Posts from — June 2008

A lot of food bloggers have posted in recent days, annoyed with an article that appeared in the New York Times by Kim Severson about recipe “deal breakers.” A deal breaker can be a technique, ingredient, or tool that can cause you such frustration that you give up all hope and order take-out Chinese instead. Severson cited obvious deal breakers from recipes that required “wild boar from hills surrounding Sante Fe,” “48 tender young grapevine leaves,” and “fillet and butterfly 12 4-inch anchovies.” But she also spoke with so-called cooks who won’t truss chickens, deep-fry- or char bell peppers. Come on, I can find any excuse to deep-fry. All I’m going to say is that a recipe is a guideline and can be manipulated to accommodate obscure ingredients, level of skill, and lack of proper equipment. EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF MAKING CHEESE! A recipe must be followed as written- the slightest deviation can yield a totally different product. This is why I spent 9 hours last Monday making haloumi.
It happened so innocently. “Wouldn’t it be great if we made haloumi?” I said to Jeremy, “it’s summer, time for grilling, we could sell it for Fourth of July.” “Sure, you can make haloumi if you want,” he responded with a look on his face that yelled SUCKER! I had no idea what I was getting into. The recipe seemed simple enough. I would first pasteurize, then culture, set with rennet, cut, stir, mold, press, press again, cut large blocks up into small 3 inch squares, reheat reserved whey to 180 degrees, cook squares in whey for 1 hour until they floated, pull cheese out of steaming hot whey bath and set out on draining table to cool for 20 minutes, then sprinkle with salt, and brine the following morning! Got all that? Everything was going great until I had to fish roughly 50 pounds of haloumi out of the extremely hot whey with a colander you might use for draining pasta. Obviously I am missing some proper equipment. What the recipe neglected to let me know is that I would need an electric pressure washer, an extremely caustic soap, and a hell of a lot of elbow grease to clean the tank after all was said and done. When I reheated the whey, albumin proteins coagulated making ricotta, which was a sweet bonus, but it also melted to the sides of the cheese vat. Jeremy walked in at this point to find me muttering all kinds of profanities under my breath as I wielded the pressure washer like some kind of vigilante cheesemaker. “If I ever suggest we make haloumi again, remind me of this moment,” I said. However, I had yet to taste my wares. A few days later I hauled my charcoal grill and some haloumi to the Lake Ella Farmer’s Market where I grilled up some skewers with delicious tomatoes from Turkey Hill Farm. Amazing!
So was making haloumi a deal breaker after all? No. I definately don’t want to make this all the time, but that’s probably why this tastes so good. All of the steps were necessary to yield the end product, which was delicious and worth all the sweat, cursing and extra scrubbing. Sometimes the deal breaker can actually be the deal maker!

Aaah! There is nothing like waking up early on Sunday morning and scraping mold off the rinds of blue cheese! But duty calls and this batch of Asher Blue is perfect at two months and it needs a little extra care to stay that way. Making a great blue cheese has been a goal of Jeremy and I’s since I got here and not to say it’s been difficult so much as confusing. For the longest time we had problems developing the characteristic blue veins. Some batches turned out and some grew other things inside where the holes were pierced. We’ve especially had a problem with a pesky surface mold, Geotrichum Candidum. It’s no suprise that it’s lurking in our cheese room, we utilize it for our bloomy rind cheese like Lumiere and Green Hill. But we certainly don’t want it in our Asher Blue for a simple reason. Geotrichum Candidum, like other surface molds has a short life and begins to break down after a month or two, depending on conditions in the environment such as temperature and humidity. Once G. Candidum starts to break down, the white bloomy rind turns orange and produces aromas of ammonia. Needless to say, not very appetizing and with this in mind, is why we eat cheeses like Brie and Camembert after a few weeks instead of a few months. To make a long story short, blue cheese requires a longer ripening time- usually 4 months, so to have something growing inside that is going to break down and produce acrid flavors before said product is ready is problematic. But as I said before, some batches turned out and some didn’t. There are other factors at stake! One is the cooler we store the cheeses in. We have multiple coolers, they are old refrigeration truck bodies we converted into “caves.” It struck me a while back that cheeses coming out of cooler #5 were more prone to having G. Canidum than cheeses from cooler #3. Mind you, the answer is a hunch because I have no way to actually prove this. Cooler #5 used to house our bloomy-rind cheeses and my guess is that it has inoculated itself into the environment. Cooler #3 has only housed big wheels, none of which utilize G. Candidum and thus Asher Blue is safe in this environment. It’s strange to think although the coolers are maybe 15 feet apart, they are two totally seperate environments with their own diverse mixture of molds, funghi and yeasts. If you are more curious about this subject, I recommend you rent The Cheese Nun, available through Netflix. Sister Noella Marcellino is a Geotrichum Candidum nut, having spent two years roaming France and studying the biodiveristy of the G. Canidum strain! The film culminates with a trip to the American Cheese Society’s Annual Competition, which is where we are headed in July. This particular batch of Asher Blue will be in tow, as will Titan and our heavy hitter, Green Hill. Here’s to hoping for a big win! And a last side note, if you are itching for another food blog, please check out http://anicca3.blogspot.com/. John Bowers is as passionate about BBQ as I am about cheese and I sent him some a while back, so check regularly to see what he comes up with! Also, be on the lookout for a post about the trials and triumphs of making Haloumi!