Long time coming...

Well it has been awhile since I did any form of update here. Life gotten in the way of doing a lot of cheese related things but there's been bits on that front. :)

Casciata

Did a cheese for a feast in May 2016. Was based around this recipe -

Italy 1500AD Due Libre B - Se voy fare casciata, tolli cascio frisco et ova et lardo et scalogne trite crude.
Translated: If you want to make casciata, take fresh cheese and eggs and lard and sliced raw scallions.

I used my lemon cheese as the basis and added the egg and lard (plus parsley, mint and sage). The egg and lard had a cool effect on the end product, it made the cheese very smooth. Was surprisingly nice.

Politarchopolis University (Aug 2017)

I was the Dean of the Cheese Making faculty at PolitU. Which was awesome. Taught lots of classes and enthused lots at people about cheese :) Had two wonderful helpers/teachers in Don Lorcan and Lord Otto. And incredibly busy couple of days, but loads of fun.

 

Made a very large round with the hard cheese class, 5.1kg all up!

Some more of the old - Cheese Glue

Because someone asked about it today I am finally posting this up from the pentathlon.

Cheese Glue

Participants: Alex, Georgia, Fiona, Clare

Items: Milk as two forms of cheese and milk

Original Recipe

Cennini - To Make a Glue out of Lime and Cheese.

Chapter CXII

Ends the Fifth Section of this Book

There is a glue used by workers in wood; this is made of cheese. After putting it to soak in water, work it over with a little quicklime, using a little board with both hands. Put it between the boards; it joins them and fastens them together well. And let this suffice you for the making of various kinds of glue.

Redaction

Firstly this recipe does not specify the type of cheese to use, soft, semi-soft or hard. So this needs to be attempted with all types of the cheese to test for the most appropriate type.

Attempts using different quantities of water (ie think/thin mixtures) will be needed as well.

Ingredients

Cheese, quicklime, water, milk.

Method

Soak cheese in water (until soft?)

Mix quicklime (be careful as this will release heat) using boards (not your hands)

Mix in a little milk if it is too thick.

Put mixture between boards to set.

Our Process

Cheese

One attempt at an Asiago cheese has failed. I will use to good parts of the cheese as the hard cheese attempt for this recipe.

I have also made some quark which is a soft cheese. I will use this as the soft cheese attempt.

As I am unable to make semi-soft cheeses (I have no way to control humidity accurately enough) I will buy some cheap camembert or brie for the semi-soft attempt. [We never got to this part!!]

Making Quicklime

Lime can come from limestone or from sea shells.

Method:

Heat the lime to red hot for a minimum of 3 minutes.

Our Process:

Attempt 1: We attempted to make quicklime using limestone from a paver. We had two different types of limestone paver, a light coloured one called 'natural' and a darker coloured one called 'honey limestone'.

 

These paver also had different striations and shattered differently. We broke these into manageable pieces and filled two crucibles with them (Hulk, smash!).

We then used the furnace to bake the limestone. Firstly lighting the fire in the furnace from char cloth!

Unfortunately the provider of the furnace (Master Owen) was a little over zealous with the time taken to heat up the crucibles and they both cracked. Which you can see in the pictures.

We also tested the limestone at several points to see if it began to fizzle (a sign that it has been at temperature long enough).

 

This doesn't seem to have worked mostly, we believe, because it was possibly reconstituted limestone and may have had other additives which inhibited the process.

  

Breaking up the pavers - Starting the furnace - getting the pavers hot

Crucibles heating up - testing for quicklime

Attempt 2: Next attempt will be sea shells.

This time we used sea shells from shell grit for birds (which is tiny, tiny shells and almost sand like).

We heated the shells red hot for about 5 minutes using a gas torch. This seems to have worked, creating a small amount of quicklime.




Shell grit - heating shell grit with the gas torch - quicklime!


Final Product:

We made the quicklime in the evening and let it soak overnight to create a lime water. We then used this lime water, mixed with the cheese, to make a glue solution.

Making the lime water - asiago mix - quark mix

 

Bits of wood stuck together - samples for display/final entry

 

Final Entry

Notes:

• We tried two sets of quicklime with only one working. I will know better for next time what to look for in regards to colour changes (red hot and white hot) as well as products to use. Don't use pavers!
• The asiago was a complete fail. The intent of the recipe is to use the glue straight away and this cheese (and probably any hard cheese) will take too much time to soften sufficiently in the implied timeframe.
• Quark makes pretty awesome looking glue. Not sure of its effectiveness as yet, but good start. It has the consistency of Aquahere, which is good.
• It was very fun to have tried the furnace approach and starting it from char cloth and steel.
• Don't eat the paste....

