Got milk?

"How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?" ~Charles de Gaulle

Firm but smooth, nutty with notes of rich butter fat, a touch of salt and a faint but sharp tinge of acidity – just enough to trigger the salivary glands and make my mouth water. God, and to think you can actually make this stuff in your own kitchen! I feel like Eve biting into the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden as I lick a yellow and blue-flecked smear from the tip of my finger. It’s so good, it must be wrong, or illegal, or something. “Help yourself, but the blue needs a little more time”, Jessie says to me as my eyes roll into the back of my head and I slip into a state of food euphoria.

After moving out to Ashland a few months ago and having her dreams dashed of pursuing an internship at Rogue Creamery due to a lack of a dairy science degree, Jess did what any self-respecting, dejected, depressed, food-loving girl would do, dug into a quart of Haagen Daz. She went to the local library and checked out a copy of Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carrol, ordered the cultures, starters, rennets and molds online, milked some goats at a local farm, and made some cheese. A goat blue, goat camembert and cow blue – to be exact. Now, this milking thing may be commonplace for all you country folk, but I’m from New York City and I’ve never milked anything except for, maybe, a hangover. Truth be told, if I were in Jessie’s shoes, I would’ve gone for the Haagen Daz and a chick flick to drown my sorrows – so I’m bowled over by her gusto!

Intrigued by the whole idea of cheese making, I’ve made a few in my day. But only fresh cheeses like queso fresco and fresh ricotta, and with only store bought milk. And though I’ve been curious to delve more into the world of home cheese making, I’ve always been under the false impression that to do anything beyond basic, fresh cheese one had to have access to a farmhouse, refitted with a sterile, stainless steel room full of lots of expensive laboratory equipment, set against the bucolic English country side, and with a cold, musty and ancient cellar dug into a nearby mountain, ala Neil’s Yard, for which to age the cheese. But as we cut through the white, bloomy, soft rind of the camembert, the area closest to the rind oozing and soft, the center chalky white, slightly firm but still creamy, I realize the err of my thinking. Jessie made all of these cheeses using basic, household kitchen equipment and the cheeses have been ripening just fine in a standard home refrigerator in her house, since early December.

From the moment she showed me her little cheese project, I was determined to stick around this neck-of-the-woods just so that I could taste the final result. The goat blue is firm, a pale, gold color, streaked with mold. It looks a lot like Cabrales, but much more mild in flavor. It’s young, that distinctive bluey tang hasn’t fully developed, but it’s well on its way. The cow blue is creamy, almost the texture of a brie, salty and mild, with pockets of blue-grey mold. But, the goat camembert is really the piece de resistance. What I’m most struck by though is not just the differences in the flavors of the different cheeses, but the differences between the store bought milk and the milk from the goats that Jessie milked herself. The cheese made from the fresh goats milk is so much more nuanced than the cheese made from the store bought milk. Though it’s mild, the flavors are complex, with layers of butterfat, grass and hay. The rich, velvety smooth and creamy texture round out it’s tart acidity. I’m totally, thoroughly impressed and amazed.

Jessie’s is on the hunt for some cows to milk and, in the meantime, has whipped up a batch of cow camembert (sadly, without me!), which won’t be ready for another month or so. So, I suppose this means I need to go apartment hunting so that I can make sure the cheese is ripening properly…