Say Cheese

Today I made cheese.  White cheese, blue cheese, French cheese and four different flavours of cream cheese.  For Christmas, W had bought me a cheesemaking course at Wildes Cheese.  It wasn't on a country dairy farm but in a small industrial unit near Tottenham Hotspur's football ground in north London, and what a good day it was too!  We started with a talk about the science of cheesemaking, and then made all our cheeses from scratch using milk from a farm in Sussex, different 'mother' cultures for the different types of cheese, and vegetarian rennet.  Nine of us on the course who all got on well, and the two guys who own the business were very entertaining and informative.  Really enjoyable, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in that sort of thing.

My main shot shows the two owners, Phillip and Keith, supervising us packing our curds into basket moulds, while I've added an extra showing Keith going through the maturation process with us.  The five cheeses in descending size order are, in fact, all the same cheese, but different ages, showing how they shrink as they mature and dry out.

I've brought home all the cheeses we made; I now have to look after them for the next few weeks while they mature into the finished object!