I like to eat.  I like to cook.  Thankfully, these two affinities are tied into one another more often than not.  For example, Mike talk frequently about my “Mass Spectrometer”, or the almost uncanny ability I have to taste a food and tell you Exactly. What. Is. In. There….assuming that I’ve tried the individual ingredients before, which I frequently have because I am also as nosy as the day is long, and if I haven’t tried something new (culinary or otherwise) each and every day I almost feel like I’ve wasted it.

The Mass Spectrometer is a tool/skill that has seen me through time and time again, but there are certain situations where taste is just not enough, and you need to rely on knowledge, ability and training.  Baking and cheese making are just two such situations.  I can taste a tart and I’ll usually be able to name all the flavor elements that went in there, but I might not be able to extrapolate the ratio of flour to sugar, or whether the dough used milk or water for moisture.  Similarly, I can taste a cheese and say, “This tastes delicious!” but that’s about it.  I’ll know if the cheese is young or aged, washed rind or bloomed, and if there is a brine I’ll usually have a good idea of what it was made from.  However, I am absolutely and utterly lacking in the ability to say, “Oh yes, that is a washed rind sheep’s milk cheese from the Basque region made from ewes that only ate four leafed clovers, and it was air dried and aged for 3-5 years.  To make that you need to [step 1] and then [step 2] and [step 3], but don’t forget to [step 4] or [step 5] or you’ll end up with a mess.”  I’m sorry, because I really WISH that I could do that, but I can’t.  I’m not nearly the expert cheese monger that I wish I was, and for that reason I look to the experts……or the internet.

And oh, the internet. What a tangled web we do weave.

My ridiculous cookbook collection left no hints as to the intricacies of cheese making, so I launched a head-on battle with the interwebs to discern what best practices were from the home kitchen.  Here is what I learned:

• Make sure your goat’s milk boils
• Under no condition should your milk reach a boil
• Use vinegar to coagulate the solids
• Use ONLY cider vinegar to coagulate the solids
• Use lemon juice and NEVER vinegar to coagulate the solids
• Boil the milk after you add vinegar
• Under no condition should you boil your milk after you add vinegar
• Strain the cheese through cheesecloth
• Press excess moisture from your  cheese
• Eat the cheese immediately
• Press your cheese and let it drain for 1-2 hours, or up to overnight for a firmer cheese

Let me tell you what I found out: The interwebs are full of crap.

Sure, that comes as no surprise to most of you, but I do expect SOME measure of reliability from the sites that I frequent, particularly when there are recipes and reviews involved.  The problem with goat’s cheese seemed to be that the reviews included, “I barely scalded the milk and it didn’t work”, “I boiled the milk and it didn’t work”, “I used special milk from the infamous cheese-bearing Alphanikku ewes, and it didn’t work.”  (Don’t bother with Google.  I already did.  There is no such thing as an Alphanikku goat). That’s when I started to lose faith.  I’ve used “reliable” guidelines umpteen times in an effort to make paneer, but with surprisingly limited success. That’s ridiculous, because panner is pretty much the easiest unripened cheese that you could ask for.  And yet…so it goes.  No dice. No cheese for Tina.  I think that I’ve been foiled so many times that it’s difficult to believe that any cheese making will be successful.

I tried my best, guys.  I really did.  Goat cheese, however is still eluding me.  Let me start by telling you what I want.

Perfect Goat Cheese

• creamy
• tangy
• rich
• snowy white
• spreadable

…..and what I got.

• tangy
• crumbly
• snowy white
• vinegary
• dry

Not a complete success.

Have you made goat cheese before?  Because if so, I implore you to show me the way.  I just want to produce a creamy and flavorful goat’s cheese that I can be proud of.  The goat cheese I made, despite my best intentions, was most definitely a  FAIL.

Let me walk you through my road to agony and self-deprecation…….

Here is what I started with:  2 liters of goat’s milk, NOT low fat or ultra-pasteurized (to the best of my  knowledge, because both can limit coagulation), and some apple cider vinegar.

Because I was in the Girl Guides of Canada for longer years than I wish to admit, I still like to always be prepared.  Casually waiting on the side I had a colander/strainer lined with a double layer of cheese-cloth, and it was sitting in a deep heat-proof mixing bowl.

