Friday 7 February 2014

Say Cheese..... Dis Fromage.......

So....... I was minding my own affairs at work the other day trying to keep slightly ahead of the workload that was piling along behind me in its usual avalanche when Pam phoned me.

She had just heard a segment on the radio of a cheese maker being interviewed about what he does, he informed the listening public that he holds short 3 night evening courses in the making of goats cheese and she thought I may be interested.


Well lets put it this way, interest led straight to my email and a request for a place, unfortunately which included a substantial amount of gnashing of teeth as Pam would not be able to join me due to other commitments.


And so it came to pass I found myself in a group of 10 people for the first evenings lessons

with Pepe Charlot which included a discussion on the type of cheese produced the flavour, looks and feel of the cheese.

This also included tastings of the various type of cheese - never complain when tasting excellent cheese and then the actual hands on participation in the making of cheese


I wont go into a long involved blah blah explanation, but rather put in a whole slew of pictures, it will give a much better idea.... what do the ubiquitous "They" always say.... "A picture is worth a thousand words"


Our Buckets of milk waiting to be attended to



Work surface in the cheesery


Milk being brought up to temperature prior to adding culture and rennet

Milk in for final inoculation

Culture and rennet dropper

Hope my cheese looks like this one day soon





Smidgeon of culture being added to small jug of milk taken from the bucket 


Culture being stirred in prior to adding back to the bucket of milk


bucket of milk being added to culture


bucket of milk being added to culture


Rennet 


Rennet being added to the milk


Milk being stirred prior to closing the lid to relax overnight


No good course is complete with out a nice glass of wine and cheese for tasting- all educational of course



Draining tubs being setup


Draining tubs being setup
Draining tubs being setup - Cheese cloth

Draining tubs being setup - Cheese cloth

Curds being scooped out of the bucket and transferred to the draining tubs

Let the draining of the whey begin

Drained curds

Drained curds get stirred to get more whey out

Curds left over night to drain

Curds now have salt added

Valencay being prepared and draining

Pepe's being prepared

Pepe's being prepared and draining

Cabecou moulds ready

Cabecou molds ready

Cheese being smeared into the mold, these moulds will be removed when the cheese is set leaving behind Cabecou's

Smoothing

Pepe's draining


Buchette being rolled out

 Buchette ready for the fridge 

Buchette into the fridge for maturing
De-molded Valencey's


Final tasting at the end of a very interesting course

All in all it was an incredibly interesting and eye opening course, that has given me a desire to learn yet more on the making of cheese, so more to come on this exciting venture.


I will also do an update to this blog item once the rest of my cheese reaches maturity and just before I gobble it all down