So it has now been nearly four months since my dad and me made our first hard cheese. We made a colby which has now done it's time so to speak and was time to have a look at. The first thing I noticed was there were a few cracks in the wax around the cheese, not big enough to notice if you weren't studying it carefully, but big enough to allow in mold I suppose as it had a few healthy colonies of different mold species growing on the surface.
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| Cheese with original wax still intact (except the side I picked open to look inside right before taking) |
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| Cheese with wax removed and mold in full glory. :P |
After googling what to do with a moldy wax rinded cheese, scraping off the mold affected area, followed by an application of cider vinegar to the surface of the cheese seemed to be the way to go. I cut off all the surface mold, then noticed that the cheese was slightly holey in the interior, which the mold had started to grow down into (picture below) so had to cut off a good side section to remove all the affected areas.
This is a side shot of the cheese when sliced through the edge. Quite a few air bubbles. More than I was expecting. Perhaps we didn't use enough pressure when in the cheese press? We did go as hard as it would go, so my other thought was that we didn't have quite enough cheese in the press for it to achieve maximum pressure on the cheese. Who knows, it's trial and error at this stage.
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| Cross section of aforementioned holy cheese. |
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| Final product after mold resection |
So now I will rewax the cheese until I find out if it still fit for human consumption, as I don't particularly want to get sick from eating off cheese. Maybe I'm just a bit wimpy, I'm sure my dad would dig in. We shall see, past experiences have given me a fine appreciation for patience, especially when it comes to mold, as I have a healthy respect for their abilities to make one feel less than spectacular. Will update once we either throw it out/eat the damn thing.
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| 1/2 rewaxed |
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| Fully rewaxed! |
A very good first attempt, Kim! What variety did you say that this was? I would agree about insufficient pressing time/weight possibly causing the furry growths. And wasn't there a small refrigeration glitch not too long ago? Peter is our household cheese expert---I will ask him to share his insights with you.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, what species of radish are you growing? They are beautiful! How do they taste?
Those first few pictures are nasty, lol!
ReplyDeleteI love that you now have a healthy respect for patience, lol. You're so funny; totally the opposite of when you were a kid ;-)
Also, I want to hear about what mouldy foods you ate previously that made you sick. Dad always just claims it's penicillen, heh.
Deb - It was a colby, made from your milk in fact! Yes, our cheese cave had a few dramas, so hopefully next time we make the next batch I would double the amount of milk used, and have the fridge all sorted and caving properly. :) Do you reckon it's still safe to eat Deb?
ReplyDeleteThe radishes came from a simple pack of salad mix seeds! They seem to like the growing conditions, I put it down to the soil we got from Good Life Soil Co. they are so nice to deal with.
Vik- Yes, the moldy pictures are a bit gross, I wasn't sure if I should even bother trying to save the rest of the cheese, but as the process of making it took so long I refused to just throw the whole thing out! Hopefully it will still be edible!