Cheese Based Question aimed at Colonials.

[santaman2000]

.....Do you have a Limburger cheese in N. America that is made there?

I don't think I've ever seen Limburger anywhere in stores at all (neither domestic nor imported) Might be different up North. More German immigrants in Wisconsin and the Ohio River Valley. That reminds me; there's probably a lot of personal cheese making among the Amish.

 

[Robson Valley]

Ah! Summer of 1976. Senor Pico's/San Francisco. My first chili relleno.
I've stuffed a lot of Anahim peppers since then. Some of them are just too hot to be civilized food.
Got a good cheese & meat stuffing for regular green peppers ( aka capsaicums).

My kids dragged me off to some restaurant in Vancouver, BC that had chili rellenos.
They were so good, I went into the kitchen, found the kid that made them and gave him $20.00.
Just one of those dishes that tastes like you hope it will?

I gotta do more cheese stuff this winter. More complicated food, just for the craftsmanship.
I have to ask city people to shop for me. This is a big 'C' conservative village for food.

 

[santaman2000]

Fruits with cheese? Well, I've had a few combos that were good:
-Fresh sliced apples with fresh sliced cheddar (preferably a tart apple such as a Granny Smith and a sharp Cheddar)
-Hot apple pie with fresh sliced Cheddar (again, preferably a sharp one)
-Fresh sliced cantaloupe with fresh sliced mild cheese
-Softened cream cheese (yeah, I know it ain't really cheese) with jalepeno jelly spread over it and set out as a dip
-Is a pimento a fruit? If so, then I have to include Pimento Cheese.

 

[Robson Valley]

Cheese & fruit plates are nice to graze on. Pimentos are little fat red peppers, fruits for certain.
I think they're really blah, even as stuffed olives. Use garlic cloves or better yet, pieces of Feta cheese.

My Dad was obsessed with a slice of cheddar with apple pie. Why, I don't know and never asked.
I could care less. A second slice of apple pie makes more sense to me. Granny Smith is my pie apple of choice.

We made Chevre as one of the 5 cheeses in our class. It's as soft as peanut butter.
1/4" thick on toast is really quite good in the morning. Added fruit preserves might be a booster, too.

 

[Janne]

They do not stuff olives with real fruit. It is a mix of the fruits, gelatin and such. A quick look on the can will tell you. Hence the uniform size and rubbery texture.

Not sure why they do it, it does not add any flavor?

God designed olives to have a stone in them. Pitted olives lose the flavor.
if you like olives with a hint of garlic, some (more expensive unfortunately) brands have the garlic loose on the jar, and the olives are as Gods intended.

Olives and Feta cheese are made or each other. Wonderful combo.

A thick slice of Bulgarian Feta, drizzled with a good olive oil, a handful of olives, a French bread and you are set!

I personally prefer Bulgarian Feta before Greek Feta.

 

[Robson Valley]

Manzanilla olives were stuffed with real pieces of real pimento. That's the original concept of a stuffed olive.
I don't know what's in the red globs of mucus that are used now. I don't eat those any more.
Maybe something that some tubercular swallow has coughed up for nest building.

Tressa is a twisted knot of salty fibrous cheese. Say, 4" long x 2" across. Everything that Feta is trying to be.
Don't know how big a city has to be in order to find it any more. Arabic writing on the label, too.

My bread, kalamata olives, a couple of kinds of cheese, fingers of red & green peppers makes my lunch.
EMMA brand Brie is Canadian made. Cosmetically, it's a sorry looking cheese.
But, I fully intend to buy more. Call it an "import" from the big city!

 

[Janne]

If it was mucus from a tuberculosis affected Swallow, the Chinese would buy the whole production!

Even if I have sounded negative to the American cheese products, I have to confess that the various Blue cheeses are good. Not as good maybe as a Roquefort, but just as good as any European Blue Cheese.

Some are called Amish Blue Cheese and similar.

Made by Amish? I do not know.

Swedish, Danish, English, American = same good. I eat a lot of Blue Cheese, from many countries. Usually I let them mature for a couple of weeks in the fridge. All turn perfectly delicious.

