Cheese! (This time with skim milk!)

I tried my hand at cheese-making* again this morning, this time with accidentally-purchased skim milk.

(By accidentally, I mean I deliberately went for my "cheese-making brand," but then seemed to go completely blank of mind and forgot what I was getting it for, mindlessly reaching for the skim out of habit. But so you don't think I'm a danger to myself and others, by going "blank-of-mind" regularly, say behind the wheel or walking across busy intersections, I did have a loose-and-energetic Thora with me and so it's fair to say that I was particularly distracted and more prone to blank-of-mindness for all things besides keeping her from pulling breakables off the shelves and walking backwards into the annoyed man pushing his cart that we KEPT crossing paths with.)

I was using the Garelick brand again, (a large dairy company located in MA, so the milk doesn't have to travel as far, and therefore, doesn't need to be pasteurized above home-cheese-making temperatures), so I was mildly confident. However, I think up until this point, I had only a 50% success rate, so this confidence was tempered with memories of dumping a ridiculously large blob of cottage-cheese-looking goo down the drain (after thinning it out with water first). And to top it off, I'd never had success with anything but whole milk, so I was skeptical. But amidst the dissonance of my luke warm confidence and lurking doubts, I plunged ahead.

Things weren't looking good at first. I let the curds and whey separate for 8 minutes, and when I attempted to cut them, they kind of immediately went all brain-looking. They kind of seized up into a few balls the size of a softball, a baseball, and a racquetball. I forged ahead nonetheless.

Then comes the draining, which I did carefully, but more speedily than in the past, scooping the curds into a colander and then pouring all the whey out over the curds to get all the smaller curds as well.

Next comes the part I dread: the microwaving. Our microwave is exceptionally strong and I don't know if this is the problem. But even in the failed attempts, the cheese always looked pretty much how it's supposed to look, until, that is, it gets the microwave step, which results in cottage cheese-looking goo that quickly progresses into a cream of wheat-looking goo.

However, today, after 45 seconds in the microwave, I already had a shiny, stretchy ball of cheese. I was floored. Was it the skim milk? Was it the slightly more than a quarter of tablet of rennet that I used. Was it the shortened trips in the microwave. I stretched it and pulled it, rejoicing in this silly little success. I put it in the microwave one more time, this time for just 20 seconds, so that I could mix in the herbs and cheese salt blend (1/2 tsp of cheese salt, and 1/4 tsp of dried oregano, basil, and rosemary). I quickly got the seasoning incorporated throughout and then pressed it into a small glass bowl, so as to avoid the ridiculous-looking end product that I've had in the past. (The photo above is of the cheese setting up in the bowl which is sitting in a couple inches of very cold water.) The cheese sets up very quickly, I've found, and so to take too long means that the cheese is randomly seasoned and looks like a long snake of cheese that's been shaped into a ball, rather than looking like the shiny, smooth ball of mozzarella which is so pleasing to the eye.

I've tasted it, and it's good (I'm 3 for 5 now!), if a little too herbaceous. I might ease up a bit next time, perhaps still using all four flavors, but just a smaller combined total measurement. However, this was eating it straight, cut from the whole. I have high hopes for it when melted onto something like tomatoes under the broiler.

*I use the 30-minute mozzarella kit from the folks at the New England CheeseMaking Supply Company.