Time for a blue cheese update.
I could wax lyrical about all the cheese that I have made that went according to plan, but I don’t think I have ever mentioned one that has gone terribly wrong! This is one of those times.
If you have been reading my adventures about a Blue cheese that I have been chronicalling, this is the final post in the Blue cheese adventure.
It started out looking kind of nice and something like this. There was enough curds for two small and one rather large cheeses.
Over the course of the last few weeks, I totally neglected these cheeses. They required turning every 4 days and humid conditions. At the 30 day mark I was to scrape off the mould and it would have looked nice.
Anyway, because of the neglect, this is what they looked like on Monday night!
The large one had mostly had a melt down, but was salvageable of sorts, but the two small ones had totally lost their form and were runny inside. A bit like blue cheese Camembert I suppose. As for the taste, well they were fantastic. A great creamy blue cheese flavour.
This is what I managed to do with them.
I scraped all of the mould off of the large cheese, then wrapped it in cheese wrap and put it into the normal refrigerator to see what happens. I could use it now, but it would be just good for spreading on crackers like a blue cream cheese.
As for the two small ones, we stored them for a day in the fridge and turned them into a wonderful blue cheese sauce.
Kim cooked up some Penne pasta and lots of cauliflower, broccoli, carrot and corn, mixed it all together with the some rue which she added the cheese to make a blue cheese sauce and baked it in the oven. The flavour was amazing and the meal was delicious. Ben went back for seconds as did I!
If this is what is known as a disaster in the cheese world, then I am happy with it! I love it when we learn from mistakes that can be turned around to something edible and yummy. It just goes to show that cheese making is not all about recipes and following rules, it can be about serendipitous mistakes as well!
I will leave you with this cheesy quote of the day:
“People who know nothing about cheeses reel away from Camembert, Roquefort, and Stilton because the plebeian proboscis is not equipped to differentiate between the sordid and the sublime.” – Harvey Day
Hi Pamela. I figured out what I have been doing wrong with my blue cheeses. After reading some very old posts on my own blog about the first few Stilton's that I made, I remembered that I wrapped the cheese in foil after the first two weeks, but leaving the ends with the holes exposed. That way the cheese stays intact and the mould grows down the holes instead. When I first started making blue I had no problems at all with this method. I need to take my own advice!
I also agree with you that hard cheeses are so easy compared to any mould cheese. Mould cheeses are so temperamental!
Gav
Oh…you are brave. I just threw out my first Stilton today. But it didn't just have blue mould (OK)on the outside, it had white and black and yellow, and yes.. had suffered meltdown. I'm not experienced enough in blue cheeses to know what is safe. The mouldy cheeses have almost got me beat, and I come unstuck on the maturing. Hard cheeses are a breeze in comparison!