Monday 12 December 2011

Home-made cheese. Yes, we did it!

My boyfriend's father is a sheepherd. He grows lovely goats and always offers us some milk. Last friday S. and his brother G. took 8 litres to make some cheese at home. Great idea!
I like to learn this kind of things and to work around preserving food (do you remember my figs jam? and the jars of olives? in these months I've also made 14 little jars of pesto, 9 of chestnuts jam and a lot of tomato sauce; and I'm going to make some quince's jam this week).
The "making cheese evening" has been funny! Quality time with people we love, making together :)
I took some photos, trying not to disturb the process. The hand you see are G's hands.

G. taking part of the cheese mass after boiling the milk, putting the rennet in it and breaking the curd: 

Putting and pressing the fresh cheese mass into a plastic basket:

The cheese round is ready:

After making cheese we also made ricotta.
It's a light and creamy cheese made of the milk that remains in the pot after making cheese, a traditional food in this part of Sicily. People generally used to eat it at breakfast (warm on bread) or as pasta's relish.
Unlike the cheese (that needs to be salted and matured), ricotta has to be eaten in a few days.

Our home-made dairies, proudly photographed (the cheese on the left and ricotta, with its water, on the right):

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