Anyway, inspired by Rosendula's example of buying milk and cream from the reduced section, I built up a little stash and had a go at making a hard cheese.
I used this recipe http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Ch ... eese98.htm but in time-honoured fashion substituted what I'd got for what it asked for
So instead of a gallon of milk I made it up with a mixture of single cream, jersey milk and a little semi-skimmed just to top it up. I cultured the milk with buttermilk overnight, then followed the instructions for making the curd. Pressed the curd in our small tofu press (don't tell my gal!) and a paneer press I got off fleabay. Out of a gallon I got about one and a half pounds of cheese, which I then matured for a month, according to the instructions.
Being a complete prat I didn't think to take any photos, and we've eaten it now
so I'll try to remember next time.It was absolutely delicious, looked like a cheshire, but was very mild - we didn't manage to hold onto it long enough to let it mature (partly for reasons explained below)
. But I was rather chuffed with it.But I did have two problems with it
1) It didn't melt like hard cheese on toast - I don't know if that was because I didn't mature it enough but the reason for this was
2) It went mouldy on the outside really quickly. The recipe did say to coat it in wax to mature it, but I didn't have any so left it wrapped in muslin, until it started going mouldy then left it unwrapped, hoping this would stop it - it didn't. Out of a pound and a half I must have wasted a couple of ounces shaving the mould off the outside. I did taste a bit, but it was mouldy tasting not nice cheese mould, so I binned it.
I've got enough stuff in the freezer to have another go so wondered if anyone had any suggestions for stopping this happening again. The not melting bit I think will be resolved by keeping it longer as, along with a little more cream, a couple of duck eggs and some veg it made the nicest quiche we've had in many a year.
And it seemed to melt just fine in that but was about 3-4 weeks more mature by then.I don't really want to have to invest in wax. Even with cheaper ingredients I reckon it still cost me about £8 and I don't want to push that price up any further - if I'm paying that sort of price I can buy better cheese from the deli!
Oh and the whey I froze in portions and I've been using it to bake bread - very yummy. So I suppose part of my £8 is included in making about 10 loaves of bread too.