This one is over a month old. I finally go to adding the picures to complete the enry.
I've been making cheese for a while, all of which have been the soft varieties with a fair degree of success. I 've tried my hand at neufchatel, feta, cream cheese, mozzarella & ricotta with fairly ok results.
Time to move up the chain. If there's ever going to be a "Gurjar's Cheese Co.', its time I got into the tougher varieties - the aged cheeses.
What makes these tricky is that in India, especially at home with limited equipment, you never know what you'll get - either dry inedible chunks of milk fat or putrid blue-mould goop masses.
My first experiment is with a cheese called 'Havarti'. Its a relatively quick ageing cheese - about 2 weeks (upto 12 weeks if you have he paience) if all goes well. Here's the story.
Day 0 - Got my usual 2 litres of fresh cows milk from the friendly folks near home. Found I was out of meso culture. Scraped the ice tray to get about a cube and a few scraps of the leftover. Added a whole tbsp of thermo culture to cover up - not a good beginning at all. Hoping it wont come back to haunt me later.
Right now in the pressing stage - started off with a 6lb load, followed it with a 10lb and now a 15lb improvised load (atta container at home). Will keep this on for another 6 hrs
Day 4 - I'm getting some form of a rind developing. Not sure if its a rind or just the cheese drying out, but the colourations on the edges suggest something is happening along with a decidedly more fuller taste. No mould so far. I'm checking on this twice a day to make sure there's no mould. Pictures of the cheese below, notice the colourations on the edge.
Day xx - lessons learnt. I'd say for a starter, the cheese came out ok - thats to say that it had to be thrown away in the end coz I didn't control humidity and moisture tool well. Thats a learning I can take away pretty quick. What really encouraged me was the fact that I was able to get a faint 'bite' to my cheese with the aging processs - something I'm quite proud of.
I'm hooked now. Done with the soft cheese for now, will concentrate on the havarti for the next few months. If I'm able to control temp & humidity in the refrigerator to some degree, I feel I should be good to go. Problem ? Waiting for the minimum 2 month ripening period means I'm going to have to wait till March to have a steady supply of this cheese :-(
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