Making Swiss Cheese!

Swiss Cheese is rather complicated, in part because it requires a particular humidity for aging and a good deal of patience. 

Like most cheeses Swiss starts with two gallons of raw milk.

Unlike Cheddar it takes thermohillic starter and Propionic Shermanii powder. 

To start this cheese heat the milk to 90 degrees and add the starter.  Then remove 1/4 cup of the milk and mix in 1/8 teaspoon of the powder.  The mix this back into the milk.  Let it set for10 minutes.  Then add 1/2 teaspoon liquid rennet in 1/4 cup of water and mix with an up and down motion for one minute.  Let this sit for 30 minutes.  The curd will be set, cut he curds into 1/4 inch cubes.  While still at 90 degrees stir the curds for 40 minutes to expel the whey from the curds.

Heat the curd b 1 degree every minute until it reaches 120 degrees.  Then cook it at 120 for 30 minutes to achieve the proper break.  This means that when you press the curds into a ball and then rub it gently between your hands the ball breaks apart.  If it is not one it won't form a  ball.  Then let the curds set for five minutes.  Poor off the whey. 

Then put the curds (still hot) into a cheese mold and press at 8 lbs for 15 minutes.  Turn the cheese over and press at 14 lbs for 30 minutes.  Turn again and press at the same pressure for 2 hours.  Turn again and press at 15 lbs for 12 hours.

Make a brine out of 1 gallon water and 2 lbs  cheese salt.  Put the cheese in the brine and sprinkle with more salt. Leave the cheese in the brine for 12 hours.

This is when it gets difficult.  You need to remove the cheese and pat it dry.  Keep the cheese at 50-55 degrees and 85% humidity.  This is very problematic in the deserts of Utah.  In order to do this we are keeping it in our wine refrigerator with an open Tupperware of water to increase the humidity. 

Turn the cheese once a day for a week, wipe it off with  clean cheesecloth dampened in salt water.  Then place it in a humid room at 68-74 degrees turning it daily and whipping it with the cheesecloth.  We are using our plant room.  Keep it in this room 2-3 weeks until the cheese swells somewhat. 

Age the cheese at 45 degrees and 80% humidity (again in the wine refrigerator) for at least three months. 

Our cheese turned out well, very flavorful.

Night Harvesting Deserves a Quiet Night

One problem that comes up when you and your spouse both work full time, and volunteer quite a lot, and have a huge garden is that some day you may get home late from work and realize that if you don't harvest the first round of beets and plant the next one this week you won't have time for the next round.  You then might realize that you both have to work this weekend.  So you grab a flash light and get started. 

To start with, I should confess that I planted the carrots too close together, so now we have baby carrots.

Really we should have given them more space, and we did for the next round.

We did manage to pull all the beets and sugar beets, so as soon as I can find the time I will freeze them and make sugar!  We got so many that they totally fill our sink. 

We also needed to find something to do with all the greens.  While they are good in a salad I am not a fan of either drying the or freezing them so most of them were given to the chickens. 

This may not look like a lot, but the greens were piled high for a nice surprise for the chickens.  Hopefully I will be able to turn the beets into sugar soon.

Newly Invented Cheese

Peter has invented a new cheese, named Manaster Rose. 

We start with a recipe for a Pressato and then he altered the starter, and aging process.  We have also added peppers and annatto seeds.  It ends up with a smooth creamy cheese where you can almost taste the cream. 

One of the best ways to impact a cheese flavor is to age it with a paste covering it.  Therefore Peter mixed coconut butter and dried roses. 

 

This creates a frosting like mixture.  After that you frost the cheese.  

 This process must be done carefully to make sure all of the cheese is covered.

 After that we sealed it in air tight plastic (vacuuming out all the air) and let it sit for 6 months in our cheese cave area.  We will see how it works!

First harvest of summer

In late June we got our first harvest. 

The weather around here was wet and cool until a few weeks ago when it suddenly became extremely hot.  This means that our plants were somewhat stunted, but our ground cover of peas and spinach went crazy.  When it suddenly got hot the peas died back, and it is time to harvest them all.

Peas are great because they produce early and well, but also replenishes the ground for the other plants.  We froze some of these peas for winter (they will be good in stir fry) because we could not eat them all.

We had no such problems with the first tomatoes of summer.

These are actually only half of the first tomatoes of summer as the first we eat in the garden.  Tomatoes are some of my favorite plants to grow, as the store bought ones are extremely different from homegrown ones.  Tomatoes were bread to grow faster, and withstand shipping.  Unfortunately this also means they have less sugar and flavor, and are tougher.  Ours are sweet and juicy, and were hot from the sun.  I am hopeful that this is the start of a great harvest which will allow us to make sauce, frozen tomatoes and soup for the winter.