Sheep shearing and weaning.

Spring seems to have finally kicked in, although I shouldn't say it too loud. Sure for Italian standards the maximum temperatures are still a joke, but not so much if you go around in a 6 Kg wool jumper and you cant take it off.
It was time to shear the sheep and I was a bit worried about it because I never did it before and surely not with hand clippers! It did go alright though. I did Boss first, she is always very cooperative and it took me 1 hour and a half, would you believe it? The poor thing was about to die of shock. After I released she lied down for an hour or so to recover and I did the same. The other ones went a lot quicker and I managed to get good fleeces out of them, in one piece and clean.
In the meantime I have also weaned all the lambs in two different rounds. The last one went in the day before yesterday. P had prepared these lovely bras for them to help weaning without having to separate them from their mothers (they can't suck), but in the end I ended up separating them for 2 reasons, the first one is that the stable is a lot less busy, the second is that Little Fecker has some company and he's very happy about it (check the picture at the end!).
Finally, I have been making cheese! I have tried of course the Pecorino and ricotta duo, it took me a while but I think I got it straight in the end. The pigs are very happy with the whey. Tonight I'm going to try mozzarella and in a couple of days I'll try a bigger pecorino. So much happening, so little time.


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Hi all, still kicking.

 
Hi all,
it's been a couple of rough months. I haven't stopped either planning or cheese making. I just stopped blogging for a while because my energies and my time were needed somewhere else.
Someone very close to me died after a relatively short fight against cancer. He will be missed very much.
But life goes on and he would have wanted me to give it the best shot. This annus horribilis has to finish somehow and I hope I can rise again from my own ashes like a Phoenix.
Time is tight, money too, plans will probably be totally inadequate and impossible to stick with but I'm going to give it a real go.
Peps and I have tickets to Ireland for June, we'll go by ferry with the van and I'll bring my bike too.
In the meantime I had a chance to work on my cheese making skills and I have to say the latest results are excellent and, unless everyone is lying to me, it is fecking good.
More soon,

Me.

Count down, once again.

I'm counting the days separating me from yet another visit to "The Farm". I'm leaving for a couple of weeks during which I hope we'll be able to look into a few details, get a few quotes and discuss things with Whizzie.
People who know me also know very well that I hate this time of the year. It is always a difficult time for me. I can't really concentrate on things and everything looks dull, blurred and pointless. In fact my latest attempt at cheese last night was a disaster. I forgot the heat on and what was supposed to be a Romano-like will become a Fuck-knows-what. I don't even know if it will become anything, in fact I think I killed all the flora.
So this recipe goes a little bit like this:

1. Inoculate with thermophilic starter and bring 4 litres of milk to 36°C
2. Add rennet
3. Keep to 36°C but then forget about turning off the heat
4. Suddenly remember about it and run for it
5. Turn it off, break curd finely, swear a lot.
6. Put in mould with a cheese cloth and press for a couple of hours, keep swearing
7. Brine overnight
8. Hope it will turn into something edible.

Stracchino!

It’s been a busy time, both at work and in my free time. I have finally downloaded from the camera the few pictures I had taken of the stracchino and the result can only be seen but I can assure you that it tasted excellent, definitely better than the stuff you but at the supermarket.

I have to say that at this point I feel pretty confident about fresh cheeses like this one. Problems still arise when I try hard cheeses. But that is another post.

Doing stracchino it’s pretty straight forward.

1. Inoculate 2 litres milk with starter (4 spoons of yogurt do the trick)
2. Bring milk to 36°-37°C
3. Add rennet in the amount suggested by the manufacturer
4. Keep it at 36°C for at least an hour for the curd to form (clean brake with finger). I find that a good quality stainless steel pot with a thick bottom is perfect because every now and then you can start the fire for 30 seconds or so on a small fire ring. That usually does the trick without damaging the curd or burning it.
5. Cut the curd in big squares/rectangular, 8x8 cm, 1-2 cm thick. You don’t need to be extra precise.
6. Let it sit for at least another hour, until you see the squares shrinking and expelling some whey.
7. Collect them with a large ladle and put them in a container with a shape of your choice lined with cheesecloth
8. Let it sit overnight at room temperature
9. The day after, get rid of the cheesecloth, turn it upside down, put it back in the container and sprinkle salt (and in my case spices) over the top surface, put it in the fridge and repeat the day after with the other side.
10. Wait a few days (3-4 days)
11. EAT IT! 

