Cheese making
These are a few milking cows ready to be milked, look at their udders they are full of milk, today farming is done in a different way, everything is modern and there are milking machines, but in the old time we used to milk the cows by hand. 
There are many types of cheese in the world, this photo is from a factory that has these wheels of cheese there to mature. Cheese is very yummy to eat in many ways and can be used to add to lots of food, as we all know.
Farming and cheese making
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(29) Farming and cheese making
Dear readers, we
are continuing to write about my life story, so, just to give a sense of
continuity to these articles that we are writing here, we are still going to
talk about the farms animals that we were talking about in our last article. We
could say that in the farms, we are using farm animals for our own benefit in
many ways, one of these benefits is the milk that we take from the cows and
other animals, and how we used it. But because I have not said everything in
our previous article, because I thought it was a bit harsh to say some cruel
things, when you are talking about spring and you want to say that everything
in spring time is beautiful, I have shifted that harsh part here. So, before we
continue to start milking the cow and making cheese, I am going to write it
here-under. Because this is a fact of life that happens, even if we don’t like
it to happen.
What I am going to
say here is that farmers sometimes are pushed to do something that seems cruel,
but it is not their fault if they do it, because these things have got to be
done, so what are those things that I am trying to delay saying; okay let me
say it, these things that we are delaying to say may seem cruel to some of us,
but it is one of those ways that the farmers have to live their lives with, not
because they are cruel but it needs to be done that way anyhow. So, don’t be
angry towards the farmers, because they have to do it anyhow, we people
sometimes do things what seems against Mother Nature, because we need to
control everything around us for our own benefit, so, we do some cruel things
and one of those things is that we take away the veal from mother cow, we sell
the veal to the butcher who does whatever he has to do in this case, after we
have done that, then we can happily milk the cow, so the poor mother cow cops
it both ways, but these are facts of life and they cannot be changed; So dear
readers do not feel sorry about mother cow and don’t think too much about it,
as these things have been accepted and done for centuries. So, let us accept it
ourselves and forget about the cruelty that sometimes life brings to us, as it
is inevitable.
Now, that I have
explained this somehow cruel part of us humans, let me go back to tell you
about cheese making, because we would like to show you what we were doing or
did with the milk that we took from mother cow. As you know, in our last
article we were talking about what I was doing in our small family farm when I
was young, we were talking about spring when all animals have their offspring’s
and at the end we were talking about the cows and the milk that they produce.
Now, let us talk a bit more about the milk that we took from the cows, because
we want to show you how farming was done the old ways; as we have said farming
is based mainly in recycling all the produce that comes from the land,
therefore it is based on the assumption of waste not want not, this would also
apply to the milk that we take from the cows and other animals, so this milk
must be put to good use and since in those times there were not many choices,
how to use it, we would make cheese from this milk that we had, as I will
describe the procedure later in this article.
As you know, this
article is being written because this is also part of my farm life story, at
the same time because I love eating cheese, I would like to say a few things
about cheeses and how good it is, and then we will go back to our normal farm
life story.
Today we enjoy
eating cheese in many ways and so do I, in fact in a lot of prepared foods we
use many types of cheeses in many ways, so, cheese is very popular food; to understand
its importance we need to look at food preparation, and how often the chefs use
cheese in preparing their food. Now apart that cheese can be added to many
dishes at the end when preparing the food, there are things that the cheese is
the main ingredient, cheesecakes, macaroni and cheese and others dishes, you
can even make a cheese sandwich by itself or with other ingredients, I love
cheese so much that sometimes I just eat a small piece of it with nothing else,
it leaves my mouth sweet and my stomach satisfied and happy, I even use it to
replace cough lollies and usually it works, but that is up to the individual
taste and what sort of cheese you use to do that.
Anyhow here under
are a couple of links that will show you how cheese can be used; I hope you
will find them useful:
Here we could say a
lot more about cheeses and their uses, but perhaps it is better if we go back
to talk about my life story in the farm, what we thought about cheese then and
also how we made this cheese the old way, we would also say the ways that we
believe cheese came about, in other words how we believe making cheese started.
