Bread and cheese...

There is a glut of milk from the goats at the moment. Two of them are filling the bucket to (almost) over-flowing, while the others give at least 4kg a session. That's only half of their daily offering but I am not there in the evenings and can only imagine how much there is every day. The plus point is I have been able to get my hands on plenty of raw milk and have the chance to experiment a little, with a bit of cheese-making.

The first one I made ended up too salty, thanks to faulty scales. But this one looks to be much better. Semi-hard and very creamy, it is perfect for spreading on the bread. 

The purchase of a new book on bread-making has given me some further tips and suggestions and I tried using some of them last night. I am not sure the table will be up to vigorous kneading as it did make a few creaky noises.

Cold dough and a rainy night...

The last few days have been really chilly, but bright and crisp. In quiet corners, the frost glints off piles of litter in the weak autumnal sunshine. On the way to work the sun is reflected in the windows of the flatblocks by the park, a vivid orange glow cutting through the willowy trees like fire, so bright it hides the stark grey concrete of Salford's slums.

At home the annual problem of how to keep the house warm is upon us again. During the summer I sealed the gaps in the floorboards but that doesn't seem to have done much good. I'm thinking of bringing the hens in at night to keep the kitchen warm, but where would we put the penguins then?

This problem of a cold house plays havoc with some of the things we try to make. Trying to keep milk warm to help it curdle and make some cheese is almost impossible, I just can't seem to maintain a level temerature other than 'cold'. Recently, I made some bread and in order to get it to rise I had to be a little bit inventive. Necessity being its mother and all that. So I have started laying a blanket down in the spare room (the only warm and dry room in the house), on top of which I put a hot water bottle filled with, well, hot water. Around this goes the bread tins and tray with dough and the whole lot is covered with a clean dry tea towel. After twenty minutes, half an hour, I go up and move everything round so the warmth gets to all sides. It looks a bit odd but the bread rises ok, eventually, and it comes out of the oven looking like it should. Now all we need is a bigger kitchen, with enough space to knead the dough without having to move things out of the way before, during and after the pummelling process.

A bigger, warmer kitchen. How lovely. Dream on...

Eating our curds and whey...

Despite having a rabid dislike of milk I am a real fan of cheese. It is one of the things I think England excels in, apart from the incarceration of ne’er-do-wells and the impregnation of teens. We are able to produce a variety of interesting local cheeses, with a range of textures and tastes from the mild and rubbery Red Leicester, through the crumbly heaven that is Lancashire and Cheshire and culminating in the flavour explosion of Blue Shropshire.

On Saturday we attended another course at Reaseheath on how to make cheese for ourselves. After donning white coats, white wellies and blue hair nets we were let loose in the dairy where we heated milk, added starter culture and rennet, stirred and strained.
The actual process of making cheese is not difficult, but it is essential to get the temperature and the timing spot on.
We ended up with a block of Cheshire cheese about a pound in weight, which is sitting in the back room where it’s warm ‘maturing’ for three days. It’s been a long wait though, as every time I tip off the excess whey, you can smell the tang of the cheese and the temptation to break a bit off and ‘test’ it is strong. On a larger scale, things are still following the same rigour and basic recipe, where you take 45 litres of milk:Add starter culture and rennet and allow to coagulate at the right temperature before draining off the whey to reveal curds that will become, after a week's maturing, Cheshire cheese:And after three months, Cheddar:Finally, time for a sit down and a brew.

Nice boots ;-)

Cheesy grin in the kitchen...

When I was at primary school we had to drink our third of a pint bottle of milk before we were allowed to go out at playtime. For some reason, although I could manage the first three-quarters of the bottle, I was never quite able to finish it and spent many unhappy morning breaks staring out the window at other children enjoying themselves. As a result I have harboured a life-long dislike of milk and rarely touch it. The only exception being the green top milk (a green lid, rather than mouldy) we used to have at a Lake District youth hostel I worked in.

Despite a suspicion of milk itself, I am a great fan of butter and adore cheese, particularly the semi-hard English cheeses such as Lancashire and Cheshire. So as part of my drive to learn new skills, I asked my parents for a cheese-making kit for Christmas and over the weekend made my first block of soft cheese.

It takes a lot of milk to make a little cheese. In this case one litre for the starter culture (most of this is now frozen and will keep in the freezer) and then two and a half litres to produce 12oz of cheese. Despite following the instructions about warming the milk, adding the culture and then stirring in the rennet (vegetarian, of course), to the letter, nothing happened. So I started to heat the milk up again and as soon as it got warm it began to coagulate. I added extra starter and then extra rennet just to be on the safe side, wrapped the whole pan up in a towel and then put it next to a radiator to keep it warm. An hour and a half later the whey had come off and the curd was sitting in a big pile at the bottom of the pan.

Back in the kitchen I ladled off the whey and started to put the curd into the mould. It seemed a lot of curd but over the next couple of hours it settled until all that was in the pan was in my little mould. A bit of salt helped it settle and gave it a bit of flavour and by the next morning I had a small block of quite tasty white cheese.
After initial disappointment I was please with the results and am waiting now to see what we can use it for. As it is similar to twaróg then it might mean we have kluski for tea, or my favourite – kopytka. Whichever we have, I know it will taste even better with some home-made cheese on top.

A grave matter...

In recent weeks I've been to two funerals, both of uncles, and returned from France to find out a friend from Liverpool, who was only a year older than me, had been found dead in his house only a few days before. It made me think of how vulnerable and soft people are, how easy it seems to be to snuff out the light of life, and how coping with death can be a difficult and painful process.

In Bayeux, we passed a funeral shop and were smiling at the stones available to adorn graves. At first I thought they were ridiculous, but having reflected on it for a few days, why shouldn't people have images on the stones that portray their life-long loves and hobbies? Here are a selection of the ones in the window:

For the gambler, an unbeatable poker hand to give them a good start in the next world.

For the farmer, a reminder of all those early starts with only the occasional pat on the back.

And for the motorist, chugging along heaven's highways in an upturned pram.