Spring Chèvre

It’s spring!!  How do I know, you ask?  The blooms are blooming like mad, the lawnmowers are fired up, everybody’s in full-force sneeze mode, and….Don brought me goat’s milk.  My friend and co-worker Don has a goat farm. He can’t really sell his milk, but he’s happy to give it away to anyone who would like to have some of this blessed elixir.  Don’s goats have had their kids, and he milks the mothers daily, sometimes offering me three and four gallons at a time.  When fresh, my family can’t tell the difference between this and cow’s milk on cereal or a big glass with cookies.  I’m personally not a big fan of it heated up with my coffee, but there is one way I LOVE goat’s milk:  made into a creamy mound of chèvre.  “Chèvre” in French is the word for goat, but also the word for the wide range of cheeses that can be made—fresh or aged—from goat’s milk.  I am so in love with the simple variety, which is similar to a dry cream cheese, that I haven’t ventured into attempting the aged or rinded varieties.  Time and space are also issues, but fortunately chèvre is so easy to make, and freezes very nicely, so it’s never a problem.

Making your own chèvre is really, really easy.  I mean it.  I got turned on to cheesemaking by my friend Heidi, who invited me over one afternoon to make mozzarella.  I was intrigued; she used store-bought milk, nothing special.  We heated it, we added little packets of something, we donned rubber gloves, stretched it, then rolled it into little balls and dropped it into ice water.  Ta-dah!  Add some sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and you have my favorite caprese salad.  I HAD to know how to do this!  Turns out, Heidi had gotten the recipe and packets of rennet (the stuff that curdles milk into cheese) in a kit she had ordered from http://www.cheesemaking.com/.  Awesome.

When I looked on the website and discovered the direct-set cultures for goat’s cheese, I ordered a box and waited breathlessly for Don’s offer of milk.  The direct-set culture is really like Cheesemaking For Dummies; you put the milk into a non-reactive pot that will hold a gallon of milk.  You heat it slowly to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.  You turn off the heat, add in the direct culture, stir lots, then cover it and put it somewhere with a constant room temperature.  I use a cooler.  Then you wait.  Twelve hours.  Or 24 hours, if you forget it.  Then you line a colander with cheesecloth (the really dense food-grade kind; the website also sells these), and spoon out the solids, saving the whey for some yummy bread or soup (adds flavor and protein to many things).  Make sure your colander is sitting on a plate or cookie sheet. Then you wait.  Four hours.  Or more, if you forget it (but best to forget it in the refrigerator or a cool place, just in case).  When you’re done, dump it into a bowl and add a teaspoon of cheese salt (also sold on the website) or sea salt.  Mix well.  The instructions say to avoid adding salt if you’re going to freeze it, but I’ve never had any problem freezing the salted batches.  It probably changes the texture a bit, but I usually use the frozen stuff for pizzas or omelets.

Don's an agriculture professor, so I trust my source and usually don't worry about using raw milk, as long as it's fresh.  That having been said, another step I would add if you aren’t sure of the source or freshness of your goat’s milk is to pasteurize it before lowering the temperature to 86 degrees.  You do this by heating it to 165, keeping it there for 15 seconds, then putting the pot in an ice bath to quickly cool it down.  This preserves the good proteins and fats while killing undesirable bacteria.  Most importantly, when cheesemaking, make sure everything is unbelievably clean.  I usually use pots, bowls and utensils that have been through the sterilization cycle on my dishwasher.

Cheesemaking is by nature unpredictable.  Some batches come out creamy and spreadable, others are more crumbly.  This depends on the milk, the time of year, the humidity level, the quality of culture, and so many other factors.  I love each difference, but my favorite is a spoonful of the creamy white yumminess spread on multigrain whey bread.  A rich reward for surprisingly little work!