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How we started to make cheese
Let us say that
cheese tastes so good that when you are young you would like to know who
invented cheese, so let us talk about cheese. When we talk about cheese we have
to admit that cheese is one of the best and most used foods that we consume, in
fact we may have to assume that cheese is perhaps the most used dairy product
that we use after milk itself, we may assume that about everybody eats cheese
nearly every day or at least has eaten cheese several times during their lives,
I am assuming that because I eat cheese just about every day, even if I eat it
only in small portions, and most other people that I know also eat cheese
regularly. So, even now sometimes we wonder who invented cheese so to speak,
therefore here-under we are trying to answer that question, just the way that
we believe it happened, including the views of some other people that we have
talked about it.
There are reasons
to believe that cheese making is very ancient, in fact there is no way to know
how early humanity started making cheese, I have not seen anything written in
the history books about when cheese first appeared, even though they talk about
herds of sheep and cattle, so we have to assume that since they had sheep and
cattle, they would milk them and use their milk in many ways, beside other
things that they could use these herds for. Since they had this milk somehow
ancient people discovered that they could use milk to make cheese and since
then we have made cheese.
There are several
theories how making cheese started, one of this theorises says that perhaps at
the very beginning when some of those shepherd stored their extra milk, if the
milk was left there for too long in would turn into curd and then in a sort of
cheese, perhaps just a piece of very acid cheese and therefore it would not be
as good as the cheeses that we make and have today, but they started to make
cheese anyhow, because they needed to save whatever they could to save
themselves sometimes from starving; anyhow, knowing that the milk could become
cheese, from this event that occurs spontaneous if you leave the milk for a
long time, they started to make cheese; you see, even though the cheese that
they made was an acid piece of a semi solid paste, the very ancient people
sometimes they had to use whatever they had to feed themselves, so they used
this cheese and slowly worked out how to make the milk become cheese; anyhow
with the passing of time in one way or another they worked out how to make
cheese properly.
So, since early
times once we humans learned how to make cheese properly, and then how to cure
cheese and keep it for long period of time, we have been making cheese and
eating cheese ever since, because cheese has one of the best nutritional values
and could easily be stored, so, today we are making several types of cheeses
and we can choose which type we want, at the supermarket there are many types
of cheeses that would be hard even to know all their names.
But cheese does not
come just from the supermarket, so, in order to make sense to the young people
of today, let us describe where cheese comes from so to speak; perhaps just to
pretend that we are not sure where it comes from, in order to tell the younger
generation where cheese comes from, since the young people are not exposed to
the natural ways of life as most of us did in the past, therefore for them
would be hard to imagine how cheese is made and where cheese comes from, they
think that it just comes from the supermarket.
So let me see how I
could tell you in my own way how to make cheese, since I had to make some
cheese myself when I was young; so, let us describe and discover how the cheese
is made, and also where it comes from, just to inform the younger generation,
because I happen to know this firsthand as I was working in the farms when I
was very young, and in our family farm we made some cheese as well. Now the
first thing that is necessary to know is that we use milk to make cheese, we
use farm animals to milk them and then make cheese form their milk, so let me tell
you what I have seen happening and what I did when I was young, so, that we
could and would make cheese.
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To make cheese we milk farm animals
In this article we
are talking about making cheese the old way as well, first of all I have to say
that we have always used farm animals to milk them and use their milk to make
cheese and other things. Now, in order to understand what I am going to say
next you need to imagine that you are living in the past; say seventy years ago
or there about in a farm as I did when I was young, because life then was very
different from today, so many things were done in a different way as well
including cheese making.
But anyhow that
wasn’t the only thing that I observed then, because, while I was living in this
farm, I have observed many things and I have learned many things including
Mother Nature ways of doing things and thus I observed also what follows here
under:
While I was living
in the farm not only I learned how to make cheese the old ways, because I was
observing everything around me as well, and as we all know it is only natural
to observe everything around you, since it is the way that helps us survive,
and therefore I was observing Mother Nature as well and I saw this; the ways
that Mother Nature has set consists of certain time rules, so, everything
happen in a natural way at the right time, this setting of how things happen in
the natural way is almost faultless, it has to be because this gives the
greatest chance to the new born, just let us look at what happens with the
farms animals, you see, most of the farm animals give birth to their offspring
when there is plenty of food to go around, and when there is plenty of food
they make also plenty of milk, it happens also when mild and fine weather is
usually expected, this is how Mother Nature has set everything to work and it
works very well indeed, because there is no strain on the new born when they
are weak.