Little M. liked it

If it is true that I am usually the most strict judge of my own work, it is also true that self-reference is no good if you want to improve your act. So I brought samples of the lactic cheese I prepared last week to the Brother's place. The Brother is usually very fussy about food and especially about home made stuff and he has gained the nickname of "Son of Capitalism and ready made food". The Brother liked it but even more impressive was the thumbs up given by Little M.
Little M. is Brother's elder son and of course my nephew and "the grandchild of Capitalism and ready made food".
Whizzie keeps insisting that he is in reality my secret child, but Little M. is fussy about pretty much anything edible and was really impressed with the lactic cheese and kept shovelling it down his own throat, trying the three different spice associations (thyme; rosemary + garlic; sage + onion) and repeating the whole process all over again just to make sure he got right the one he liked most.
So, Little M. says the sage and onion one is the best but he liked very much the other two as well and he'll let me know about the bland one + honey for breakfast (but he's waiting for your honey Whizzie!).
Chipmunk, the younger nephew, was just not interested in these cheesy stuff, he's superior to these mortal things.
Then we also tried to make stracchino although the kids lost readily interest in the process and the whole thing was a complete failure.
Once home I tried again and this time I got it right. It's still maturing and I'll be posting about it soon.

Lactic cheese.

This is possibly the easiest cheese recipe ever, you don't even need rennet to do it and it's delicious. It takes a couple of days but the effort involved is minimal.
First thing you need to do is to prepare your mesophilic starter. This is a compound of bacteria that ferment milk at room temp. You can do it by leaving milk at room temp for 24 hrs or by inoculating a little bit of milk with the content of a probiotic drink or a yogurt. It needs to be brought to room temperature well in advance (in the morning) to give a chance to the bacteria to start working. Lactobacillus acidophilus does a great job and you find it in most probiotic drinks and some yogurt but if you want to use professional stuff you can buy a proper starter like this one (it's enough to inoculate 150 liters of milk). If you go for yogurt or some probiotic drink, make sure there is no Bifidobacterium because in my short experience it does not allow the milk to curd. Streptococcus thermophilus and bulgaricus are ok as long as there is lactobacillus acidophilus. So, second thing you need to do is to bring a liter of pasturaised milk to 21°C in the evening and add a couple of spoons of the mesophilic starter you prepared in the morning. Leave everything at room temp and the bacteria will use the lactose in the milk producing lactic acid as a byproduct wich will lower the pH causing the milk to curd (usually between 8 and 12 hrs but could take up to 24). The amazing thing (to me) is that you get a very firm curd without rennet. So it will have probably curded by morning but if you dont have time to do anything, just leave it for when you come back.

On day 2 cut the curd along the two dimensions in cubes of 1 cm or 2. Then cut along the 3rd dimension orizzontally as in the pictures.

 

Let it rest for an hour.

 

 Drain it in a colander with a cheesecloth or just a cloth that can let the whey through. Preferably in a kitchen cleaner than mine!

 Hang it preferably in a cool room. The first time I did it I left it at room temp in the kitchen at 17°C and it came just fine. Let it drain for at least 24 hrs.It will be soft, spreadable and juicy.

 

 Eat it as it is or add herbs!

I have actually prepared 2 litres and got roughly 7-800 grams of it and I prepared some with sage and onion, some with thyme and some with rosemary and garlic. If you do too, it would be good practice to sterilise the herbs in a closed jar by boiling and to let cool, add then the cheese by mixing it with a sterile spoon. It will last longer. I also left half of it as it is, it's super yummy! It will keep in the fridge for at least a week.

PS. If you have dogs, they love whey, it is a good although poor source of protein and you should feed it to them.

The cheese fever.

Oh dear! It is difficult to explain, this cheese fever that suddenly gets you, that makes you get up early in the morning to check on the strater cultures, that makes you look at your first creations aging in the cellar like if they were pets needing your love, that makes you feel like you don't have enough time to try all the recipes you'd like to try ...
I have been compulsively buying on the internet and off the internet, in the real world, I have been buying different thermometers, cheesecloth, starter cultures of all kinds, cheese moulds and alternative pressing methods, dreaming about ways to do things... Oh my! And it is soooo gooood!
First pictures in a few days.

