Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

Romano Cheese

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Wikipedia states;

“Romano cheese is a type of cheese that is known for being very hard, salty and sharp. It is usually grated. It is different from normal cheeses because it requires more milk per pound, most water being lost in the creation process.

There are different types of romano cheese. True romano cheese is made from sheep’s milk, pecorino romano or goat’s milk (caprino romano), though mass produced versions, as in the United States, are often made from cow’s milk (vacchino romano).  Pecorino romano is sharp and tangy. Caprino romano, the goat’s milk version, has an extremely sharp taste. Vacchino romano is very mild in taste. Most of the romano cheeses made in the United States are made from cow’s milk or with a mix of cow’s milk and either sheep or goat milk.”

So, if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making a Parmesan then Romano should be your cheese of choice to make, and of course that it goes great with most pasta dishes.  In the shops it is sometimes sold as Pecorino Romano, which is vacuum packed to make it all the way from Italy to Australia and also very expensive.  Think of all those food miles!

Anyway, here is my method that I adapted out of the book “Making Artisan Cheese” by Tim Smith.

I found that Warrnambool  Cheese and Butter Factory Company now sell Jersey Milk via supermarkets.  I bought 8 litres because the milk is much creamier and higher in butter fat (4%) than the normal milk you can buy (3.1-3.4%).  This makes for a much fuller and richer cheese, so I reduced the amount of milk by one litre down from the normal 8 that I normally use.  This is because if I used 8 litres the curds would not fit in the cheese mould after cooking them.

Romano Cheese

  • 7 litres whole milk (Jersey Milk) or 8 litres of full cream milk 3.4% butterfat
  • 1/8 teaspoon Thermophilic culture
  • 1/4 teaspoon Lipase dissolved in 60ml cool boiled water
  • 2.5ml liquid vegetable rennet diluted in 60ml cool boiled water
  • 2.5ml calcium chloride diluted in 60ml cool boiled water (omit if using un-homogenised milk)

Brine solution

Method

Sterilize all equipment.
Heat milk to 33C (90F), stir in the calcium chloride if required.  Add starter culture, stir, then add the diluted lipase.  Cover, and let milk ripen for 15 minutes.

Maintaining the target temperature of 33C, add the diluted rennet whilst stirring for two minutes.  Cover and let sit for 40 minutes, or until you have a clean break.

Once you have a clean break, cut the curds into 6mm cubes (1/4″).  Let the curds rest for 10 minutes at the target temp.

Slowly heat the curds to 46C (115F), which took about 30-45 minutes.  Stir frequently, with a whisk.  When you reach the target temp, maintain for another 45 minutes, continuously stirring (sore arms) to prevent matting of the curds.

Drain through a cheese cloth lined colander.  Keep the whey for your animals if you like or set aside for baking!

Pour the curds into a 1kg (2lbs) cheese cloth lined mold.  Cover the top with the excess cloth, top with the follower, and press at 5kg (10lbs) for 30 minutes.

Remove from the press, unwrap (be gentle), turn over the cheese, re wrap and press at 11kg (25lb) for 3 hours.  Repeat procedure, pressing at 20kg (40lb) for 12 hours.  Repeat again, pressing at 9kg (20lb) for 12 hours.

Remove the cheese from the mold, and unwrap and immerse the cheese in the brine solution.  Flip the cheese every 6 hours and let it sit in the brine for 24 hours at room temp approx 21C (70F).

Take the cheese out of the brine, pat dry, and place in the cheese fridge at 13C (55F) at 80-85% humidity for 10 months (shorter if you like).

Turn the cheese daily for the first three week of aging, and weekly thereafter.  Remove any mould that forms on the exterior with a clean cloth and brine solution.

After 1 month, rub the cheese in olive oil to keep it from drying out, and again after a week.  Repeat oiling every month until maturity.  You can also skip the oil and wax if you like.

In the picture below, I am only up to the last pressing, but have a look how yellow this cheese is already.

Romano Cheese

I have never had a Romano cheese this yellow at this stage of its life.  I did notice that the milk was certainly not a white as normal milk, and more like a off-white to yellow colour.  Also with this milk, the curd set stronger than I have ever seen.  The clean break test was very positive with a nice solid curd.  I am looking forward to full maturity and don’t know if I can wait for the entire 10 months 😉

This cheese is still in the cheese fridge and matures in October 2011, however I made some last year, and it had a comparable taste to a mild Parmesan, with more body.

I highly recommend this cheese for anyone looking for a tasty slicing and grating cheese that will accompany any Italian meal!

Blue Cheese

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As you may know already, Friday night at my place is cheese making night.  It has become a regular institution, whereby Kim leaves the milk out on the kitchen bench for me and as soon as I get home, I start to set up and sterilise the equipment as she serves up dinner.

Tonight I am making a simple blue cheese using the recipe from Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making book which uses 2 gallons or 8 litres of milk.  It is easy to follow, and I am currently about 5 hours into the process with about an hour to run until it is time for bed.

Here is where I have got to so far.

Sushi mats on top and bottom of the moulds.