Therefore, it is
for this reason that in springtime most of the animals offspring are born,
starting from the goats, sheep, and also the cows that usually calf once every
year and they make plenty of milk especially when there is plenty of green food
to eat, also other animals have their offspring, the goats have their kids, the
sheep have their lambs, the mares have their foals, and other animals have also
their young’s whatever it is according to their specie; there are reasons to
believe that they are born in spring so that they can grow big and strong
during the spring and summer, so that when the cold weather comes back they
would be able to cope with it easily, this is really how Mother Nature wants it
to be, when we do not intervene and upset the natural ways.
Dear readers, I
have written a few extra things above, just to find an excuse and delay to say
something that is going to sound cruel, but I cannot avoid it any longer: we
the people that own the farms and the animals, sometimes we have to do things
that go against Mother Nature, as we want and need to control everything around
us. Sometimes we do very cruel things also, and one of those things is when we
take away the calf from mother cow, we sell the calf to the butcher and then we
happily milk the cow, so the poor cow cops it both ways.
You see we take
plenty of milk from the cows after selling their calves, and what we do with
most of the milk? We could sell the milk, if there is a market for the milk, or
we could make cheese and other dairy products from it. So, hereunder we are
going to talk about, how we made cheese at the time when I was young, and then
how we made ricotta cheese, I know that what I am going to say here is going to
be old fashioned, because today is not done as much as then accept in some
cases, when it becomes necessary do use the old ways; but anyhow, here we are
talking about my life story and the way of how things were done and happening
when I was young, so let me continue to tell you my story.
But before we do
that, let us talk about the modern ways of how they make cheese today, say in
the cheese factories like Parmigiano Reggiano, which is a well-known cheese all
over the world, and it is used a lot on many culinary things. Perhaps this will
make us compare the great difference, between the way they do it now on a grand
scale, and the ways that we used to do it then in our family farms when I was
young.
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Parmigiano cheese making
Cheese making
There are many
types of cheese in the world, but it would be wise not to mention them because
it would take some time to write and to read them; so let us talk mainly about
one of the best cheese in the world, Parmesan cheese, which is a cheese that is
used in many culinary things, you just need to watch one of these cooking shows
to see the many times this type of cheese is used. Now we would also like to
talk about from where this type of cheese comes from, as this cheese has a
special recipe that is protected even today, so let us talk about this cheese,
since it is one of the most popular cheese:
The king of cheeses
must be Parmigiano Reggiano, as its name suggests it is from the province of
Parma and surrounding territories in northern Italy, here I would like to point
out, what is the Difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano-Reggiano?
The answer to this
question is this: (I am going to use this explanation from the internet) Due to
Italian D.O.C.laws that protect the names and
recipes of certain cheeses, a cheese cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano
unless it is made using a specific recipe and production method within the
provinces of Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, and specific regions in the
provinces of Bologna and Mantua. The D.O.C laws are meant to preserve the
integrity of traditional cheeses by insuring the flavour and quality.
Therefore, any cheese made outside of these regions with a slightly different
recipe or production method cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano.
You can check a few
things about this great cheese with this link below;
One may guess that
the recipes for this great cheese has been the work of very many generations of
Italian cheese makers in the first place, and then many generations of
organizing the great factories of cheese making, one has to look at some of
these photos where they cure and store the cheese until it matures to see what
we mean.
Now, we have talked
about Parmigiano Reggiano because it is one of the best known cheese in the
world, just ask a chef and he will tell you how good this cheese really is to
use for his cooking; now we are not going to tell you how this cheese is made,
because we do not know how, but the point we want to make here is that lots of
people have always made cheeses; we are saying this because we know for a fact
that in the old times lots of people made their own cheese, as we have stated
above already; in fact I have made some cheese myself in our family farm of
southern Italy and I would like to tell you how it was done in the old ways, as
most farmers had to do it anyhow, because we the farmers had to use as much as
we could from what was available and to turn milk into cheese was one of them,
now because I was working in the farm I did it also, so let us see how I have
learned to make cheese the old farmers’ way.
