Meet Me There

… and it looks and smells fantastic! I took a pic with  my phone but I’m having trouble with uploading it this blog, something to do with file permissions.

The loaves don’t quite look like the ones we made at the bakery though. Both of them rose a bit funny and kind of cracked down one side, but I think it’s because I didn’t slice the top of the loaves vienna style. I’ll do that next time.

Just got to wait for it to cool down enough to lash with butter and honey and consume… drool!

Cheese making. It takes all afternoon, but the action is spaced with half-hour waits. If you make cheese with a friend, these waits are perfect for consuming cheese made earlier and even better if enjoyed with beer, cards and laughter.

I know it’s not cheese, but it goes well with it - I spent last Sunday at a sourdough breadmaking workshop at the Redbeard Bakery in Trentham.

Our host and baker John was a wealth of information about baking and we got to make many loaves of bread - quarter tins and vienna loaves - in their enormous wood-fired oven that’s over 100 years old.

The loaves were fantastic too, heavy and moist and deliciously sweet - I won a few friends by giving some away, and of the four loaves we kept Elicia and I had eaten three within as many days.

We left with careful instructions and the beginnings of a starter leaven, so I’ve been looking after it every day and in a couple of weeks I’ll be able to have a go at baking in the oven at home.

Can’t wait!

The French Dr Alain Delabos has recently become one of my favourite people, having reported findings that cheesy favourites like Brie and Camembert can actually lower cholesterol if eaten at the right time of day.

And that time is: breakfast!

“Cheese is wonderful medication against cholesterol,” claimed Dr Delabos, “as long as you eat it that right time.”

His technique, called chrononutrition, is based on the premise that each human cell has functions that are biologically programmed to take place at precise times.

“Chrononutrition is the right food at the right time and in the right quantity,” he told Le Parisien.

According to the technique, fatty foods such as cheese or a traditional fried breakfast can be safely consumed without guilt first thing in the morning.

Heavier food – like steak and chips - should be eaten four to six hours later.

Sugary foods, including dark chocolate, jam and honey, are fine in the afternoon, while evening meals should be relatively light and fat-free. Fish or seafood are recommended, with no dessert.

The doctor warned against trying to cut cholesterol or weight by eating less altogether.

Last weekend the stove was fired up, milk sourced, rennet dug out of the back of the fridge - and cheese production resumed!

It’s been over six months since the last cheese I made, having a beautiful little son has meant my weekends are spent quite differently than before - but last Sunday saw me back in the apron.

As a re-introduction cheese I went back to the original camembert. As well as being a fairly easy cheese it has the advantage of being ready to eat within a few weeks, and it’s still one of my favourites.

To add a bit of extra interest I put some coarsely crushed peppercorns into the middle. I’ve never tried this before, but I broke them up with a morter and pestle, poured boiling water over them to sterilise, the when I was laying the cheese out into the hoops I put half the curds in, sprinkled a small teaspoon of pepper in each one, and then filled with the rest of the curds. It looks right, although the peppercorns are maybe not spread as evenly throughout the cheese body as I was imagining.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. If it works well, my mind is already filled with other things that might work: sundried tomato, olives, wasabi, pickled onion, chilli… who knows where it could end!

My wife and I are now parents!

Tobias George Crook (Toby) was born at 7:31pm on Monday 3rd March, weighing 4.065 kg (8 lb 15 oz), 50cm long and looking quite spunky.

Here’s a couple of photos!

Last time I made washed rind it was a bit of a failure - I tried the one in the book called ’soft washed rind’ and it turned a bit too soft and became, basically, mush.

So this time I’ve tried the one called ‘hard washed rind’. I  made the cheese itself about 3 weeks ago now and it turned out well, it’s a fairly basic hard cheese recipe, very similar to the one I used for Romano. The distinctive flavour comes from the bacteria that grow on the surface after the cheese is pressed.

To grow the surface bacteria the cheese needs to be ‘washed’ every day with a watery bacterial solution. After a couple of weeks the surface is meant to grow a sticky orange rind and pong like crazy. Meant to. Unfortunately I forget to do the wash three days out of four, so although the surface is looking a bit strange and has a little bit of fluffy mould growing on it there’s nothing orange yet.

We’ll see how it goes…

Washed rind, where have you been all my life? It’s a traditional style but it seems to me that it’s still underappreciated here in Australia. The first time I remember even trying a washed rind was the Milawa Gold I wrote about last year. And this is my second experience: a washed rind from King Island Dairy known as ‘Stormy’.

I like this cheese a lot. Even more than the Milawa variety. Stormy has a consistent texture and a smooth taste with just a hint of mushrooms, and although it does pong when first unwrapped, the smell doesn’t hang about for too long.

Appearance: Stormy washed rind comes in a circle wrapped in paper and plastic looking similar to a Brie, but with a crinkled rind that’s coloured a dull orange. Inside it’s a warm cream colour, smooth and shiny.

Aroma: This cheese smells, and strongly, especially when first unwrapped. The aroma is a little like compost - earthy and grassy - and although it seems offensive it is at the same time incredibly attractive.

Texture: Soft and smoothly consistent with a slightly chewier outer rind, this cheese begs to be sliced and consumed.

Flavour: Perfection! Not particularly strong - definitely not as strong as the smell suggests - but sweet with a slight bite. Very edible, I bought a wheel of this and shared it with various people over a couple of weeks, and everyone who tried it was delighted.

It’s been a busy season, lots of summer fun and family time, and we had a fantastic Christmas day. The cheese I made went down a treat! The blue and white combo was soft and delicious - quite perfect - and the romano was even better than last time I made it. It had much better texture - a lot closer, still quite crumbly but smoother and easier to cut. not as hard as true romano, more like a cheddar - but I’m not too worried about that… I like cheddar! Served them both on a couple of platters with some grapes, along with a couple of King Island cheeses I bought for the occasion.

Well, Christmas is on its way, and one of the things that I wanted to do this year was make my own cheese platter for Christmas day. To that end I made a romano earlier in the year, and a couple of weeks ago I started a Blue and White combo cheese.

This is a really interesting one, it’s made in much the same way as a normal blue cheese but after the cheeses have been in the mould and dried, they are then dipped in 90 degree water for a few seconds. The heat kills the mould spores near the outside of the cheese, which is then sprayed with a white mould suspension. So once it matures it becomes white one outside, blue in the middle. Marvellous! You can see here in the photo (a couple of weeks since it was made) that the white mould is clearly growing well, and in the deeper holes there’s a hint of the dark blue residing inside. I can’t wait.