I heated the goat’s milk on medium high heat for about 10 minutes, or until it was just cresting a boil.  If you look closely you can see that there was a foamy sheen on top of the milk, and in the lower left you can see how bubbles were just starting to break the surface.

It was about at this point that my kitchen started to smell a lot like…..goat.  Really.  Boiling goat’s milk is a good way to get every cat in the neighborhood all hyped up as your partner starts to question his/her good judgment in choosing you as a potential spouse.  It was rangy and not entirely pleasant.  I almost wished that I had a stem of hayseed to suck between my teeth, because if nothing else it would have made me feel more generically farm-y and therefore I would have felt entitled to the barnyard smells that were emanating from the stove and soon swirling throughout the neighboring rooms.  I’m not a farmer, and I have no entitlement to a farmer’s imperturbable character, ergo this was not an entirely uncomfortable sensation and Mike complained for days that our house smelled, “Like goats”.  He was not wrong.

Leaving the pot on the heat I quickly added 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and gave the mixture a stir.  I had read a lot of recipes and reviews on goat cheese, but in terms of the acid ratio it was most frequently 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar or lemon juice to 1 liter of milk.  Thankfully, the milk started to separate almost immediately.  I started to relax and feel at ease, like this was some kind of a cheese-making cake walk.  After all, the biggest problem that I’ve ever had with paneer is that the milk wouldn’t separate and I sorrowfully tried to strain out milky whey and lackadaisical solids which were in no way interested in becoming cheese.  Goat’s milk?  WIN. At least, that’s what I told myself.

I stirred the milk regularly for about 2 minutes while it was on the heat and continued to separate.  After that,  I took the milk off the heat and let it sit and cool for 3-4 minutes while the super cool coagulation took place, and the solids visible distanced themselves from the whey.

This step had also made me nervous.  After reading so many reports that said, “DON’T LET THE MILK BOIL WHATEVER YOU DO OR IT WILL TURN OUT LIKE SH*T {no sic}”, I was hesitant to trust this much heat.  However, it seemed to work.  Or so I thought. You can see that the whey was clear and slightly yellow while the solids were a cool milky white, which is obviously a good thing…..right?

The mixture was poured through my cheese-cloth lined sieve so that the solids would be collected.  I usually don’t discard the liquid whey as it’s full of protein and flavor, but because I know that I’m not making soup or doing too much cooking in the next few days I sadly had to bid it adieu.  It looked granular and thick, but as a goat’s cheese ingenue I was hardly one to judge.

The solids were stirred within their cheese-cloth shell for a minute or two to bring them together before I added salt and any other flavor modifications.  I’ve been feeling the dill lately, so about 1 teaspoon of dried dill entered the mix.

After stirring the seasoning into the cheese base, the suspiciously crumbly mixture was gathered together with cheese-clot and tied at the top.  I used a wooden spoon to press out any additional liquid which might have still been lurking in the creamy depths.

Following directions again, I put a small plate down on top of the wrapped goat cheese parcel with a light weight. The weight continued to press out moisture so that the cheese could drain for another 60-90 minutes.  The damage may have already been done, but I fear that this was still too long.

Et voila. Goat cheese.  A totally anticlimactic goat cheese, as fate would have it.  This was less creamy than crumbly, and it held together almost like a queso fresco or pressed cottage cheese. That’s cool, but not really what I was going for.

Was the problem the “draining time”?  Maybe I shouldn’t have let the cheese rest?  Frankly, I don’t know yet.  I would also question the ratio of milk to vinegar, because there was a decided vinegar flavor to the cheese that wasn’t distasteful, but I certainly wouldn’t seek that out.

The texture was crumbly and unpleasantly dry, some might say.  “Some” being “me”.

I must hasten to say that if nothing else, this cheese-like product was absolutely delicious.  It really was.   The flavor was mild and almost sweet but just a bit gamey and most assuredly from goat.  What was more of a concern was the texture.

Therefore, I consider Goat Cheese V1.0 a failure.  The taste was almost true, and the coagulation was apparent, but we got neither the creamy and spreadable character or the irreplaceable tang that makes us reminisce about goat’s cheese.  I tried to shmear it on a cracker, but that was a mistake.  I just need to figure out The Right Way, so that my goat’s cheese will be silkily spreadable and unbeatably tangy. However, until I do, at least you can take a look and let me know what you think I did wrong so that hopefully other people won’t repeat these mistakes.

xoxo

Tina