We get several sorts of Stilton here before X-mas, in beautiful, useful, ceramic jars. Badly unmatured, so the wax layer has to be removed and the jars stored in the warmest part of the fridge or the wine room for at least 2 weeks before they taste good.

 

[Robson Valley]

Despite not knowing yet what the ripening time might be, I am going to try my hand at making Brie.
I'll blend an ounce or two of cheese in boiled water for the bacterial/fungus additive parts and see what happens.

The whole beginning part, to get the curds is really simple. There isn't much to do.
The real trick is learning how to process the curds, even if it takes months.

 

[Janne]

BY boiled you mean boiled and cooled? I would not do that.

If I was you I would just take a piece of rind from a cheese you like the flavour of, and rub on the compressed curds.

Why? Brie and Camembert are cheses that ripen from the outside in.

 

[Janne]

Some factory made Blue cheeses have the mould lnjected.
The expensive ones are aged in caves that is full of the mould, but they have to put holes through it ( vents?) so the mould can penetrate easily inside the cheese.

I visited Roquefort years ago. Very Interesting. .

 

[Robson Valley]

I know very well what the Brie and Camembert processes are. Confirmed in the course.
In #88, I said that I would use boiled water. Sterile. No plans to hydrolyze and denature the bugs I need for ripening.

Brie and Camembert are cheeses that need squeezes in the store.
The raw ones are really hard and surprisingly dry. Ugh!

 

[Janne]

But what will you do with the boiled water?

The problem is squeezing the ones that come in a wood foil round box. I usually buy ‘unsqueezed’ by me, and at the furthest back at the shop fridge, as I do not want anybody that had just been to the shop loo squeezing it.

If immature when home, I let it mature in the fridge.

 

[Robson Valley]

I intend to disperse some cheese in the boiled (sterilized) water and add that as my innoculum.
That is typical of the suspensions currently in use.

 

[Toddy]

I didn't know that was how it was done.
There you go; learn something new

Would that work with crowdie do you think ?
M

 

[Robson Valley]

I can't see that there's any point in adding any bacterial culture (innoculum) for a cheese with a very short life span.
All the others get put away for months, at least. I will eventually look over the 10 page handout we got for recipes and techniques.
The rennet tablets that I bought have a little booklet of recipes as well.
Funny. The recipes don't make a whole lot of sense until you have done the process at least once!!!

The first cheese we made was a semi hard, expect it to be like a gouda or emmenthal in texture in 3 months.
The innoculum and the rennet were measured added to the warmed milk at the same time.
Once we got a 'clean break,' the curd was cut and stirred then eventually drained. . . . .. .
Each group made a batch of about 14-15 liters of milk.

Two groups elected to mess with a salt rind, the rest of us vacuum sealed ours and into 10C for 3 months.
Not 1% of the mess using wax.
I have a nice walk-in cold room for hanging hams, etc so the ripening part for me will be pure neglect except
for notes on a calendar!

 

[Janne]

Will you try to do a blue cheese too?

 

[Toddy]

Sorry Robson Valley, I ought to have been a little more clear with my question.
Crowdie is a soft cheese, but it's also the basic cheese that gets pressed and dried off and lightly matured. I wondered about adding the blue to it so that it developed as the cheese matured.

M

 

[Janne]

I have done my own quark cheese from youghurt and kefir, that is the extent of my cheese making.

I need quark for the traditional jewish cheese spread Liptauer.

 

[Robson Valley]

If my memory serves, the moldy cheeses mature quite slowly. We didn't do anything like that.
I'm not very interested with the exception of Brie and Camembert. Most of them are 15C or colder.

Your "crowdie" + bacterial culture is what we made to become a semi-hard cheese that will take 3 months to ripen.
My next phase is to round up the containers that I need as molds and presses.
I know that 15 liters of whole milk will give me a pressed cheese that's about 6" diameter x 6" tall.
I believe that I will model my cheeses for size after what I see in the grocery store.

I'm just going to take an uninhibited shot at it. Not much of a gamble.
Upscrew and the Ravens get a treat.

 

[Janne]

Today I bought some blue cheese, Amish Blue. It said ‘matured 90 days’ on the packaging.
Tastes like Danish Blue. Nice.

You can do it. Call it ‘Buffalo Blue’

I pay for both the cheese and FedEx.