Ok so this recipe is similar to the last one I posted but it produces an entirely different sort of cheese!
This is a simple recipe for a soft goats cheese. It’s a bit of a cheat recipe really,
since real goats cheese involves using a mould culture and maturing it, but
this makes a delicious sort of goat-y cream cheese, and is ready to eat
immediately so I think it’s earned it’s place in this column.
You can change
this recipe up as much as you want, mix the cheese with black pepper, any
combination of herbs, or garlic. Those are just ideas I stole from Boursin
cream cheese haha, I’m sure there’s loads of other things to do with it!
It tastes like a mixture between cream cheese and chèvre goats cheese, so use it where you would normally use those. It's great by itself on toast or crackers and lovely in creamy pasta dishes!
Equipment:
Medium/Large non
reactive saucepan
Colander
Cheesecloth/muslin
Large bowl
Cooking
thermometer (optional)
Ingredients:
1 litre
Unpasteurised goats milk (I got it from Exeter’s farmers market, from the goats
cheese stall)
1 lemon
1 ½ tsp Salt
Herbs (I used
thyme and sage)/garlic/black pepper/whatever flavourings you want
Method
- Start by heating the milk in the saucepan. Heat it to just below boiling (or around 90 C), stirring.
- Turn the heat way down and add lemon juice, 1 tsp at a time for about 4 tsps, stirring continuously.
- When the curds begin to separate from the whey, stop adding the lemon juice. The result will not look like anything you might recognise from making cheese with cows milk as the whey is less clear and the clumps of curd are smaller.
- Leave to sit for about 5 minutes to ensure the curds and whey are separated completely. Place 2 layers of cheesecloth over a colander, and the colander over a large bowl. Strain the contents of the saucepan into the muslin lined colander, then bring all the corners of the muslin together and tie the top, to form a “bag” for the cheese. Hang this either from the tap in your sink, or from a wooden spoon over the large bowl. Hang for 1 hour.
- Mix the cheese with chopped herbs or other flavourings, then shape into a sort of sausage for ease of cutting bits off. It is traditional to have leaves on soft goats cheese (I think?) so I pressed some sage leaves into the top.
- Refrigerate wrapped in clingfilm until use, and enjoy on crackers, toast, or pasta sauce. Beware, it goes off quite fast, and will start to taste a bit weird within about three days, so get eating!
Next on my list of recipes is mozzarella, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
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