Mary Ostler

I recently got back from a house sitting stint. I always enjoy house sitting due to the fact I can cook whatever I want. While on this last gig, I tried my hand at making soft cheese. It was easy, tasty , and worth the effort. I liked making it enough I decided to make another batch, this time straying from the recipe to add my own spices, and such.

The base recipe I got online in an article from someone in the SCA

14-15th century soft cheese.

Apple Cider is not just used to kill off those pesky fruit flies in the summer (again you learn something every day).

Here’s my heavy duty colander lined with an industrial paint strainer (as I could not find any cheese cloth)

Cook the milk to 190′F

Take the milk of the burner and slowly pour in the vinegar.

Lumpy Kurds instantly…woot. Science is fun. Let it sit for 5 minutes.

Then pour the curds and milk into the paint strainer

And hang the bag somewhere to drip for 2-3 hours. You may want to figure this one out first, as it can be trickery than you think. Luckily the sinks tap was long enough to work as a hanging post.

I don’t have a picture of the pressing jig I used. It was basically a colander in a pot with the bag of cheese in the colander. On the bag of cheese sat a plate with about 10 pounds of canned goods sitting on top. This then lived in the fridge for 24 hours. The first batch I only pressed for ~12 hours, and was a fair bit more moist in the final product.

This is the cheese when shook out of the bag. This time I split it into four parts, as I want to try making my own flavored cheese. I also wanted to have a wide selection for the last minute Laurels Prize Tourney or something happening this weekend.

This is the recipe version from the pdf file. Honey, Ginger, Salt, and a little cracked pepper, as I love pepper…

This version has no honey or ginger, but kept the pepper, and salt, plus fresh dill from a garden, and cardamom ( as I have lots from making Turkish coffee as of late). I can’t remember but there might be a little long pepper in this trial too.

I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the third batch. That one has Honey, Salt, Long Pepper, & Sweet Spice ( a mixture for some medieval recipe I tried out last year that has ginger, clove, cinnamon, and ground bay leaf).

From left to right: Plain cheese, Honey Ginger Cheese, Dill & Cardamom Cheese, and Sweet Spice Cheese.

I think I will look into how to make the harder cheeses next.