Well, I can't call myself a "consummate dabbler" if I don't dabble in things now and again. So on Wednesday my friend Sasha (see the "You Should Know About" link to the right to view her fine jewelry and paintings) joined me to make CHEESE! This meant that, first, I'd have to drive out to my mother-in-law's farm 40 minutes away in Warren, pick-up two gallons of fresh goat milk (Ada is the goat's name, a beautiful nubian) bring it home, and pasteurize it--itself quite a process. That done, we decided to make one gallon into "farmer's cheese". We cooked the gallon, bringing the temperature up to 180 degrees, pulled it off the heat, then added lemon juice to make it curdle. We ladled the curds into a colander lined with cheese-cloth, allowing the whey to gather in a bowl under the colander. We then tied up the cheese-cloth corner to corner and hung it from a short wooden rod over the sink, allowing the whey to drip-drip-drip for a couple hours. At the end of it, we had a nice, tightly curded, creamy chees not unlike ricotta. We left one container plain and added assorted herbs to other batches. In the evening we ate it on crackers with a fig tapenade to die for from River Wave Foods (purchased at a local farmer's market) and an orange fig spread imported from Croatia. The other gallon we are reserving in order to make it into chevre one of these days. Great fun!
Here's a link to River Wave Foods: http://www.riverwavefoods.com/
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