Month: February 2020

Mayor Pete:

Or Mr. Bean:

I know which one I want to be MY president.

-R

This was my first attempt at a Roquefort-style cheese, using the recipe from cheesemaking.com, with a two-gallon build on Oct. 15, the usual conditions for a month, and now it’s been in the fridge for 3 months

Looks promising!

But a disappointing lack of mold.

But there wasn’t much green, and I’m worried that around the piercings there’s something red . . .

Not much flavour, so it got a re-poking, re-wrapped and back in the fridge for six months or so . . .

-R

It’s the “Green Meal!” Pasta, dumpling and feta with cilantro; and sourdough toast with ricotta, lemon curd and scallion.

Yum!

-R

Chicken and shiso broth, grapes and ricotta mache toast, Reese’s.

Yum!

-R

A blue was the first cheese I made, because if it was already moldy there didn’t seem like anything else could go wrong (little did I know).

This is the second blue cheese I made, pretty on the outside:

And delicious on the inside . . . with the sharpness of the mold interspersed widely in the cheese. The rest was re-wrapped and will be even better in a year 🙂

In all evidence of truth, my blue cheeses have come all from this:

Then did every elementary school kids’ favorite science experiment, moldy bread with a sprinkle of the crumbles.

There are lots of varieties of the mold Penicillium roqueforti (yep, you guessed that it’s not only an antibiotic but also makes Roquefort taste like Roquefort!) but I’ve only used this one.

The mold grows from the inside of the cheese, where the pH is low, and extends its mycelium until the pH rises, at the same time as there’s proteolysis and lipolysis goin’ on, cheesely fun!

This one was a failure:

And my first attempt at a Shropshire Blue was not a huge success:

Too late to correct the color, but it has been very thoroughly re-poked and hopefully will get bluer.

Absolutely delighted with this, gorgonzola pic(c)ante using the recipe from cheesemaking.com. So pretty on the outside!

And pretty much perfect, crumbly and blue (and delicious) on the inside:

Yum!

-R

Here she is after a couple of weeks:

Earlier I made two beery cheeses, but you can call them ale-washed trappist, and only one has a label by Ralph Steadman. Now just ready for their maturity, three months later, best tasted with some Schlagenheim in the midday Sun: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jBZLbrlCwM&list=PLIXWMhTRu847X1cyPH0BjTb34KIIFgjqi)

Kind of (but only slightly) disappointing. The Rochefort (left) was actually pretty good, and tasted of Rochefort (although I probably wouldn’t have guessed hadn’t I known) and the Guinness had a stronger taste of Guinness. I think both of them needed more salt. In any case, both are going back into wrapping and might be better in six months!

-R

Many use petri dishes for mushroom work, but I rarely do. Even the cheapest ones are 50 cents each, and not re-usable. A much better option is yer basic glass canning jar variants . . . either cup (8 oz.) or half-cup (4 oz.). It’s a bit more difficult to see what’s growing than as petri dishes, but almost:

This is a recipe for 500 ml, about 1 pint, of agar mix. It will easily make 20 jars, depending on how thick you pour the mix.

Agar is basically the vegetarian version of gelatin. It provides the support, then for food you need something like malt extract. Nutritional yeast is probably more nutritional to you than mushrooms, but it can’t hurt 🙂

10g agar:

Add 10g malt powder:

Very optional, 1g yeast:

Now add 500 ml water.

THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART (1)! The agar doesn’t want to make friends with the water, so whisk it into the water for TWO MINUTES!

Now, stirring it regularly, heat it until boiling. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART (2)! Here you can’t ignore it, because as soon as it gets to boiling, it will boil over and make a mess. So keep an eye on it, and once it starts to boil, don’t let it boil over (duh) and whisk it for TWO MINUTES (at least ONE)!

You already have your jars ready, of course:

Poured:

The great thing about using re-usable jars is that you can pour the agar, then pressure-cook them:

. . . unlike the fraught pouring of agar into disposable petri dishes that can’t be pressure-cooked, and avoiding contamination.

-R

This is a build from Dec. 19, two gallons into my clever cut-from-a-bucket 8″ hoop:

I sprang some change for a French spruce tree bark belt, so now it looks okay outside of the beltway:

… but I’m concerned with the cheese itself. The rind doesn’t look smooth like it should, instead it’s more “brainy.”

It has taken on the right coloration, but I’m still worried!

-R

I don’t make many recipes from Mary Karlin’s book any more, but this one is very good. A mix between a bloomy rind and a washed rind, and delicious. This is from my first attempt:

My first try went into a number of molds:

Here’s a ‘nother. After a couple of weeks in protective wrap, in the fridge, some of the G. candidum (or PC?) grew back:

One post said that the initial brine was probably too weak, but this cheese gets a daily washing with an annatto and salt brine. It was really good, but with all that washing, I found it a bit salty.

For my next build, I thought an eight inch cheese would be really sexy, until disaster:

Fine, trim it up and use the rest in a pizza!

The rest has a lovely G. candidum coat:

Like your granny or a young teen athlete, it will continue to get its daily rubdown until it’s ready.

-R

It’s an Appenzeller, at six weeks.  Every day it gets rubbed down with a mixture of vodka infused with rosemary, sage, tarragon, cloves, juniper berries, chamomile, ginger, anise, and orange peel; mixed with the yeasty lees from my mulberry, ginger and turmeric sodas.

It’s tumescent because it’s young, and kept at 60-65 degrees while Propionibacterium freudenreichii subsp. shermanii rabbited away making holes (think Swiss cheese.)

Now it’s going into 52 degrees for four months, at which point it will still be young, but ready and creamy inside, or if I can resist, aged for longer.

-R