TOGETHER

Last June, I spent five days learning about natural cheesemaking. I tasted a lot of things I hadn’t tried before, nor thought I ever would: warm raw cow’s milk I’d squeezed, raw yak milk from a fellow student who raised them, clabbered milk, and dried, coagulated milk from a young lamb’s stomach.

The class was taught by Trevor, a commercial cheesemaker turned nomadic researcher-educator. He taught us barefoot, outdoors on a raw dairy farm (more firsts). It gave me what every good class should: many more questions than answers and unlikely acquaintanceships.

Ruminants are plant-eating animals with even-toed hooves, part of the Ruminantia suborder. They digest plant materials by fermenting them in a unique stomach before digestion, mainly through the activity of microbes. Young ruminants have an enzyme in their stomachs called chymosin, which turns their mother's milk into a cheese-like substance. Cheese was likely discovered accidentally; perhaps noticing by storing milk in a pouch made from the abomasum, or the fourth stomach of a ruminant, and noticing it had coagulated. Trevor says milk wants to become cheese.

Before these young animals start digesting grasses, their stomachs are made to digest milk. Their abomasums are harvested at this stage to produce rennet. Though a single abomasum can make a lot of cheese, this fact was what influenced me to research plant-based alternatives. While vegetarian (synthetic) rennets are available on the market, such as the ones that I used in my initial cheesemaking attempts, much of my research involves understanding exactly where my food comes from. These lab-created substances lack any sense of terroir, essentially becoming placeless.

Working with processes that require very few ingredients, like bread and especially aged foods (like cheese or wine), the flavor often comes through fermentation (time + microbial activity) and terroir, that is, the environment in which the ingredients came from. When I’m making cheese with thistle stamens, for example, this environment gets as microscopic as the soil the cardoon was growing in.

Research Poems has been an incredibly worthwhile exploration. However, I realized at Sour Milk School that it also misses an important aspect of the cheesemaking process, the milk, and the animal that milk comes from. Unfortunately, simply using plant-based rennet does not separate me from that process.

When you’re making and eating cheese with homemade rennet from a dehydrated abomasum surrounded by grazing animals, life and death coalesce into a curdled mess. While not slaughtering animals for meat, the dairy industry is not without suffering. That is what happens when living things are treated as individual resources; when what is not useful is discarded.

My seat in class was a white rocking chair. Draped over the top was the hide of the lamb whose stomach we used to make rennet. I am sitting here writing this, still unable to picture that lamb’s tiny curls without feeling deeply upset about it. But I want to sit with it. I might need to sit with this. At least at this scale of a small farm, perhaps I might be able to honor the dead by honoring the living; by making cheese and sharing it with the people I’ve met.

When making cheese with rennet, you must cut the curd. The coagulation process is incredibly fascinating to watch, a kind of magic or technology. Trevor taught us what he learned through travel, to begin with, the cross: one cut vertically and one horizontally, meeting in the middle where the whey would start to fill the space. It was a gesture of thanks; to the animal whose milk we used, to the other animal whose abomasum, and to each other, for spending time together learning.

In place of a new recipe, I wanted to provide you with an old one. Ricotta was the first cheese I made and remains one of my favorites. Made traditionally, it’s a product of reheated, leftover whey. I came across this article in Saveur Magazine about rural Calabrian shepherds and provides a recipe for making ricotta. It’s a fascinating recipe that I’d like to try soon. For now, I have a simpler one (you may already have the ingredients). As I was writing this chapter, I made ricotta again for the first time in a while.

The first recipe I used didn’t turn out how I expected. It yielded some cheese but a small amount and very milky whey. Within simplicity, there are many small ways to make mistakes. There are also several ways to iterate and improve. Unscientifically, my second attempt changed every variable: different milk (fattier + more of it), higher temperature (185° to 200°), different coagulant (lemon to distilled vinegar), and salting (during the heating process instead of after draining).

Ingredients

Method

Add milk to the pot along with salt. Heat your milk on medium heat, stirring often to ensure the bottom layer of milk doesn’t scorch. Once you reach 200°, slowly stream in the vinegar. Continue stirring, gently, and watch as the curds start to separate from the whey. Turn off the heat and let it rest with the lid on for 15-20 minutes.

While you wait, line a colander placed over a bowl with cheesecloth. After 15-20 minutes, scoop the curds into the cheesecloth. (Note: you may want to dampen it slightly to keep it in place.) Then pour the remaining whey and smaller curds. Let the curds drain for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. As expected, the longer it drains, the less moisture the cheese will have. Keep the whey to use in baking or cooking, where you might use water, milk, or buttermilk.

This recipe was adapted from here.