My apologies for my absence. Life has been rather busy. First my 50th birthday, then during the following week the Durham Shopping Extravaganza (of which I was chair this year) and my godmother’s 70th birthday followed by a trip down to Oxfordshire to celebrate my oldest friend’s (we were at prep school together 43 years ago) 50th birthday. It has all been wonderful. However, this week has mainly been spent filling and unfilling the washing machine, identifying strange objects in the fridge and reacquainting the dogs with the concept of a walk.
So today I am more or less up to date and contemplating my nice clean tidy kitchen I opted to muck it up rather than attend to any of the extremely dull jobs on my to do list.
How many things can you make out of 4 pints of full cream milk? I am not including the carton (though I held a competition for that once and some of the entries were extremely entertaining. Another post perhaps).
Mozarella. I used this recipe, combined a little bit with the one from Cheesemaking made Easy by Ricki and Robert Carroll. I don’t think I pulled it enough. Actually I really didn’t pull it enough at all. I need more practice (what a shame 🙂 ) However, I have some perfectly passable white cheesy stuff that is a teensy weensy bit like mozarella.
I fear my friend Gio would weep if he saw it. But he’s safely in London so that’s okay.
Ricotta Not a great deal, but enough for a little starter before supper this evening. It is pretty straightforward to make. See here.
The draining
The finished product.
Whey and lots of it. Some of this will be used to make soft dinner rolls. In fact, if we could eat enough rolls I would use it all for this as it really does make the most beautiful soft bread. I’ll mix some in with the dogs supper tonight and the rest I will freeze for more rolls later on. If you are swimming in whey there are some good ideas here too.
I used to make lots of cheese and fell out of the habit when I was working. There are only so many hours in a day after all. There is something magical about watching the curds and whey separate, in fact I think that’s probably the main reason I make cheese at all. I’ve yet to have a go at hard cheese, but I have a press now, so that may be the next project.
one pair of shoes at a time 
How lovely, your Ricotta looks divine, I am going to chance my arm at haloumi soon.
I’ve never tried haloumi. Now off to find a recipe!
Hmm. I am not sure that I ever had FOUR pints of cream in my fridge— in total!
Full cream milk not cream!!!
We are intent on making cheese! You beat us to it!
I had a go at making cheese a few weeks ago and was very impressed with it (and myself!) I tried all sorts of flavours; the garlic and herb worked great on pizza and melted well and the chocolate was … different!
Chocolate cheese? Did you grate and mix into cream cheese?
Your post has me motivated! RE: comment on choc cheese – I have had choc cream cheese but never choc cheese…. extra motivating!
Is that the Philly stuff? Has divided our daughters right down the middle!
Hi! Joy (Joyfully Green) just told me about your blog, and I’m glad she did! 🙂
I’ve always wanted to try cheese making. I happen to think that cheese may well be the best food ever created, and I’ve always wanted to experiment with it.
I’m a bit of a cheese freak too, but have a long way to go before I am accomplished enough to meet my own exacting cheese standards!