Science, craft, cooking, art, alchemy.
As a chef, I’ve always thought of cheese making as a complex process, secret and separate from cooking, after learning about it at The cheese school at Castlemaine, I now think of it as “an artful alchemy that science tamed” Jeanette Young
“cheese, milk’s leap towards immortality” Clifton Fadiman
If cheese is concentrated preserved milk, then cheese making is controlling moisture content and “farming microorganisms” according to our teacher Judy Gifford.
I very much enjoyed Judy’s teaching style, number 1 lesson but not the first one taught - the cheese sets the timing for everything, if lunch is scheduled at 12pm but the cheese/curds need to be tended to, then you better be in the cheese making room. As in life and any kitchen I’ve ever worked in - swift reevaluation of competing priorities is the key.
The cheese making room
To get into the room - a change of shoes, generally stylish white gum boots, big apron covering from chest to toes, and hair net/hat to complete the ensemble.
Hands are washed up to the elbows, dried and sanitised.
The room is warm and slightly humid.
The smell is mould and ammonia with a hint of brioche dough.
The room is clean, the floor is wet.
The basics of cheese making
Start with milk
Maybe pasteurising
Acidify the milk
Coagulation/curdling
Cut the curds
Maybe cooking
Draining
Salting
Forming
Pressing
Within each step, small deviation will have big implications in the formation of cheese.
Just think of how many varieties of cheese there are, then times it out to infinity and that’s close to how many cheeses are possible, I make no promises about how good they would all be.
The cheeses
Judy guided our group of would-be cheese makers through the making of about 10 different cheese and dairy products.
Chaource style, which had been commenced the day before, we get to cut the curds, (the most satisfying culinary process) then ladle into moulds to drain.
Taleggio style, we see all the way through, syringe with measured starter, litmus tests, patience and timing, syringe with measured rennet, more patience and timing, learning how to judge if the curd is ready to cut by splitting the curd with a pinky finger (second most satisfying culinary process), cutting curds, scooping into mould, patience and timing, turning and draining, unmoulding, salting, the tending to - turning and washing done at home in the following weeks.
Halloumi - same same as the others but different.
I marvelled at how the white curds for the cheese all look somehow the same but are going to be so different.
Cut the curds smaller or stirring with slightly more vigour will increase amount of liquid released from the curd, leading to a firmer finished product. This is one of the more visual ways texture is changed in cheese making. Fat content in the milk will make it creamier and softer, that can be influenced by season, diet and numerous minuet factors, other changes occur in the ripening as enzymes breakdown proteins.
We used the whey (liquid) from the halloumi curds to make ricotta, easy to make but the whey must be super fresh. My inner chef loves that nothing is wasted.
We also made Persian feta, mascarpone, labneh, butter and buttermilk.
I left cheese making school with loads of cheese, an understandings of how my seemingly random bits of cheese knowledge fit together and a renewed passion for all things culinary, my ever present inner chef was no longer feeling jaded, knowledge appetite sated.
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