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Cheese making in the farms
Cheese making on
the farms when I was young
As you might
already know, as we have said this before, when I was young I ended up working
in our family farm. Now, while I have been writing about my life in the farm, I
have become aware that I have also learned how to make cheese in the farm and I
am sure that some of you would like to know how it was done in those old times,
perhaps just to compare to what happens these days; well I have to tell you
that this is not exactly making Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese, but is it more
like the poor farmer everyday cheese, but let me tell you how we did it then
anyhow, so that we may compare those times with the modern times, and how we do
those things now. So, I am going to tell you here-under how to make this type
of cheese and ricotta my grandma way, I am saying my grandma way, because my
grandma taught me how to do it.
Now before I start
I need to say that what I am writing here has really happened in the fifties, I
had to tell you this because a lot of things have changed since the fifties,
but the principle of how these things were done the old times does not change
much, so what we were doing then was the same ways that it had been done for
hundreds of years or perhaps even thousands of years, this same way could still
be used today, if the need arises, so let me tell you what and how we were
doing this cheese making then?
In southern Italy
and perhaps in many other parts of the world, the farmers use to milk the cows
the goats, the sheep and perhaps other animals as well, so that they would have
their milk and also could make their cheese and other milk products, so this
was also happening in our small farm. For those people that is not familiar
with this sort of farm life I need to explain that milking is done twice a day
in the morning and in the evening, milking is a must to do at the right times
otherwise the animals will suffer, and also if you don’t milk them then slowly
those animals will produce less and less milk. So, what to do with all this
milk that we collected by milking the cows, goats, sheep, etc. You need to know
that the most constant and important rule in farming is waste not want not, so
we had to use everything available to us to achieve the best results, and one
of these was to make cheese from this milk, since there was not a real milk
market, and also there was not much demand for milk locally.
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Cheese making grandma way
This is cheese
making my grandma way
In our case we had
two milking cows, so we would collect up to 30 litres of milk every day in
spring time, when there was plenty of green food for the cows to eat. In those
times everybody needed to be self-sufficient and nothing would be allowed to go
waist, the theory was waste not want not, therefore everybody was ready to do
those things necessary to save whatever had to be saved, therefore the milk
that we had collected from the cows we used to make cheese, this is what all
farmer would do in the old days and I am going to explain it to you how all
this was done, including some description of how in the very old time before my
times was done.
When I was very
young my Grandma who would be staying and sleeping in town overnight would come
to the farm to help us in the farm, so she would make cheese from this milk
that we had milked from the farm animals, this thing happened for a few years,
and then she slowly taught me how to make cheese. The whole process was simple
but at the same time it was hard for a young bloke, but as I grew older and
stronger and able to do it I was left most times on my own. So, if you don’t
mind let me go over the process, because I would like to make a record of how
these things were made in the past. You see, today in the farms things are
different, because now there is a vehicle that collect milk from these farms
and take it to the cheese factory to make cheese and any other milk products.
So let me tell you how we made cheese and ricotta when I was young and how my forbear
had made cheese themselves for centuries if not thousands of years before me.
After milking the
cows, the evening before and the morning we had about 30 litre of milk that we
could make cheese with. Now the first thing that I had to do was to light a
fire in the fire place of the farm and make sure that there was enough fire
wood ready beside the chimney for the whole process, set a strong three legged
steel device on this fire that I had started that was capable to hold the
weight of the milk in this special container safely. Then I would get this
special large copper kettle, now this copper kettle had to be clean for a
start, beside that had to be treated from a specialist perhaps once a year with
a coat of tin or something like that, this treatment is very much like
galvanising the inside of the pot, and it needs to be done properly, so that
all copper surfaces inside the kettle should be covered in full. Now that I had
this large kettle ready, I would strain the milk with a fine strainer while I am
filling the kettle with the milk and after that I am ready to make cheese.
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Making cheese the old ways
Making cheese and
then ricotta the old ways
Dear readers, I
want to point out to you the way that I am making cheese and ricotta this time
here, is the way that we used to make cheese then, of course there may be other
ways to make cheese and ricotta, but hereunder is the way that I was taught
from my grandma.
