Hatch Chili Goat Cheese and Goat Ricotta
Sunday morning I received an MMS photo from a friend showing 4 gallons of milk and this text message: “4 gallons of fresh goat milk waiting for you!”. I jumped in the car and drove up to Denton to pick it up. Mike is a friend at work and his folks have a farm north and west of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. This would be my first home made cheese since my ACS trip and I had some fresh Hatch chili peppers that I wanted to put in a cheese.
I learned quite a few things at the American Cheese Society, especially at two fantastic lab sessions lead by Marie Chantal Houde (topic: Tomme Cheese) and Marc Druart (topic: Rheology). I will need to make some upgrades to some equipment and ingredients but for now I implemented several process improvements. I put the pot, mold, measuring implements and utensils in the dishwasher and set it to sanitize before the milk run. Also I pulled the thermophilic bacterial culture out of the freezer so it had time to come to room temperature while I was away. I sanitized my thermometer and my PH meter in a water and bleach for several minutes and then rinsed them well with tap water. I may change that in future to distilled water.
I took pains to spend more time observing the cheese process and carefully filled in details of time, temperature and PH in a worksheet. I was particularly attentive from the point I added the rennet to watch for flocculation and then for the setting of the curd. I had this odd feeling that Marie Chantal and Marc were looking over my shoulder while I was making the cheese. Good incentive to me to be much more attentive to all of the details!
Goat cheese does not easily form firm curd but I wanted a firm cheese this time. I managed to get a firm set but there was more protein suspended in the whey than I normally see with cows milk. While the curds were draining in a colander I put the pot back on the heat and raised the temperature to 197 degrees F. I was able to capture about a pound of ricotta from the whey, though there was still a milky color to the initial whey draining from the butter muslin.
Here is a picture from the next day while the Hatch Chili Goat cheese was forming a rind and the CheeseWife™ and I were enjoying the Goat Ricotta on crackers.
(I know the bowl, cooling rack and other implements make for an odd picture but I was cooking dinner in my rather cramped kitchen while munching on cheese and crackers and I belatedly thought to make a picture with both cheeses!)
P.S. The weekend prior, the CheeseWife™ and I went to a concert in Dallas but first stopped in to Scardello Cheese for wine and cheese. Scardello’s was a lot better than the concert. We are glad we stopped by Scardello’s and will definitely make a habit of dropping in whenever we are in Big D.