Additional Notes after the fact:

• The glue held really well. I needed a hammer to separate the two bits of wood I had glued together.

Skyr (the Pirate cheese)

Origins

Norwegian originally (9thC) then moved over to Iceland. It died out in Norway (11thC) and is now a purely Icelandic cheese. This is a very ‘difficult’ cheese as most of the references say that you can only make Skyr from Skyr. A number of online sources tell of some very different processes for making a simulation of this cheese if you don’t have access to Skyr.

With unhomogenised cow’s milk -

1.       Using a sour cream starter

2.       Using a yoghurt starter

3.       Using a buttermilk starter

With crème fraiche

1.       Using a sour cream starter

With sheeps milk

1.       Using yogurt and sour cream as a starter

Some research into the specific bacteria’s found in Skyr produced interesting results. The bacterial makeup is found in a combination of live yoghurt cultures (Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, amongst others).

9^th-11thC it would have been made with sheep’s milk, Iceland having a particular breed of sheep as well. It was then transferred over to being made with cow’s milk, but that is much more recent (and post-1600).

My Testing Attempts

I have limited access to sheeps milk and the creme fraiche option was going to be way to expensive for the feast, so I went with the cows milk options. I toyed with making my own creme fraiche briefly, but I only had 5 days notice for making the cheese for the feast so thought it better to go with a simpler solution.

Given the variance in the methods, I did three test batches before making up the final for the Feast.

Method/s:

Sour cream	Yoghurt	Buttermilk
1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture sour cream	1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture yoghurt	1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture buttermilk
3Lt of milk was heated to 93oC Divided into 3 pots of 1Lt each Allowed to cool naturally to 40oC Rennet and culture was added and gently stirred Pots where then wrapped in towels and moved to the linen cupboard for 12 hours Curd was cut and transferred into muslin Hung over a bowl in the fridge for 24 hours

Results:

Sour cream	Yoghurt	Buttermilk
Curd was ok	Curd was firm	Curd was still a little loose
Hung for 24 hours only	Hung for 24 hours only	Hung for 24 hours then was in a strainer for another 12 hours
Tasted plain	Tasted creamy	Tasted plain

Given the results of the testing (and the fact that I can’t know what Skyr would taste like to compare it) I chose to use the yoghurt cultured method for the feast cheese. It had a lovely tangy note to it which made it stand out from the other two which ended up quite bland.

Feast Cheese

Seems to have been met with positive results and feedback. Was very tasty with the roasted beef that was served, as well as just with the fresh bread :D I ate a bowl all by myself!

Online sources (all accessed on or around the 10th August 2015)

http://icecook.blogspot.com.au/2006/02/skyr-recipe-and-instructions.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr

http://scandinavianfood.about.com/od/cheeseeggdairydishes/r/Basic-Recipe-For-Homemade-Icelandic-Skyr.htm

https://books.google.com.au/books/about/N%C3%BDja_matrei%C3%B0slub%C3%B3kin.html?id=yXVWnQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/35625594?versionId=44339002

http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/250317/

http://julesfood.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/skyrhomemade-icelandic-yogurt.html

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/skyr-or-yogurt-recipe

http://www.food.com/recipe/icelandic-curds-skyr-171363

http://icelandreview.com/stuff/ask-ir/2011/01/06/there-skyr-recipe-which-uses-only-buttermilk-and-not-skim-or-rennet

http://icelandmag.visir.is/tags/skyr-recipe

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/icelandic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_sheep

http://www.darnitchars.com/Historypage.html

Update - Life! Laurelling!

Its been some time since I did a blog update, much of that has been due to life. I've been unable to make cheese for the past 6/7-months as my husband has been going through chemotherapy (we were told that the bacteria could complicate things so just avoid it if we can). So there really isn't much to say on the cheese making front.

However, related to that I was asked to join the order of the Laurel in April. And I am very, very happy :) I will be Laurelled later this year at Fields of Gold, Politarchopolis at the end of Nov.

And with the 'ban' on cheese making lifted I intend to offer a cheese sideboard during the feast that evening. So I am scheming and planning on what cheese to make and when. This weekend will be the first in a number of sessions making some hard cheeses (Gouda this time) and then others during the time ahead. Later, and closer to the time, there will be soft cheese as well. It will be very nice to get my cheese on again after such a long break :)

My time during the cheese hiatus was mostly spent researching animal breeds, regional influence and the 'secondary resource revolution'. When I get a chance I will put some more article links up and write up some of what I have learned.

