It’s taken me awhile to get around to this post, but a wee bit back in time – January 2009 – those of us at fucheese got together and had our first 2009 cheese event.  Our purpose was to get back into cheese making after the hiatus brought on by the holidays, plan for the upcoming year, and show off holiday cheese swag.

There were a number of minor setbacks, even prior to the actual cheese making, mostly due to my ill planning and failure to read the recipe all the way through.  (All things I made resolutions to correct this year.)  Since we didn’t have the starter needed for Ricki Carroll’s recipe, we used one from The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrel-Kingsley.  While a good time was had by all, the cottage cheese could have benefited from closer attention.  Cheese making, I’m coming to realize, is really all about attention to detail and attentive monitoring.  Not necessarily skills that I’ve honed in the kitchen as I’m more of a throw it all in a pot and see what happens kind of cook.

The milk got a LITTLE hotter than it should have right from the outset, so it carried a scalded aroma and flavor all the way through to the end product.   I think we also rinsed and drained it a bit too much as well as it was very dry.  Even after adding some milk as suggested by the recipe to make it more resemble store bought cottage cheese it just tasted kind of crumbly.  While certainly not our best attempt at cheese, it was nice to get back into the kitchen and start talking about potential solutions and ideas for monitoring the cheese process in the future.  You can check out the day’s events here.

You’ll note some pictures of the cheese plate I served up which was a collection of Iowa cheese (+ one from Wisconsin) that I’d purchased while visiting my family over the holidays.  I was just somewhat interested to see what was available from my home state, like for instance, Maytag Blue Cheese, made in Newton, IA.  Iowa certainly held its own in the tasting, but I must say, that this was my first exposure to Carr Valley Cheese Company, and their aged goat cheese, was amazing.