting together enough. The next day’s batch was much better (although, in the end, it doesn’t seem to have mattered):

And I may have gotten carried away a bit with the annatto on that first make 🙂

Anyway, it has now been two months. They’ve been kept in 48-50 degrees/90-95% RH. I did the initial wiping with B. linens and brine wash, then until about three weeks ago, I had to wipe the rinds more or less daily with just plain water. Then they started to get “tacky,” stayed moist and developed a gorgeous salmon/pink color, as seems right for B. linens FR22.

One problem? I wasn’t careful enough when they started, and they got infected with my arch-nemesis, blue:

It varied from cheese to cheese. This one was pretty much unaffected:

. . . and it didn’t really seem to affect the finished taste, since it never got past the rind and into the paste. The other problem? I should have kept the rinds even moister (until they started doing that for themselves), to prevent some splitting:

Here they are at two months, which cheesemaking.com describes as “à point.”

The labels are reversed – Lim2 is actually the first batch I did. Pretty happy with these, nice color on the rind, some openness inthe curd, and (once I cut back on the annatto) nice color.

But, you ask, how do they taste? Well, the irony here is that I’m not really a Limburger fan. It’s not the smell, which I recognize but it completely doesn’t bother me, I just don’t really love the combination of soft/sweet/salty taste of these cheeses. I’m gonna pat myself on the back because they were pretty much like Limburgers I’ve had in the past. It will be interesting to see how much funkier they get in the future.

Yum-ish?

-R

Les comparaisons ne sont pas tout à fait juste, parce que les photos plus récentes sont de mes plantes lorsqu’elles portent leur livrée hivernale 🙂 . Je ne jamais essaie de faire pousser mes plantes plus vite qu’elles ne pousseraient dans leur environnement, alors, toujours est-il que, etc.

Euphorbia subpeltatophylla:

E. capsaintmariensis:

E. pachyclada:

E. royleana:

Je continue?

-R

No, not stuttering . . . and if I post about my cheesy successes (mostly), it’s only fair to post about my cheesy failures, and hope for some advice.

This is one of the first cheeses I made, because it looked so groovy (both figuratively and literally) in the pic. This is the inspiring pic from the book, don’t sue me please!:

I followed the recipe from the book, and it went into two molds, first week of November. Last month into the fridge, and now . . .

. . . they don’t look anything at all like the pic in the book:

More space than curd on the inside:

In no way am I saying Ms. Karlin was at fault. It was one of the first cheeses I made, and one of my other efforts from the same time (which looked similar) was a big success (IMO!). This was really bad, and no matter where I took a sample of the cheese, it tasted horrible and I spat it out. Keep in mind that I’m more of a swallow guy.

I’m worried because another of my blue cheeses that just I’ve just tried and is less than spectacular has the same *red* instead of *blue green* around the holes.

Any advice?

Less than yum!

-R