Cheese-making Result = WIN

Recently I was lucky enough to participate in a cheese-making course held at a place called Small Cow Farm in Robertson.  The course was conducted by the lovely, lovely, lovely and extremely knowledgeable Carole Willman from Cheeselinks.  Carole knows just about everything there is to know about cheese and other dairy products and she made cheese-making seem easy, accessible and fun.  If you get a chance to do a course with her, I highly recommend it.


Anyways, on this particular course I learned how to make triple cream brie, tomme (a farm cheese pronounced Tom), goat’s cheese, ricotta and paneer.  At the end of the course I came home with my share of the spoils – about 400g of brie and 300g of tomme ready for curing*.  I fudged some of the processing recommended in my cheese-making guide and winged it.  The brie I left out longer than recommended (over two weeks instead of a week to ten days) to get a stronger flavour and the tomme I didn’t cure at all – wrapping it and refrigerating it straight away instead.

Today, some three weeks after I made them, I unwrapped them both and cut them open to test them.  It’s earlier than it should be for eating (usually you'd wait at least a month) but in the brie’s case all this means is a firmer texture and in the tomme’s case…well that was a much more interesting result.

First of all let me say that I think, given how much good cheese costs, that we’ve been deluded into thinking that it’s incredibly complex to make and that nothing we do ourselves will ever come close.  I certainly don’t think either Charles or I were expecting my cheeses to be any good**.  So when we unwrapped the brie and the scent wafted up, we were both pleasantly surprised.  Carving it revealed quite a chalky texture but the flavour…the flavour is incredible.

I quickly unwrapped the tomme – which is basically a codeword for simple farmhouse cheese that comes in many forms.  It was a mild yellow and not as firm as I’d expected.  Slicing it open revealed a cheese that smelled and looked exactly like a Havarti.  And boy did it taste like one too.  Mild, rich, creamy.  Divine.

The cheese course has been a raging success.  I could see in Charles’ eyes that he’s a total convert.  I will now convert the fridge in the garage to a cheese-making curing fridge and begin experimenting and expanding.  One thing’s for sure, I’m never paying $90 a kilo for French triple cream brie again.

*Left at 10-15°C instead of being refrigerated.

**It didn’t help that the mould was quite thick when I brought it out of the curing container – Charles was convinced it was way too fuzzy and dubious when I told him that wrapping and refrigerating would tame it.