Hmmm, I thought my mozzarella cheese was good. I may have to rethink this. Today a woman and her 4 children came over to see my goats and then I showed the mother how I make mozzarella cheese. She gave her children a taste and one cute little blonde ate hers and promptly threw up. Seriously, I didn't think it was all that bad. The mother assured me she just gagged on it. This made my dogs very happy, if you know what I mean. Sorry, did that make you gag?
I'm finding other ways to use my milk besides the obvious ice cream, cheese and yogurt. This week I made cajeta (pronounced caheeta). It's a Mexican confection that can be served over ice cream, cheese cakes, apple slices, or whatever you like. It's kind of like a caramel syrup, traditionally made from goat's milk. It took me 3 hours to cook 3 quarts of milk, along with sugar, cornstarch and baking soda, down to this much syrup. I was afraid I'd burn it so I kept the heat lower than it probably needed to be. I had read it should take at least an hour and a half.
Some friends of ours invited us to pick sweet cherries from their trees a few days ago before the birds got them. Free fruit? Yeah, James would never say no to that. Surprisingly (and very generously, I might add), he offered the majority of them to me to make wine from so I made a gallon.
Didn't make me gag, but I did get a really good laugh out of it! :)
ReplyDeletecajeta... did you read Brad Kessler's "Goat Song" novel by any chance? I just read that diary/dairy entry this morning over my regular espresso and dreamed of the day I'd have oceans of goat's milk to play with in the kitchen. I'm falling deep and hard for goats, I know I was born to raise em. Your new little Nubian doe is a riot! She's beautiful. What I like most about milk and making cheese. You seem to have a lot of experience making cheese with goats milk. You make manchego? Incredible. Do you pasteurize your milk first, killing off all the naturally occuring bacteria, or let it wildly ferment? I'm much more inclined to wildly fermenting... cheers, Charlotte
ReplyDeleteYes, Charlotte, I read Goat Song and loved it. I've loaned it to a few other friends with goats because I wanted them to read it too.
ReplyDeleteI don't pasteurize my milk for anything I make.
I know I was born to raise goats...and eat cheese.
Haha right on! Thanks for the kind words on my blog. My cheeses are so tiny because I'm only experimenting with free milk I've collected from friends. I wanted to try tons of different methods without using all my milk at once. This sort of backfired on me as most of the cheeses I aged became overrun by mold spores, overpowering the good stuff on the inside. As for presses...I've got a collection of makeshift processes that all taught me something about the right way to make a cheese. Now, finally, I'm ready to make some proper cheeses. I'll post more photos soon!
ReplyDelete