Making Goat Cheese

Goat Cheese.

I have a fascination with cheese. I can spend enormous chucks of time thinking about it. Then I hit a wall and leave it alone for awhile.

I think it all stems from my dream......to own a cheese shop. To work there every day handing out samples of cheese to customers....having my customers get big smiles on their face when they taste something they have never tried before....but they know they want again. I want to chat with them about where the cheese came from, how to serve it, how to use it in a recipe, how to store it. I want them to leave not only with cheese but with a fond memory of our conversation. I want them to remember the place and the people and I want them to come back again for more.

Where do all these cheeses come from? How is it possible to take the same milk and rennet and come up so many different types of cheese? I am fascinated by this. I want to learn everything there is about it.

To that end I have started the only way I know how and that is to make cheese. Really simple cheese. So far I have made ricotta, goat cheese, and mozzarella. They were all three delicious. With the ricotta I made an acorn squash lasagna, with the goat cheese a caramelized onion and goat cheese pizza, and with the mozzarella we sliced it with organic heirloom tomatoes, fresh picked basil directly from the garden, drizzled a little olive oil over the top and hit it with some sea salt and pepper and ate it straight away.

I have spent some time researching this cheese making topic and found that it is much more difficult then one might think.

In my childhood I recall my mother coming home from the supermarket with Velvetta cheese and we would make grilled cheese sandwiches. We had no idea this was not real cheese. And it melts beautifully. Have you read the package on that stuff lately? Yikes!

So on to what this post is about: I decided to be brave and make goat cheese. I love goat cheese. I buy it quite often and love it on salads and for crostini with various toppings. So I put it on my calendar and decided to just do it. (Putting tasks on my calendar somehow tends to make me do it. I know! I know!) I found a recipe that I liked and my first challenge was to find the goats milk. Pasteurization in milk can effect the cheese making success so I wanted to find unpasteurized or raw milk. However, that proved to be more difficult than I thought. Hum....who would have thunk that living in the big city would limit the prospect of getting raw milk? Now if I lived out in the country where I had access to a farm I could go buy some wonderful fresh milk and make some fantastic cheese. Here in Orange County we have Mothers or Whole Foods Markets. There are a couple of dairy's but they carry basically the same thing and none of them carry unpasteurized products. Its a safety thing....which is a whole other topic!

There are a few recipes out there which you can find in cheese making books for by googling the topic. Look in the cookbooks you already own. Some recipes work better than others and lend a slightly different taste. What I am amazed at it that often the same ingredients are used but somehow we end up with different cheese. It is very subtle. A slightly different technique or the difference in time and temperatures all produce a different result. Some folks say making cheese is easy but I don't know if I agree. Some folks say making wine is easy too but I think we all know that is not true.

I found a recipe that I liked and so off to Mothers Market I went to get the milk. I purchased the best quality pasteurized organic goats milk they had. Do NOT buy ultra-pasteurized. That is the key. I had my doubts as to whether the pasteurized would work or not but it did and it was a breeze.

Basically you put stuff in a pot, wait for it to get to a certain temperature, then strain it. The recipe takes two days and most of that time is waiting.

Ingredients:

2 quarts organic goats milk
2 cups buttermilk
1/2 tsp liquid rennet
Salt

This makes about 3/4 pound. You can easily double the recipe for 1 1/2 pounds.


In a large non reactive saucepan or pot combine the goats milk, buttermilk and rennet. Stir just until combined and then do not touch it. Do nothing. Heat over low heat until the temperature reaches 180 degrees F. Be sure to use very low heat so the milk does not burn. Getting the temperature up to this point on low heat does take some time, so just stand there and watch it. But don't leave the area! Watch the temp carefully and once it reaches 180 turn it off immediately.

Transfer the liquid to a non reactive bowl and allow to sit and cool for a few minutes then cover with plastic wrap. Now it sits until the curds and whey separate, overnight, see photo. The next day line a colander with cheese cloth and ladle the curds into the colander. Discard the whey. Fold the cheesecloth over top of curbs and allow to drain overnight. Put the colander inside another bowl to catch any liquid. Refrigerate overnight. You now have goat cheese. Add some salt and give it a taste. I bet it's good!



Ingredients you can add to the goat cheese to create the taste you like: olive oil, salt, pepper, herbs, sun dried tomatoes or pesto. These are all excellent in goat cheese. I used some of mine to make a goat cheese and caramelized onion pizza. How good does that look?