Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

What Does 2 Year Old Romano Taste Like? Let Me Tell You!

By 1 Comment

Look what I found lurking at that back of the cheese fridge!  It is a 2 year old Romano that I made way back in 2011.
I cannot believe that I managed to keep from eating it for so long.  You will notice that I originally planned to age this for 10 months, but something must have gone wrong in the time-space continuum, and it got lost somewhere in that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
Dr Who references aside, this was the first cheese that I made with raw milk, playing it safe with the choice of cheese.  The milk I received from a friend, hoping that it would be the best cheese ever.  Well, I think I got pretty close.
So let’s have a look at this 2 year old Romano aged beauty, shall we?

The wax was intact, and no whey leakage as I removed it.

It was oily to touch, and quite hard.  At this stage I thought it might have completely dried out.

I cut it apart gently with two knives.  It had a few small holes in it, but nothing like the eyes of the swiss style cheeses that I have made previously.

The texture was oily and had a waxy feel to it.  It did smell incredible.  Not as strong as an aged Parmesan, but still quite pungent.  The centre still had moisture to it, but I could only press my fingernail into the cheese.  Slightly hard.

It was difficult to cut slices from, so to keep all of my fingers intact, I decided to shave some off using a vegetable peeler.

This method worked very well, and I created some quite amazing shavings.  I vacuum packed a one half and shaved the other.

But what about the flavour?

Well, it was simply amazing!  Sharp tasting, that lingered on the palette afterwards.  Blown away by this cheese and how incredible it is (was).  It just goes to show how patience, a long maturation period, and great ingredients can all come together and make something truly wonderful.It really compliments pasta dishes, and is particularly excellent on homemade spaghetti and meatballs.

I think I need to make some more Romano.

How To Store Cheese

By 4 Comments

Cheese is made to be eaten, but what if you make so much that you don’t know what to do with it.  You can let it age longer if you like, but what if you want a more subtle flavour in your semi-hard cheese?  Well you have come to the right place as this post is how to store cheese!

There are a few ways around this issue.  Once your cheese has reached maturity, it is difficult to eat an entire wheel.  I know.  Trust me, I have tried.

We usually serve up a quarter of the wheel which works out to be about 250 gm (or half a pound) when we have friends over.  If we know that we are going to share the rest in a very short time frame, I wrap up the cheese in greaseproof paper, just like the type you can buy for baking.  This paper allows the cheese to breathe, and stop it from drying out.  I highly recommend that you don’t wrap it in cling wrap (plastic wrap), as the cheese sweats, which spoils the flavour, and it could go mouldy.

Additionally, to stop them from drying out, you should store it in the paper within a sealed container, which helps keep the cheese moist.  It should be stored at around 4°C (39°F) to slow down any further maturation.

If you know that you will not be eating your cheese for at least a month, I recommend another method of storage.  That would be to vacuum pack the cheese.

I mentioned in my last podcast that I had a Caerphilly in the cheese fridge, and today it was ready to eat.  Look at the perfect rind.  I washed this cheese with a brine solution every day to stop mould from growing on the outside.  It was the best Caerphilly I have ever made!

how to store cheese
Caerphilly Cheese ready for storage

As you can see, there is far too much cheese for us to eat in one sitting.  Luckily Kim (my lovely wife) and I had two friends around to help us eat most of one of the quarters!  So it was out with the vacuum machine.

how to store cheese
FoodSaver – vacuum sealing machine

Here it is with the lid down.  A few buttons, one to seal, one to vacuum and seal, and a few adjustments for wet and dry contents.  All in all, easy enough to use.

This model comes with a roll of the plastic.  You seal one side, cut off the size you need, fill it with the cheese, then suck all the air out of the bag.

Here is a bag where I have sealed one side, ready for a quarter of the Caerphilly.

how to store cheese

And here is the finished bags.  Yes there are lots of plastic, but the cheese is so big that you have to make the bag big enough to suck the air out of it and get a good seal.  I then label the cheese with its name, and the maturation date.  Note that these ones have todays date, as that is when the cheese was ready to eat.  This helps a lot when you have lots of these bags in the fridge!

The cheese can be stored like this for over six months as long as you keep them at 4°C (39°F).  In fact, I know home cheese makers that use this method to mature their cheeses instead of waxing them.

I prefer wax because I can’t stand all of the plastic waste that is generated.  I usually make the bags a little bit bigger so that I can wash them out and reuse them for other foods once I have consumed the cheese.

So there you have it.  A couple of ways to store cheese after you have either bought it from your friendly cheesemonger, or made it all by yourself.

Does anyone have other ways of storing their cheese after it has aged?

Storing Cheese After Aging

By 2 Comments

How do you go about storing cheese after aging?  Do you need to stop the maturation process?  Can you?

There are some of the questions that I was asked today by a reader, Roger in NZ.  Here is his email (with permission).

“Greetings Gavin,

I hope you had a great Xmas and New Year.

I wonder if you could tell me about what to do once your cheese has matured. I have made
your Stilton and Wensleydale and they are maturing nicely so when they are ready do you cut them into wedges and wrap them?

Are they then kept in the refrigerator or are they left in the cheese maturing box?

Do you remove all the cheese wax when you first cut into the Wensleydale?

Sorry to bother you about this but I envy your extensive knowledge on these things.

Thanks and best regards,
Roger, Palmerston North, New Zealand”

Well Roger and dear readers, these are some issues that you will need to deal with as your cheese matures.

Personally, semi-hard cheese like Wensleydale can be treated in two ways.  The first way is to leave it to mature in your cheese fridge/cave until you want to use it, as it will grow stronger in flavour as time passes.  However there will come a time when you want to stop maturation and keep that certain special flavour until the cheese is totally consumed.

When I think a cheese has matured, I removed the wax, give the cheese a clean with a clean cloth and brine solution if it has any blemishes or mould, and then taste a little bit of it.

If the cheese has not reached the desired flavour, I re-wax it as quickly as I can and pop it back in the cheese fridge with a new date attached to it for when I am going to retry it again.

Aged Pepperjack with a re-waxed quarter.

 

However, if the cheese is just right, then I cut it into quarters, and either vac-pack each quarter separately, or re-wax each quarter, label them and put them in a cheese box that I have in the normal refrigerator.  By dropping the temperature down to around 4C (39F), it slows down the aging process dramatically.  Excluding air by waxing or vac-packing each quarter ensures that there should be no further mould development.

If it is a Stilton or Blue cheese, you could vac-pack, but I find that it is just as easy and safe to wrap in cheese micro-wrap, or wrapping in grease-proof baking paper.  Then store it in the normal refrigerator as per a semi-hard cheese.

Same goes for a hard cheese like Parmesan or Romano.  I simply wrap these cheeses in baking paper, store them at 4C, and they tend not to dry out any further.

Besides, my finished cheese tends not to be stored too long after maturation, because our family has either eaten it, or I have given it away to friends!

I hope this post has shed some light on what to do with your cheese after maturation.

Do any of you do it differently that may be worth mentioning?  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Little Green Workshops