The Greening of Gavin

Archives for July 2012

10 Tips For Successful Home Cheese Making

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Who loves cheese?  Well I do, that is for sure, and I love making it and sharing it with family and friends.

Having produced cheese as a hobby now almost weekly for more than 3 years, I thought it would be a great time to share with you some tips that I have learnt. 

Tip #1 – Cleanliness

Firstly and most importantly is cleanliness.  The area that you intend on making your cheese, and your tools that you make your cheese with, must be spotlessly clean and sterilised.  I cannot stress this enough.  Some people use bleach to clean their surfaces and utensils, but I prefer vinegar and bicarbonate soda, and to boil all the utensils for 15 minutes.  It doesn’t take long, and this is one of the first things I teach everyone in my cheese making classes.
I spray all surfaces with white vinegar including the utensils that I can’t boil to sterilise and let them dry naturally.  This kills any wild mould spores that can inoculate your cheese unintentionally.  I even spray my hands with vinegar and give them a good rub together every time I handle the cheese during the process to alleviate this problem.  I have not had a problem with bad mould to date.

Tip #2 – Preparation

Have everything all prepared and laid out before you start.  As I am waiting for the 15-20 minutes for the pot,  stainless steel utensils and cheese cloths to sterilise, I get a clean tea towel and lay it on the kitchen bench next to the stove top, ready to place all the tools on.  I select the recipe well in advance, and get out all the necessary ingredients and put them on the side ready to go.  Cheese making requires un-chlorinated water for diluting some ingredients, so I have to pre-boil some rain water from my tank and let it cool to room temperature.  You could use bottled water, but I do not due to environmental reasons.  I pre mix the diluted calcium chloride with this water, and do the same with the rennet.  Something I learnt in the Boy Scouts that I shall never forget and that is the Scouts motto, “Be Prepared”.

Tip #3 – Plan Your Time.

Although the process of cheese making is not particularly difficult, it can be time consuming.  Ensure you take into account all factors involved in culturing the milk, renneting, stirring, milling, and pressing.  If making a simple hard cheese, allow at least 4-5 hours to entirely finish the process.  I make one cheese, Wensleydale, that take over 9 hours from start to the final pressing!  Mind you the final product is well worth the effort.


Tip #4 – Start Simply

Start off with a simple cheese to build your confidence. 

Try a soft cheese like yoghurt cheese (or Labneh) which is basically putting 1 kg (2 lbs) of natural yoghurt into a cheesecloth and draining for a few hours, then gather into a ball and suspend over a large pot overnight in the fridge.  Simple, yet tasty and you can mix in different flavours, either savoury or sweet to liven it up as a dip.

Ricotta is another easy cheese to make.  Take 4 litres of milk, bring to about 93C (200F) and add a quarter of a cup  (67ml) of white vinegar or lemon juice and stir.  You will see the milk separate into curds and whey.  Ladle into cheesecloth lined colander to drain.  When cool to touch, tie the corners of the cloth into a ball and wrap the ends around a large wooden spoon and drain over a large pot.  After a few hours of draining you can add salt to taste and it will keep for about 5 days in the fridge in an airtight container.  Great for lasagne and any other dish that requires a large amount of ricotta.  As I said, simple successes give you the confidence to try something a little harder next time.


Tip #5 – Attend A Cheese Making Course

If you find that you enjoy making simple and basic cheeses, see if you can find a local cheese making course that is held nearby.  The knowledge that you will learn will take you to the next level, and as I found, the interaction with other amateur cheese makers is priceless.  Some of the courses can be expensive, but I found a relatively cheap one that was definitely worth the money.  I have attended two of these courses (basic and mould) at our local community centre.  Have a look around your local area.  You might just get a surprise.

Tip #6 – Try Something Harder

When taking the next step and you have the urge to make an intermediate skill level cheese, like cheddar, feta, parmesan, edam or the like, try and make one like feta or Caerphilly that only take a short time to ripen so that you can taste your handy work quickly.  By making these quick to ripen cheeses once a month, you will always have some type of cheese at hand at home and never be tempted to by that processed store bought rubbish that some supermarkets try and pass off as cheese!