So now that I have
the fire going steady but at a slower pace, and had this three legged device
set over the fire to hold the kettle safely, if nobody was around to help me
lift the kettle, I had to be extra careful to lift the kettle containing about
30 litre of milk over the fire without getting burned; then I had to be very
careful that the milk would warm up to 37-38 degrees only and no more,
otherwise the whole process would not work well. So once the milk reached this
temperature more or less, I am saying this because we had to guess the milk temperature
by putting a clean finger in the warming milk, anyhow once the temperature was
right I would take the kettle off the fire. Now let us go on to see what we
need to do next, you see to make cheese you need to add something like enzymes
or an extract so to speak (or perhaps acid, but I am not sure about acid) in
the milk while it is around 37 degrees to make the milk curd. In my young days
I was lucky here because this extract could be bought at the chemist and so it
was a lot easier that the very old ways, when you had to prepare your own
extract. Anyhow at this point I would measure the amount of caglio (this was
the name of the extract) and mix it in the milk with a wooden devise which was
purposely made.
You see in the old
time people had to do most things in wood for this purpose because wood does
not rust, it does not conduce heat so while one end is hot the other end will
not be affected and remains cold, and also it does not react with milk,
therefore wooden utensils were safe to use; and last of all but not the least
important was that these wooden utensils could be carved from the farmers
themselves, when in winter times was cold and miserable to go out of the farm
building.
Now let me tell you
how the enzymes to curd the milk were collected or prepared in the past, when
there were no chemists to help the process how to curd the milk. I know this is
going to be a shocker for some people but that was the way that it was done in
the very old times. First of all, a very young lamb is killed after feeding on
milk, so that its stomach is full of milk. You see in the young lamb stomach
there are these enzymes that curd the milk for the lamb to digest it, as this
is the way for the lamb to absorb the milk nutrients and grow. You need to
harvest the stomach of the lamb, because this is where all the process starts.
There are a few ways how to use this stomach, and one of the less shocking ways
is that once you have this lamb stomach you seal it by tying top and bottom and
hang it up to dry in a cool clean place. When it becomes dry you can use the
powdery stuff inside to curd the milk. You need a little bit of this powder and
a little lukewarm water to mix together and you are ready to add it to the milk
that you want to curd. This is how it was done in the very old days when there
were no chemists to help, this is the ways our forebears have done it, since
this is the way that Mother Nature itself has set up.
Now let me go back
to cheese making as we have left the milk to curd for a while. 10 minutes or
perhaps a quarter of an hour has passed since we have added this caglio to the
warm milk and now the milk is firm like jelly, our next move now is that we use
the wooden devise that we stirred the milk with and push it into this curd and
start breaking it to small pieces. After that we stop and wait a moment for the
particle of fresh cheese to start sinking to the bottom as the whey and the
cheese become separated, now I put my washed clean hands in the kettle and go
to the bottom of it, the fresh cheese has all sunk at the bottom, so I start
pushing it slowly to one side of the kettle, by doing this I am slowly
compacting the new cheese by pushing the whey out of it, I am going to do this
until a firm ball of new cheese is formed. Once I have this firm new ball of
cheese in my hands I lift it into a container; wait a minute this is not a real
container, but it is something like a woven basket purposely made for this
task, so that the whey can continue to run out the fresh cheese. Now I have
about four to five kilogram of fresh cheese and by the time it matures may
become three kilograms. The whole process does not end here, because there are
a couple of other things we need to do to complete the first part of cheese
making. One is that I need to get all the whey back into the kettle so that I
can make ricotta from it, and after I make ricotta I have to dip for a few
minutes the new fresh cheese that I have just made into the hot whey after I
have made ricotta. This action is a sort of pasteurising the new cheese, since
the whey is very hot after making the ricotta; you see the milk that we have
used to make the cheese has never been pasteurised as we have warmed it below
40 degrees. Having made the new cheese and dipped it in the whey for a few
minutes, now that cheese needs to be cured for a few months, this curing
usually involves sea salt and vinegar. Now in this hub we have talked about how
we made cheese and in our next hub we will talk about how to make ricotta
cheese. See you then.
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