Cheese Bibliography - round 2

Been meaning to do this for awhile. And you'll see from the length it certainly has been awhile! Just wanted to post more articles that may be of interest to cheese-y folks.

My reading has varied quiet a bit this time around. Not quite as much focus on the cheese as such and with a lot of drift into the domestication of animals (specifically dairying animals). Some articles are pretty good, other should be taken with a grain of salt.

Bibliography 2

Badenhorst, S. (2002) The ethnography, archaeology, rock art and history of goats (Capra hircus) in southern Africa: and overview, Anthropology Southern Africa, vol 25(3&4), P96-103.

Booth, P. (?) The Macclesfield Cattle Enterprise 1354-1376, Academia, accessed Nov 2014,  https://www.academia.edu/5488855/The_Macclesfield_Cattle_Enterprise_1354_to_1376

Bogucki, P (1986) The Antiquity of Dairying in Temperate Europe, Expedition, vol 28, No 2, P51-58.

Brick, G.A. (2003) The University Farm Experimental Cave and St.Paul as the Blue Cheese Capital of the World, Ramsey County History, vol 38, no. 3, P4-10.

Clutton-Brock, J (1999) A Natural History of Domesticated Animals, Cambridge University Press, New York USA.

Copley M.S., Berstan R., Dudd S.N., Docherty G., Mukherjee, A.J., Straker V., Payne S. & Evershed R.P (2002) Direct chemical evidence for widespread dairying in prehistoric Britain, PNAS vol 100, No 4, P1524-1529.

Decker JE, McKay SD, Rolf MM, Kim J, Molina Alcala´ A, et al. (2014) Worldwide Patterns of Ancestry, Divergence, and Admixture in Domesticated

Cattle, PLoS ONE, vol 10, issue 3.

Dudd, S.N. & Evershed, R.P. (1998) Direct Demonstration of Milk as an Element of Archaeological Economies, Science, vol 282, P1478-1481.

El Zubeir, I.E.M. & Jabreel, S.O. (2008) Fresh cheese from camel milk coagulated with Camifloc, International Journal of Dairy Technology, vol 61 no. 1, P90-95.

Evershed R.P, Payne S., Sherratt A.G, Copley M.S., Coolidge J., Urem-Kotsu D., Kotsakis K., Ozdogan M., Ozdogan A.E., Nieuwenhuyse O., Akkermans P.M.M.G., Bailey D., Andeescu R-R., Campbell S., Farid S., Hodder I., Yalman N., Ozbasaran M., Bicakci E., Garfinkel Y., Levy T. & Burton M.M. (2008) Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding, Nature, vol 455, P528-531.

Gautier, M., Rouault, A., Sommer, P. & Briandet, R. (1995) Occurrence of Propionbacterium freudenreichii Bacteriophages in Swiss Cheese, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, July 1995, P2572-2576.

Hacket, T. (1588) A dairie Booke for good hufwiues, transcription by Kathleen Madsen 2015, accessed Jan 2015.

Huntley, D. (2013) Say Cheese!, British Heritage, vol September/2013, P54-57.

Jeon, I.J. (1996) Undesirable flavours in dairy products, Food Taints and Off-Flavours, Chapman & Hall, P139-167.

Kamber, U. & Terzi, G. (2008) The Traditional Cheeses of Turkey: Middle and Eastern Black Sea Region, Food Reviews International, 24:95-118.

Karamanes, E. (?) Changes in Cheese Production Among the Koupatsarei: The Cheese Batzos, ? P287-296.

Martin, M. (2008) Interiors and Interiority in the Ornamental Dairy Tradition, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20, no.3, P357-384.

Marom, N. & Bar-Oz, G. (2013) The Prey Pathway: A Regional History of Cattle (Bos taurus) and Pig (Sus scrofa) Domestication in the Northern Jordan Valley, Israel, PLoS ONE, vol 8, issue 2.

MacDonald, K.I. (2012) The morality of cheese: A paradox of defensive localism in a transnational cultural economy, Geoforum, vol 44, P93-102.

MacDonald, K. (2013) The Transnational Life of Cheese, A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, Blackwell Publishing, P293-315.

McCormick, F., Kerr, T., McClatchie, M. & O'Sullivan, A. (2011) The Archaeology of Livestock and Cereal Production in Early Medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP 2) Report 5:1, Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research (INSTAR) programme 2011.

Moore, J.E. (1995) Prints, Salami, and Cheese: Savoring the Roman Festival of the Chinea, Art Bulletin, vol LXXVII, num. 4, P584-608.