Tip #7 – Don’t Be Afraid To Experiment

Once you get the basics right fairly consistently, don’t be afraid to experiment a little by adding other flavours to your cheeses during pressing or milling.  I add a layer of home grown sage leaves into the middle of my Wensleydale and it imparts a fantastic flavour.  I add home grown dried Birdseye chilli to my Monterey Jack to produce a variety called Pepper Jack.  I have even added green peppercorns to my Farmhouse cheddar.  It is all about the cheese and the final flavour.

Tip #8 – Have Patience. 

A good cheese, like a good wine, needs to ripen for a specific period of time and get better with age.  Try and resist temptation by eating your cheese earlier than recommended.  All hard cheeses take time to mature to the right taste.  You would be amazed by the difference a week or month between tastings.  Depending on the cheese, if tasted early it will be very mild, but if left for longer the flavour gets stronger over time.  I will give you an example.  I made some Camembert, tried it at 3 weeks and it was fantastic.  Left one for 4 weeks, and it was so strong it was overpowering but out of this world.  Another example, my first Caerphilly cheese I sampled at 15 days, when it was supposed to ripen to 28 days.  It was nice, but when we tried it at 28 days, it was fantastic.   I don’t dare try my Parmesan until at least 12 months!

Tip #9 – Invest In Good Equipment

If you find that cheese making is the hobby for you, invest in a few good books, a decent press, and if you don’t have a cellar that maintains a constant temperature between 10-15 C, then you will need to invest in a wine fridge that has the same temperature range.  After I decided that cheese making was going to be a long term hobby, then I took this step and invested in such a fridge and it has become my “cheese cave”.  The summers can be pretty gruesome where I live, so it was a need more than a want if I was to continue to make cheese during this hot season.  I picked it up relatively cheaply, and it has served me well so far.  I can now make un-waxed cheeses as well as mould type cheeses (blue vein, brie, camembert) because I can keep the temperature constant.

Tip #10 – Share Your Success.  

Don’t forget to have fun and share the final product.  I usually make my cheese on a Friday night, with a few glasses of wine to relax after a tough week at the office.  I find it very therapeutic.  I also enjoy breaking out a small cheese platter when friends drop by whereby sharing all the different tastes.  Most say I should sell it at a local farmers market, but I think it would spoil the fun of the hobby.  Some of my friends have never heard of most of the cheese types that I make, because the main cheese consumed in Australia is cheddar or processed cheese slices.  I love the variety that home make cheese making gives you.

Summary

Who would believe that you can make so many different types of cheese with plain old milk!  After all it is milks immortal leap.  


Cheese making is great fun, so give it a go, and remember the most important rule.  Don’t cry over spilt milk :-).    

For more cheese making tips, check out my cheese making blog, The Little Green Cheese.  It is full of easy to follow recipes, video tutorials and helpful advice, all for free!

Don’t just take my work for it.  Lets hear from the audience!  For all those readers who have tried my cheese, or who have made cheese during one of my classes, sound in with a comment to let everyone know how tasty, or how much fun it is to make and eat home made cheese. 


Our Tree Day

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“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther

Our tree day started at 10am this morning, when we arrived at the banks of Toolern Creek, that runs through our town.  

I was greeted by enthusiastic members of the Friends of Toolern Creek, who were ready and waiting with masses of tree, shrub and native grass seedlings.

The native flora that we were planting were a grass called Poa Labillardieri or Poa Lab for short.  It is indigenous to our region.  The trees were Yellow Gum.

As we were not veterains of tree planting, we opted to plant the grass.  Lyn, the President of the FOTC, got out the hole digger and got straight to work.

It was pretty easy work, just pop a seedling into each hole and backfill.  Each tray of grass held 100 seedlings.

Ben was simply amazing.  He was a grass planting machine, and I was very proud of him.  We worked really well as a team.  Even when Lyn had to duck away on the occasion, to sort out the other workers, Ben kept digging his own holes with his trowel and planted more grass.  He was really enjoying himself.

In the two and a half hours we worked, we rejuvenated a 20 x 20 metre square area of creek bank. In the end we had planted 600 Poa lab grasses, and the others put in about 20 yellow gum.

