Blessed are the Cheesemakers
Posted on | May 9, 2011
Curd being pressed
real cheese fresh from the press
waxed for aging
At our recent show in Greensboro I told many of you that I’d share my latest obsession in the next blog. It all started a couple of years ago when Ben Singer loaned me a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which chronicles a year in her family’s life of homesteading in Virginia. One chapter in particular brought me to tears. It wasn’t the death of the family dog or a romantic heartbreak. It was the miracle of watching curds separate from whey, and the realization that only a couple of generations ago this was commonplace in my own family. I grew up on a farm where beef cattle was raised, but my mom, who grew up on the same farm, recalls my grandmother churning butter from our family’s dairy cattle. She may have hated that chore, just as I hated hoeing potatoes and picking beans and dodging those pesky chickens that pecked at your feet. I was jealous of my friends who ate food from cans and thought my family must be very poor since we didn’t buy our food from the grocery store. But I regress. I ordered Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll and have read it cover to cover at least twenty times. In the past year I’ve made lots of butter, yogurt, and soft cheese, but I longed to try hard cheeses, the production of which requires specialized equipment, i.e. a cheese press. For my recent birthday, Pat built me one and I’ve experienced the miracle that is stirred curd cheddar. Later this week I’ll attempt traditional cheddar (more advanced), and will tackle romano next week. I travel way too much to ever own a cow, but there are still farms out there that will sell you a little raw milk. Now comes the test of my willpower…aging the cheese for a minimum of two months before tasting it. That’s slow food!