I used 14 litres of milk and adjusted the recipe to suit.  I ended up with these two smaller cheeses which are in Camembert hoops.

I also had enough curd for this very large cheese.  Now all I have to do is find a container large enough for it to fit in to keep it humid enough in the cheese fridge.

As they mature, I will show you what happens as the blue mould grows.  This recipe is very quite similar to making Camembert, with the aftercare of Stilton.  A bit of a hybrid cheese.  After about 3 days of drying and salting, I pierce each one with many holes so that the bacteria can breath and make the blue mould.  Then they go into the humid cheese fridge.

Making Stilton Cheese

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Back in 2009 I attended my second cheese making course.  This one was for mould ripened cheeses and I hoped that I could be making Stilton cheese.  I was very excited, and didn’t sleep very much last night.

The course was held at our local community house, and started at 10am.  A most civilised start time for a Sunday, I thought.

There were 8 people on the course, and I knew one gent called Kasper who I met during my first course.  He also has made many different types of cheese as I have since the first course in February, and we both have the cheese making bug.I was able to make Stilton, which is an English Blue vein cheese.  You can read how they make it commercially at the Official Stilton Cheese Makers Assoc page.  Here is a little history of the cheese.  It has an uncanny link to my town of Melton.

Stilton was first made in the early 18th century in the midlands of England – specifically in and around the Melton Mowbray area. Stilton takes its name from the village of Stilton (though no Stilton was ever made there) located about 80 miles north of London on the Great North Road. It is here that the coaches travelling from London to Scotland and other northern cities made their first stop for fresh horses and overnight stays. Convenient to Melton Mowbray and the surrounding area, the village became the central marketplace for the cheese with thousands being sold every week. Thus the blue cheese one would buy in Stilton became known as Stilton cheese.

Well there you go.  Stilton was never made in the town of Stilton!

Anyway, history lesson over.  It was a fairly simple recipe, and started off the same as making most hard cheeses, bringing up the temp to 32°C, add the Calcium Chloride, add the Mesophilic culture, and then the Penicillium Roquefort (the smelly stuff) to the milk.  After 30 minutes I added the rennet and let set for about 45 minutes.

After cutting the curd with a whisk into about 4-6mm squares, it was rested again and then the whey was drained off to the level of the curds.

That is when it all went to custard and down hill from there.  After another 30 minutes of resting, I drained it through a cheesecloth and it was still very moist.  I had to leave it in the cheesecloth and press it with a pot filled with water to get more whey out of it.  I then took it out of the cheesecloth, broke it up into smaller pieces and sprinkled 2 teaspoons of salt over the top and mixed it through.

I thought it was still quite moist, but because we couldn’t really follow the recipe properly because of the time limitation we attempted to press it in the hoop.  It did not like it very much and oozed out of the sides of the follower.  Still too much whey in the curd.  I had to return it back to the bain marie and heat the curd until more whey was released.  Normally you would just leave the curds to drain a few hours in the hoop and add more when it shrank by itself.

The heating process released a lot of whey and the curd became very rubbery.  Hopefully I didn’t kill the cultures.  The cheese itself looks a bit abnormal, lopsided and rough.  It didn’t press very cleanly.  We all cleaned up our gear and were finished by about 2pm.  Here is the finished product at home, which looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I bought a special container that has a rack in it to mature the cheese in, because we were told not to leave mould-ripened cheese in a fridge with normal cheese unless we wanted strange moulds all over our nice cheese!

The Phillips head screwdriver is to make holes in the cheese so that oxygen can given to the p.roquefort and give those wonderful blue-green mould lines that you find in this type of cheese.  It has been sterilised, and is relatively brand new.

I rubbed salt liberally over the cheese, and I turned the rack upside down, put a bit of water in the bottom of the container (to raise the humidity to 85%), and pierced the cheese with about 30-40 holes top to bottom and bunged it into the cheese fridge.

The first Stilton I made turned out very mouldy all over and I wrapped it in foil with the ends exposed to encourage mould growth in the holes.  It smelled fantastic, and we ate it within days of maturity.

It looks a bit squished, but that is how it came out of the cheese mould.

As for the second Stilton I made, it turned out to be a bit too dry and cracked in half.  I have had to wrap it in foil early to get it to keep together.  In this photo it is just showing signs of blue mould growth at the top.

You can see the crack better in this picture.  I nearly cried, until I remembered watching how they wrapped Roquefort cheese in thick tin foil in France.  Before I wrapped the cheese it was laying in half on the bottom of the ripening container.

To tempt your taste buds further, here are a few shots of the 3rd Stilton that I made.  It had been maturing for the last 4 months.  Once again, homemade blue cheese is simply divine.

It had a nice, strong rind, with lots of marbling inside.  I went crazy with the piercing it this time as I wanted lots of veins in the wheel.  I put in about 40 holes. It clearly worked well.

Click to enlarge any of the photos to get right in there.


Kim and I sampled this small piece with a few crackers and local cherries.  The flavour combination was amazing.  We love this cheese!

In summary, making Stilton cheese or any blue cheese for that matter is not that difficult to make.  You just have to set up the right conditions for it to grow the mould successfully.

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