These are some of the seedlings that Ben and I were responsible for.  We felt really good.
I found a picture of what this native Tussock grass looks like when it is fully grown.  It is a good looking plant and its flowers attract native birds and butterflies.
Finally we walked down to the creek itself, which was flowing fast after the recent rains.  It is clean and healthy, thanks to the Friends of Toolern Creek and its many willing volunteers.
We had a great day, and will do it again next year.
Did anyone else plant a tree today?

Around The Garden In Winter

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It felt so good today, finally getting into the garden.  It must have been about two weeks since we have had a sunny day on a weekend, without rain to interrupt work.

We had a fair bit of work to do, so we got cracking.

Firstly it was a quick check on the broad beans (fava), and they seam to be growing fine.  There were a few weeds, which were a little hard to get to.  The Lemonade tree in the background is full of fruit.  It is a cross between a lemon and a Mandrin, and you can eat it straight from the tree.

Then it was on to the garlic patch.  This had quite a few weeds, so I set about removing them.  I had to really rug up, as it was about 8 degrees C.  The garlic is strong and healthy, and once all the weeds were removed, I scattered some blood and bone throughout the bed to give them a boost.

The next bed has leeks, spring onions and brown onions planted in it.  The leeks are nearly ready for harvest in the next few weeks.  Looking forward to some Leek and Potato soup!  There were only a few weeds, and it didn’t take long to sort it out.  The Mandarin and Meyer Lemon tree are also laden with fruit.

I noticed this year that if I planted broccoli and cabbages near onions, there were a lot less cabbage moth caterpillars on those vegetables.  So I planted even more brown onions to keep the grubs off the brassicas.

Look at this Romanesco broccoli!  Sometimes know as Roman cauliflower, it is an edible flower of the species Brassica, and is a variant form of cauliflower.  What a fine specimen.  The head is about the size of my hand, and is nearly ready to pick and eat.  Such a beautiful lime colour.

Here is a sprouting broccoli that we have already started to harvest.  This has been the best year for broccoli, mainly because I choose heirloom varieties, and the cabbage moths have not been too bad.  It just goes to show that companion planting work well, and the onion smell must put the moths off laying.  There will be more heads off these two plants to harvest in the next few weeks.  Kim makes the best cauliflower and broccoli cheese bake.  Yum.

Moving up the path as I weeded, my objective was to tidy up all of the beds and the paths so that it was ready in preparation for Sustainable House Day.  Can you see Kim?  She is hiding.

SHD 2012 is being held on Sunday, 9th September, and for the third year our gardens will be open to the public.  We are both looking forward to it, as it is a really great day.

Holly was helping me along the way.  She is a lovely little dog, and follows me everywhere when I am gardening.

As Kim was moving some ornaments around, we found this Huntsman spider (non-poisonous) hiding in a clay zebra.  Ben was shaking when he took this photo!

After the garden was finished, we trimmed back the fir tree that was shading the solar panels, and cut out some dead wood.  Because the tree looked a bit bare, Kim decided to disguise our handiwork with an metal tree.  A bit of irony there, but it did look nice.  The metal tree was given to Kim as a birthday gift, so I helped her hang it, and moved some Yucca’s and Dragon trees in front to give it a bit more depth.

Once we had finally finished in the main veggie patch, it was time to move into the pool area.  I planted another Meyer Lemon tree, that had dwarf root stock.  This should flourish in this area, as are all the other citrus trees we have in pots around the yard.  This takes our citrus tree count to nine.

I then had to tackle this lot, but before I did, I needed to make some planter boxes for the three remaining grape vines that I will plant tomorrow.  I tidied up the area, weeded in preparation to plant the vines, and landscape with large river pebbles.

Here is the first small planter.  It is made from left over decking wood in a simple box shape and is 300 x 300 mm (1ft x 1ft).  It will protect the grape vines whilst they are small.  I made two this size, then another that was 1.8 metres (6ft) to put in front of the rainwater tank.  I will then make a trellis out of chicken wire to put in front of the water tank, so that we can grow passion fruit.

Finally, as we called it a day Holly decided to catch a few rays.  I think she was pretending to be a statue on the far side of the pool.

We had a great day, and called it quits after about six hours of work.  It was good to ground myself in the soil.  Connecting with the Earth really takes all the stress of modern life away!

Who else loves to potter around in their edible garden?  What successes have you had this season?