June 29, 2009

A Clean Break

I've been trying to figure out the exact definition of "A Clean Break" -- meaning that the milk has set, and is ready to cut.

The best thing I've found is to a (clean!) finger, poke it into the curds about 1" deep, at a diagonal, and then lift your finger straight up. If the curds "break" as you lift through the top, then you're good to go. If they just kind of ooze around your finger, they're not strong enough yet and you should wait a bit longer.

This page on Dr. Fankhauser's site has some good information about getting a clean break.

June 25, 2009

Next on my Summer reading list: Goat Song


Reviewed on the Wall Street Journal:

"Mr. Kessler goes off to the French Pyrenees to study cheese-making, taking a few bottles of Vermont maple syrup with him for trade. A dutiful student, he learns how to make a variety of hard cheese called tomme. Back home, he sets about creating his own version of it. We read about the turnings and moldings, the saltings and ripenings. It is an art that owes much to the early monastic Christians. The imagination settles, inevitably, on metaphors of transfiguration."