Cheese Making with Sela

Sela and I got busy in our kitchen lab this weekend and tried to make cheese. In one of my new cookbooks (which I love), How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, there is a wonderful little passage about making fresh cheese. I was reading the cookbook in bed one night and started talking to Sela about making cheese. Mark Bittman, the author said even your first attempt will be better than anything you can buy in the store. That definitely piqued my interest. Sela was very excited. Raw milk is said to have a better flavor than pasturized milk. I don't drink milk, but I went on a hunt for the elusive bottle of raw milk. Most stores don't carry raw milk, but we found it at Whole Foods. I was quite surprised to find it cost $12.99 a gallon. Seems like it would be simpler to produce raw milk, thus less expensive, but what do I know. I wanted good cheese though, so raw milk we did buy!

The process of making cheese was seriously fun! Very, very simple. Sela did most every bit, except pouring the hot milk into the cheesecloth covered colander. I think she might use this for her science project this year. The one mistake we made was not adding enough salt. The cookbooks said salt optional, so I put a pinch in, but it needed more. It still tastes wonderful for our first attempt and being able to eat our own homemade cheese is just soooo Little House on the Prairie!

The first step is boiling raw milk until the bubbles come up the side.
The buttermilk is added and Sela vigorously stirred.
The curds and whey begin to separate
The colander is lined with cheesecloth
The hot milk mixture is poured into the colander. Whey drains out, curds remain.
Sela squeezing the liquid out of the cheese.
Twisting the cheesecloth squeezes more liquid out and forms a ball.
Then, the cheese hangs suspended in the air for an hour to set.
Off comes the cheesecloth.
Fresh Cheese!
Let's try it on pizza.
We mixed the fresh cheese with some other grated cheeses.
It passed the test!