One of the advantages to being married to a dietitian is that she is way into food, really good food and if she can make it herself/ourselves, so much the better. So for Christmas I gave her a cheese making kit she had spotted on one of the blogs she follows. According to the instruction, if followed religiously, you would have your own mozzarella cheese. We looked for minimally pasteurized milk which we THOUGHT we had found in Asheville (where else). Our first effort was almost a flop. while we didn't end up with mozzarella, we did end up with some cheese that bore some resemblance to ricotta. The real problem was that you need unpasteurized milk to make it. Enter the source.
She who will remain nameless, provided us with a gallon of pure cow goodness complete with all the cream. Finally, the chance to make the real thing. Following are pictures of the actual process as it occurred in our kitchen. Amazingly, it took all of about 30 minutes to make.
cutting the curds
In case you ever wondered what curds and whey looked like. Miss Muffet was one tough cookie if she ate this stuff.
Its coming all together, the whey is separating from the curds and it is beginning to resemble the cheese we hoped we were making.
Finally, lisa is pulling the finished product like taffy. The more you do this, the better the finish.
The finished product.... one pound of mozzarella that tastes very good. Our next batch will include some herbs for flavoring. This batch will go on a pizza or maybe in some ravioli if we can get our friend Joanne to get her ravioli press up and running.
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