First fridge first: the cheese cave

Ok, as you know I have been organising myself in the recent weeks to start some home cheese making.
Because I need to get some experience on hard and aged Italian cheeses the first issue to be addressed for me was the set up of an aging area with the right conditions for maturation of theses cheeses.
The condition required are 8-12° C temperature and 85-95% humidity. As I've shown in a previous post, most people resort to slightly or heavily modified fridges in order to reach this conditions. Here is another solution for curing meats: http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=480
This usually implies an added thermostat and the exclusion from the circuit of the built-in one. It's only a few bucks and real quick work but I have figured out a way to do it even in a cheaper way.
The picture you see at the head of the post is one of classic fridge thermostat. You'll find one of those basically in any European fridge. It is positioned right behind the controller used to regulate the temperature/power of the fridge, and to access it you have to take down that part of the fridge. It's usually pretty straight forward and that's what I've done here: take it down!
If you look at the thermostat from the side which has no cables, this is what you'll see:

That little screw indicated by the red arrow can be used to modify the temperature range of your fridge. In it's natural position it will make the fridge work usually between 8° C (minimum power) and 3-4° C (maximum power position). But if you screw clockwise, that range will change towards higher temperatures. I screw it in almost to the end and then started the fridge, put the power to minimum. After 12 hours it indicated 16°C (thermometer in a filled water bottle). Too much. I put the power level up to 3.5, another 12 hours and was down to 13°. Now it's on 4 and the temperature is a steady 12. Perfect. I put everything back together. The good thing about this method it's that you can always restore the fridge to its original condition and resell it, no holes anywhere.

For the humidity issue, some people like to go for the hygrostat + fogger solution like here: but it involves another expense (50 euro maybe). So many others go for the easy solution of just letting the humidity build up in the fridge and leave water to evaporate from containers. In this case the fridge needs to be properly sealed (including the hole for drainage of condensed water which is usually at the bottom/back of the fridge area). Another solution is to make your cheese mature in a closed container (which will also eliminate cross contamination if you are working on different types of cheese). The easy solution is what I'll use for now.
Last night I carried out my first experiment, there is a lot to be improved, so I won't post pics unless I'll be extremely impressed by the result which is at the moment aging in the cave...

More soon!

All you need to make a bit of cheese

I see! That's how you get the holes!

Making cheese is really not that difficult. Making GOOD cheese is a bit more difficult. Making a living out of selling good cheese is akshully quite difficult.
To start off you don't need that much and you can find all you need online and in small shops.
I myself bought everything online and I spent not more than 60 euro (+ 70 for a fridge).


Shopping list:

1. Milk (5 liters approx for 1 Kg cheese, NOT ONLINE!!! :))
2. Rennet (animal, 250 g, 7.5 euro)
3. Starter culture (Mesophilic and thermophilic for different recipes, 6.5 euro each)
4. Cheese moulds (ricotta moulds 7.5 euro for 50, pecorino 7.5 euro for 50)
5. Thermometer (6 euro on ebay)
6. Cheesecloth (5 meters x 35 cm, 8 euro on ebay).
7. Old fridge to be converted into a cellar (70 euro second hand in a town nearby)

I bought most of the stuff from these guys: http://www.tecnolatte.it/pages/acquista
but I think they deliver only in Italy (Rowena, they're close to you!)
If you are in the UK there is a pretty good ebay shop which I might use in the near future, they are very nice and helpful (thanks Ann!) and the shop is called "Small Farm Supplies".
I got my Cheesecloth here, it was extremely cheap.
Regarding the Cheese cave, most people tend convert old fridges or wine cooling units by substituting the thermostat with one like this, and by adding a fogger and an hygrostat to build up humidity like in this post: the cheese cave, but for the time being I'm going to rely on the inbuilt thermostat (it looks like it could do 12C°) and the built in humidity (I'll dedicate a post next week to the cheese cave).
So far, so good. All the stuff should come in next week. So exciting!