Eat Alberta 2012: Session One, Cheesemaking

You may remember my post telling you all to register for Eat Alberta.  Well, those of you that listened joined a fun filled foodie day at NAIT!

My lovely sister, Kristy, joined me for the day, as well as Mira and Yvonne! Kristy and I took the same sessions while Mira and Yvonne went off on different culinary adventures. 

Our first session of the day, after a great morning keynote by Nature's Green Acres, was Cheesemaking!

Mozzarella. The bane of my cheesemaking existence.
I've tried to make it 3 times before at home. Alas, all I have accomplished was complete and utter failure.

Until today.  The day I met Chef Allan Roote of NAIT!

He was an excellent teacher! No wonder NAIT scooped him up... He'll also be instructing NAIT's upcoming Artisan Cheese Program.

We used an adaptation of Ricki Carroll's 30minute Mozzarella.  A recipe I have used before with little to show for my effort.

I had followed all the directions!
Don't heat the milk too fast.
Don't over heat the milk.
Use good quality milk.
Add your ingredients at the right stages. Make sure they're measured out correctly.
etc etc

My problem.
I had been using whole milk (3.25% milk fat).
Mozzarella works BEST with 1% or 2% milk!!!!!

First we added the pre-measured and dissolved citric acid into our pre-measured milk, stirring slowly but constantly as we poured it in.

Then, the milk is SLOWLY heated up (burner on LOW).  The slower the milk is heated, the better the cheese.

The whole time the milk was heating, we were stirring. Gently, of course. No spoons were allowed to scrape the bottom of the pots!

Poor Kristy's burner... even though it was set on low her milk heated up fast and over temperature.
The rest of the session we (including Chef Allan) were trying to save it, but it basically turned into a mushy ricotta....
Still, her failure in class was still WAY better than anything I had made at home.

Don't worry, she still got to take home some mozzarella.
We were in the same room for French Macarons afterwards so when Chef Allan came back to finish a cheese someone had abandoned he let Kristy finish it with him and she got to take it home :)  What a great guy!

After the milk comes to temperature, 90F, remove it from the heat and add the dissolved rennet (pre-measured for us).

Stir constantly but slowly when adding the rennet, going in a bottom-to-top motion (up and down motion). Take care not to agitate the milk for more than 30seconds after adding the rennet.

The milk was then left off the heat to form a curd mass...

After the milk has sat for AT LEAST 5minutes, you may check to see if the curd has set enough.

Chef Allan showed us a "surface cut" technique. You take the handle of the spoon and gently "cut" the surface of the curd.

Then you slide in the tip of the handle perpendicular to the cut you made to see if it creates a clean break.

When the milk is set you'll also see a clear whey forming around the edge of the pot.

Once we determined the curd was set, we then took the handle of our spoon (such a handy tool!) and cut the curd mass into 1inch checkerboard squares.

As evenly as you possibly can.

There's a fancy cutting technique that I'm sure Ricki shows on her site (link at top of post).

You can see the whey starting to separate from the cut curds.

(The milk is still off the heat at this point)

After cutting we left it undisturbed once again for at least another 5minutes.

Then, it's back onto the stove top, low heat of course.

We stirred with our hands, gently bringing the curds from the bottom of the pot to the top.

We did this until the curds reached their next temperature point, 105F.

Look at all the lovely curds!

Then it was time to strain (which I didn't get a picture of...)

You could reserve the whey to add to bread dough/pizza dough, feed to cats/dogs/piggies, etc.

We didn't save the bulk of it, just a bit to add to the ice bath so the salt we added to the cheese didn't leach out into the water.

Here's what mine looked like after straining.

The curds are still soft and there's still whey seeping from them.

It then gets zapped for 1minute. 

Since I don't have a microwave at home anymore, I would use the waterbath method.

This is the curds after a minute of microwaving.

1 tbsp of salt was added and then the kneading and stretching began!

The more you work the curds, the drier the cheese.

Dry mozzarella is great for grating to use on pizza, in lasagna, etc.

A fresh moist mozzarella is a real treat on a cheese or charcuterie platter.  I made a moist mozzarella.

This is one of my bench-mates working the salt into the cheese.

You can see little tears on the surface of the cheese, that means it needs to get microwaved again to soften the curd up.

Which she did, don't worry :)

Sometimes it gets microwaved up to 3 or 4 times, as the curd has to be really hot to stretch.

It was a drier cheese, perfect for pizza!

Here is the end product!

A lovely moist ball of fresh mozzarella!

It gets put into an ice bath with whey to cool off.

It pays to be stubborn sometimes... I could've given up on cheesemaking after 3 failed attempts at an "easy" recipe.

But I didn't.

My reward is CHEESE! :)

Thanks Eat Alberta! Thanks Chef Allan!