Last weekend I finally got around to trying out some cheese making at home, following the course that I attended in February. (Yes, sorry, this is not beer making but it is a similar food-related craft. And anyway, it’s my blog so I’ll write about what I like. So that’s my last apology for cheese-related posts!)
So, we made lemon cheese which is dead simple to make and comes out a bit like Boursin. It’s so simple in fact that you don’t need any special ingredients – just whole non-homogenised milk and lemon juice. It’s the acid in the lemon juice that splits the milk into curds and whey.
The milk must be non-homogenised, which these days is a little tricky to find. Homogenised milk has been treated to smash up all the fat particles, which means you don’t get the cream separating out on the top of the milk like you used to in the olden days. This is no good for cheese making so you have to find a source of non-homogenised milk. On the other hand you DO want it to be pasteurised. This doesn’t greatly affect the flavour of the final cheese and it makes it a lot safer. I’ve found a local butcher that sells non-homogenised milk from Cloudview Diary near Congleton in Cheshire.
You need to heat the milk gently to 38C and then add the lemon juice (about 6 table spoons) until the milk starts to split and the curds form. After leaving it ten minutes for the curds to become firmer they can then be strained through a straining bag. We then spread the curds on a piece of cling film, spread with basil and sun-dried tomatoes and rolled into a swiss roll.
The resulting cheese was a little prone to breaking up as you cut it, but it tasted nice on good bread or crackers.
I’ve got the ingredients to do some “proper” cheese making now, so I’ll write another post about that soon.
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