The Accidental Cheesemaker

Not only is Eat At Joe's feeling the economic pinch, but also we've had an accident: a boating incident on Lake Baikal damaged Joe's dominant hand.  Cooking, shopping, working, and typing are all tough right now.  We'll see how it goes. 

So Eat at Joe's has milk in the fridge that's going off.  Since it's tough to get more (see above), we're trying to use it.  This morning, biscuits were on the menu.  But horrors!  There's no buttermilk.  I'm not even talking about real buttermilk: Eat at Joe's has used the real thing, garnered from his father's one-man, one-cow dairy operation.  Alas: Dad, the cow, and their real buttermilk are all gone, and we didn't even have any store-bought buttermilk (what's the difference, you ask?  This is where Eat at Joe's wishes for a Wiki-type front end to our blog: we could leave a hanging link.  But that's AnotherStory).  If you've cooked much, you might know an oft-used buttermilk substitution using plain milk and an acid.  The recipe we were cribbing from specifically warns against plain milk: the author claims slack rise.  At this, a little light went off in Joe's head.  We remember an article (was it Cook's Illustrated or Harold McGee?  We can't remember right now) about how scalding and skimming milk -- once standard for bread-making, then considered an "Old Wives' Tale" and dispensed with -- actually does improve rise and crumb: a protein that coagulates in the skimmed-off skin does indeed interfere with bread rise.  Have you ever noticed how many "Old Wives' Tales" are true?  I'm gonna have to get me one of them Old Wives someday. 

You can imagine the next step: get out the not-so-fresh milk, scald and skim it, add vinegar, and proceed with the biscuit recipe.  But some of you might be wondering, "Joe, what about the accidental cheesemaking?"  Others want to know how the BiscuitsTurnedOut, and some probably don't care.  But for those interested in cheese, read on.  We decided to be thorough about the skimming, so we additionally decided to filter the skimmed milk.  Our fine chinois didn't seem like the right tool, so we tried a coffee filter.  This took too long and worked too well, and was indeed why we coughed up $85 for a fine chinois anyway.  So about three coffee filters later, we substituted a cloth napkin for the paper filter.  And somewhere in there we decided to add the vinegar to the portion of the milk that was still unfiltered. 

As we squeezed the last of the milk solution through the napkin, another light bulb went off.  We put down the squeezings and got out Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation.  Hell, we were making cheese and didn't even know it!   Rennet is the traditional curd-ler for cheese-making, but vinegar and other acids will do a passable job.  So now my filtride as well as my filtrate were important.  We squeezed more filtrate out of the napkin, and salted the curds lightly.  More squeezing and draining.  Our liquid was down to a little more than a cup, and not very acid; we added more vinegar and some water before proceeding with the biscuits.  The curds were set aside, and later scraped into a ramekin.  We had a scant tablespoon, if that.  But it tasted like -- well -- maybe cottage cheese, with a hint of tang from the vinegar.  It's now "aging." :)  We've already started pining and inquiring for fresh cow's milk, and dreams of glorious Goudas have danced through our heads.  The intoxicating joy of making things is heady stuff indeed. 

Comments

[Kira]

Oohhhhh cheese, he makes cheese, oohhhhhh! Now THAT is a quality a man should have! Can I taste some when it's done aging? :D

[eric]

Blessed are the cheesemakers...

[Kira]

Ok, Joe, I found what you need to do with your cheese:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7218880/

Now enter! :D

[Joe]

Someone took me to the grocery store tonight, and I bought a whole gallon of milk. I think I'm going to try making cheese out of half of it. I'm going to layer the cheese with cracked pepper, garlic, and rosemary from my neighbor's yard. We'll see if I actually get to it.