Soft-Cheese Class & Cheesemaking

For our five year anniversary we attended a class called the "Artisan Cheesemaking & Sampling Class." It was a whole lot of fun and not nearly as complicated as it sounds. Cheese, especially soft cheese, isn't really approved on our diet, but what better indulgence is there? When I heard about the class we couldn't turn it down.

We watched as the instructor flew through the steps of cheesemaking like they do on TV cooking shows: 1. Mix the milk and culture 2. let sit for 12 hours, then she lifted the lid off of the next pot and like magic- Cheese!

We got to sample five soft-ripened cheeses, three Chevre and two Fromage Blanc. We learned that Chevre means goat and Fromage Blanc is Chevre made with cow's milk instead of goat's milk. I had no idea.

The class was hosted in a spice shop and all of the samples included spices from the shop. Oh man, were they good. The best sample was the chocolate chevre truffles! Who knew you could mix sugar and chocolate with cheese to make a wonderful dessert? It isn't something we would normally think of.

The unfortunate part about attending a cheese class in a spice shop is you can't possibly leave the shop without buying all of the spices you just sampled and then heading over to the local brew shop to buy cheese culture and rennet.


Soooo.....here is our attempt at homemade cheesemaking the next day:

 After leaving it to sit, the curds and whey have separated.
In theory anyway. Our cheese didn't quite separate completely because our milk was not farm fresh and it was probably pasteurized to too high a temperature.

 

Letting the whey drip out.

 

Watching it drip was quite mesmerizing. I could believe that six hours later it was still dripping. 

(keep your naughty thoughts to yourself . . . )

 

After the cheese was finished we had a wine and cheese night! The cheese by itself tasted like mild yogurt more than anything, which is probably because we couldn't find the right culture. We mixed four different seasonings, including two new ones from the shop, to see what we liked the best. The truffle salt won hands down. Yum!