Anna's Adventures in Cheese-Making: Goats Cheese

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! 

Winter Warmers: Veggie Soup at the Slow Food Cookery Class

Here at Slow Food on Campus Exeter, we've really been feeling the cold weather lately. It may be March and the evenings may be getting longer but things certainly aren't warming up quite yet.

And in our opinion, there's no better way to warm the soul than a good bowl of fresh, homemade soup. It'll heat you up, inside and out, all the better better to keep you going this winter in our chilly student houses!

So that's exactly what we got up to at our last cookery class...

Step 1: The Ingredients.

We buy ours from The Real Food Store in Exeter (click for link).  This means all our ingredients are fresh and local - and covered in mud! The first task was to roll our sleeves up and get stuck in at the sinks.

Step 2: The Demonstration

Charli from Slow Food on Campus took us through a demonstration of her Mum's parsnip and ginger soup. The theme of the evening was chop the ends off and slice the vegetables up - nice and simple!

Step 3: Get stuck in!

After a short demonstration, everybody was ready to get started. It was only 6:30pm but stomachs were already beginning to rumble...

The cookery classes are quite relaxed and informal; everybody hangs out and has a bit of a chat whilst they work. It's nice to come with friends or it's a really good way to meet new (food-obsessed) people on campus.

Our second soup of the evening was a cauliflower and apple recipe brought along by the society's president, Bethan. 

After a similar, quick demonstration, we were ready to go again and before long it was time to put the knives away and get cooking!

The ingredients went in the pot and the heat was turned up. There was nothing left to do but wait.

Now, what's a good soup without anything to dip into it?

The second part of the class revolved around a brilliant way to turn old, stale bread into a delicious treat.

First, we crushed our garlic into some butter...

And then we mashed it up!

And where's the best place to put garlic butter?

Right

in the middle

of a delicious baguette.

And conveniently, everything was ready at just about the same time (thanks to the handy chef on site who blitzed our soups for us once the veg had cooked - thank you!)

We were really, really, really hungry by this point.

Luckily, the cooking classes also come with a taster session tacked on the end.

Which essentially means "one giant rugby scrum free-for-all to see who can eat the most".

I'm ashamed to admit that I positioned myself right at the end of the table so that I could make a quick getaway back to the kitchen for more soup!

But it really was so delicious - both soups were real winners with everybody there and when we voted at the end, the parsnip soup only won by a couple of extra votes!

Despite our efforts, there were plenty of leftovers. I learnt my most important lesson that evening; always take a tupperware to the cookery classes.

Nevertheless, after much mess, I managed to pour a portion into my water bottle.

A great success!

If you want to recreate the class' winner at home, here's the recipe:

Parsnip and Ginger Soup
Feeds 6-8

• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 medium onions
• 800g parsnip
• A thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger (we find it's best to add a little more than this!)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
• Veggie or chicken stock (we used veggie)
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 sprigs of fresh coriander

1. Peel (where necessary) and roughly chop the carrots, onions, parsnip, ginger, celery and garlic
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium heat in a large pan
3. Put the chopped veg in the pan and stir with a wooden spoon for 10 minutes - the carrots should have softened a little and the onion should be turning golden 
4. Make the stock up with 1.8 litres of boiling water and pour it in
5. Bring to the boil
6. Stir and let it simmer for 10 minutes with the pot lid askew
7. Season with salt and pepper to taste
8. Garnish with fresh coriander

Ta da! A wonderfully simple and insanely delicious recipe for these chilly winter evenings! Enjoy!

P.s don't forget to buy local where you can!