Nomura K., Yonezawa T., Mano S., Kawakami S., Shedlock A.M., Hasegawa M. & Amano T. (2013) Domestication Process of the Goat Revealed by an Analysis of the Nearly Complete Mitochondrial Protein-Encoding Genes, PLoS ONE, vol 8, issue 8.

O'Hara, C. (?) Gaelic Feasting on Island MacHugh and Native Coarse Pottery in Ulster, Department of Archaeology, NIU Galway.

Pringle, H. (1998) The Slow Birth of Agriculture, Science, vol 282, P1446-1450.

Roguljic, I.O. (2010) De caseo faciendo, PRIL. INST. ARHEOL. ZAGREBU, vol 27, P171-176.

Rubel, W. (2009) Homemade Butter - The best you'll ever have, Mother Earth News, June/July 2009, P44-51.

Rubel, W., Levi, J. & Loldepe, E. (?) Finding the Ideal Balance Within the Smoke-Cured Fresh and Fermented Milk of Northern Kenya's Samburu, Keata Kule Lorien, P278-287.

Rubio, R., Moya, V.J., Berruga, M.I., Molina, M.P. & Molina, A. (2011) Aflatoxin M1 in the intermediate dairy products from Manchego cheese production: distribution and stability, Mljekarstvo, vol 61 (4), P283-290.

Salque, M., Bogucki, P.I., Pyzel, J., Sobkowiak-Tabaka, I., Grygiel, R., Szmyt, M. & Evershed, R.P. (2013) Earliest evidence for cheese making in the sixth millennium BC in northern Europe, Nature, vol 493, P522-525.

Sherratt, A (1983) The Secondary Exploitation of Animals in the Old World, World Archaeology, vol 15, No 1, P90-104.

Sullivan, J (2013) Clay pot fragments reveal early start too cheese-making, a marker for civilisation, PhysOrg, Princeton University.

Tresset A. & Vigne J-D. (2011) Last hunter-gatherers and first farmers of Europe, Comptes Rendus Biologies, vol 334, P182-189.

Tunick, M. (2014) The Science of Cheese, Oxford University Press, New York USA.

Vigne, J-D., Carrere I., Briois F. & Guilaine J. (2011) The Early Process of Mammal Domestication in the Near East, Current Anthropology, vol 52, supp 4, P255-271.

Vionis, A.K., Poblome, J., De Cupere, B. & Waelkens, M. (2010) A Middle-Late Byzantine Pottery Assemblage from Sagalassos - Typo-Chronology and Sociocultural Interpretation, Hesperia, vol 79, P423-464.

Walker, H. ed (1994) Look and Feel - Studies in texture, appearance and incidental characteristics of food, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Prospect Books, Devon UK.

Wei C., Lu J., Xu L., Liu G., Wang Z., Zhao F., Zhang L., Han X., Du L. & Liu C. (2014) Genetic Structure of Chinese Indigenous Goats and the Special Geographical Structure in the Southwest China as a Geographic Barrier Driving the Fragmentation of a Large Population, PLoS ONE, vol 9, issue 4.

West, H.G., Paxson, H., Williams, J., Grasseni, C., Petridou, E. & Cleary, S. (2012) Naming Cheese, Food, Culture & Society, vol 15, issue 1, P7-41.

Zeder, M.A. & Hesse, B. (2000) The Initial Domestication of Goats (Capra hircus) in the Zagros Mountains 10,000 Years Ago, Science, vol 287, P2254-2257.

New project - some cheese/milk related research

Lately I have been looking at recipes that use milk. In the most part to find more period descriptions of cheese making.

Now in that investigation I have a few times read someones redaction and gone hmmm, that's not the right cheese for that time period or location. So as an attempt to understand the wide variety of redactions to recipes and to also look at the cheeses used and methods for making them I am gathering what I can from the period sources as well as any redactions I can find for them.

All these will end up in a database so that I can do some structured research on who, what and when. Must be the data analyst in me :)

I've barely scratched the surface so far (an entire 50 recipes) but found some interesting things, such as 5 different but exceptionally similar recipes for 'Snow'. Spread across both timeframes and locations.

Many sources to gather into my tables, but a good start. Need to work out a bit of a classification system to make the groupings a little easier, but moving forward!

12 month Aged Gouda

A couple of days ago I cut open one of the first rounds of Gouda I made last year. This is the first time I have aged a cheese for that long.

Very edible. But really quite sharp compared to what I am used to. Not unpleasant, but personally I would nibble at this rather than gorge! Tasted by a few people at home and then I took it along to our Wednesday night regular to spread the joy there.

Crumbly, sharp, tasty. Those were the general comments. I found it needed the water cracker to temper the sharpness a little. But yum!