Cutting the curd at home

Foodstyle Review takes some inspiring lessons with the country’s loveliest cheese-maker on crafting soft cheeses that can be made at home with commercial milk and a bit of basic bucket chemistry.

Katherine Mowbray is as bright and velvety as the soft white cheeses she is about to make before our small group.

The venue is the restaurant at Artisan Wines in west Auckland and, after a glass of fine wine to sharpen our wits and appetites, Katherine stands before a small but energetic group of foodies and is about to convert a few litres of commercial milk into two popular and versatile cheeses - Camembert and Mascarpone.

Our 1.5 hour cheese lesson starts in good humour. There’s 15 in our group and a number are experienced amateur cheese-makers doing a refresher course.

Having worked in the commercial cheese-making world as a qualified cheese-maker and now fulltime on the demonstration circuit, our tutor beams with confidence. Katherine has also published a book, ‘Cutting the Curd’, which sets out the basic principles behind cheese-making, illustrated with recipes. 

“There’s no right way or wrong way to make a cheese,” she says encouraging. “I will show you the principles and then you can do whatever you like.”

Then, two rules that must be obeyed at all cost! Hygiene and temperature control.

Presiding over a nest of spotlessly-clean pots and instruments Katherine waves a brand of supermarket tablets used to sterilize baby bottles. We are advised to impeccably clean all equipment before using it and then sterilize it all in cold water infused with the tablets – the big pot in which the milk is heated, the thermometer and everything else (even the tea towels should be used only for cheese making). Even then, we are dealing with ‘bucket chemistry’, she warns, and a lot of faith in the gods that rule the world of microscopic fungal spores. So, whatever you do, don’t sneeze over your curds.

The first demonstration was how to convert two litres of whole goat’s milk (not homogenized), into two 250g camembert-style cheeses that would mature in a week and get nice and runny by the end of the second week. After that it will probably jump up and sprint out the open door.

“You can be quite flexible with the base milk [cow, sheep, goat] whatever recipe,” Katherine says, explaining the different solids in various milks and the different quantities of cheese they make. You can also use either pasteurised commercial milk or fresh milk bought from a farm. Under the law, you can buy at least five litres of fresh milk per person, per day. If you make cheese with unpasteurised milk, it is for your own consumption – it’s against the law to sell it under any circumstances, and you can’t sell any cheese unless you are registered with the food authorities.

Kathrine says she prefers the taste of unpasturised cheese and believes the standard of milk from farms in this country is high enough to negate most health risks.

The two litres of goat’s milk was heated gently in a sterilized stainless steel pot that sat in a warm-water bath. Here’s where that thermometer kicks in – the milk must be 31c before adding cheese-making culture. Because we were making a camembert-style Katherine sprinkled few grains of Flora Dancia culture onto the surface and a minute quantity of Penicillum Candidium from the very tip of a knife – it develops the white mould that forms the skin on the sift cheese. These cheese cultures can be bought from Curd & Whey (email anchar@icr.net.nz). While not cheap (around $37 a packet) it’s enough to last 250 litres of milk, because you use such small amounts. These cultures can be stored in a zipped pack in the freezer.

Next she added 5ml of rennet diluted in an equal amount of water that was stirred into the warm milk and left it to set for half an hour with a tea towel cover. The amount of rennet depends on the milk type. Rule of thumb says 10 mls (diluted with equal quantity of water) for 10 litres of cow milk, half the amount (5ml) for 10 litres of sheep’s milk, and double the amount (20ml) for the thinner goat’s milk. You can also buy ‘vegetarian’ rennet extracted from fungi.

“Leave the curds to set in peace,” she stresses. “Place the pot out of the way with a lid or tea towel on top to keep warm. The principle of cheese making is ‘do a bit and leave a bit’. You can’t be in a hurry.”

While Katherine’s curds did their thing, we wetted our whistles with a delicious tasting of Artisan’s Gisborne chardonnay and chatted excitedly amongst ourselves like an aviary of budgies.

Time to cut our curds. “With sterilized knife cut a T shape in top of curd – if the cuts fill up with whey, it is ready. Some recipes don’t cut the curds but it drains quicker if you do.”

If we had been making hard cheese, the curds at this stage would have been ‘cooked’. Our deliciously chalky curds were spooned into two soft cheese molds available from Katherine’s own supplies and also available from Curds & Whey, and they come in different shapes such as pyramids. The molds sit on a cheese mat (Katherine confessed to buying her close weave matting from the garden centre) so the whey drains out of the bottom.

The molds are covered with a clean tea towel and left to drain until the next day when the curd should be reduced by half its size and firm enough to turn upside down onto a second sterilised mat. The cheese surfaces are sprinkled with salt and stored in a cool place (10-12c) and turned every few days.

Once firm, the cheeses are removed from their molds and stored in little containers lined with matting to keep them clear of the whey, which will continue to drain out. The container needs a lid to keep in the humidity. The white, whiskery, mould will appear on the surface after two or three days and you need to turn the cheese every day or this white mould will grow through matting.

“And don’t touch the cheeses at this stage or the surfaces will grow back finger prints,” Katherine warns.

After the white mould is formed, you take the cheese out of the mold and wrap in cheese paper (available from Curds & Whey) or greased baking paper and then tin foil. They are then kept in the fridge to mature.

As a finale, Katherine produced a cheese made two weeks before with another group, along with sample of boutique soft cheeses from makers around the country. We washed them down with a little Artisan late harvest Riesling and some animated note swapping.

The cost was $45 which includes sampling Artisan wines and boutique cheese sampling after the lesson. We were also given written recipes and advice on equipment and where to buy it. More comprehensive, one-day courses (10am to 2pm) are offered at a venue in Epsom Auckland, costing $130 pp, inclusive of a light lunch and wine tasting.

Spring 2009 - by Alan Titchall

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