Smoked Gouda -or- Maybe Not so Gouda

[Please see previous post: Problem of the Precarious Pyrite Pagoda -or- How not to make Sharp Cheddar Cheese]

Cheese can be relatively simple to make, and usually (if one is careful) does not take a lot of expensive equipment.  Sue has been immersed in the wonders of making our own cheese, visiting websites and becoming fixated upon mastering increasingly difficult levels of cheese varieties and techniques.  But the basics remain rather simple.

Of course, one inexpensive accoutrement in cheese making is the prosaic cheese cloth.  Having used her cheese cloth to make a mozzarella, a Parmesan and then a second type of cheddar cheese, it was time to boil the cheese cloth and get it clean and pristine and ready for the next cheese project.

The cheese cloth sat upon the burner in a sauce pan filled with water, the plan was to boil it clean.  Like they say, "Rinse and repeat".  It boiled as she worked on writing a paper. It boiled as she did some reading.  It boiled as she surfed on the computer. It then boiled on the proverbial "back burner" of her mind.  And then it boiled dry as she stepped into the shower.  When she came out of the shower, the house was filled with the acrid smoke of a smelter.  The sauce pan with a layered steel and aluminium bottom, had boiled dry and turned the the aluminium layer into a melted metallurgical mega mess.  The range top had a shiny and bright cooled aluminium puddle like a flow of cooled magma on the side of a volcano.  The scorched sauce pan and smoking and incinerated cheese cloth was quickly dispatched to the back patio.

The smoke alarm(s) throughout the house did not sound.  So on Saturday, I installed the new ion smoke detector that Sue bought the very afternoon of the sauce pan's demise. 

"So", I asked, "once you get some more cheese cloth, what kind of cheese are you going to make next?  Perhaps "smoked" Gouda?"

With a smoldering look and a dead pan expression, "That's no Gouda", She replied.

Besides the basic ingredients of milk and culture additives; this cheese making has cost us

• a glass top dining table
• a sauce pan and
• shown the need to buy 3 additional smoke alarms. 

No Gouda indeed.

The Problem of the Precarious Pyrite Pagoda -or- How Not To Make Sharp Chedder Cheese

The clue on Sue's Christmas gift explained that the receiver of this wrapped gift will have something in common with Saddam Hussein.  The box holding the curiously framed and opaque clue turned out to be a do-it-yourself cheese making kit.  With the clue's explanation being: Saddam had Kurds in his way - while you will have curds in your whey.  The cheese making box itself had positive testimonials from from enthusiastic, if not redundant, happy cheese makers, who wrote the manufacturer saying: "Tonight my kitchen will become Cheeseville City!!"

Well Cheeseville City here we come!  Sue came back from the store with 3 gallons of milk last Saturday, having made the easy breezy mozzarella a few weeks ago, it was time to amp up her game and go for a nice cheddar.  Everything was included in the kit, except perhaps a cheese press that retails for $125.  Not to worry, the directions said, one could squeeze the moisture out of the cheddar brick by just adding weight.  They suggested 20 lbs.

With the green cheese having drained through the cheese cloth for about 2 hours, it was time to press the lump into the cheese mold (since we did not have a press) and place weights on top.  Now think about this, the mold was 6 inches across, and the ordinary home cheese entrepreneur was expected to just happen to have something compact enough to press onto a 6 inch diameter surface with a force of 20 lbs.  What would you use? 

We are fortunate. Not only are we fond of cheese, we happen to be a household of geologist, and if you know anything about geologists, you know they love to have all kinds of rocks and minerals hanging around the house with them, they are like family.  Well, Sue grabbed a couple solid 10-pound specimens of iron pyrite (aka Fool's Gold) off their perch on our entertainment center and placed then atop a saucer on top of the cheese mold.  Iron pyrite seemed especially suitable since it has a high specific gravity, and since this stage was just a matter of giving it time to squeeze the moisture out, she moved the process over to the breakfast nook table while she cleaned up the kitchen counter space.

In the breakfast nook sat the table.  It was a fine table.  It was the first furnishing I bought once I got my first job out of school.  I furnished my first real-world, 1-bedroom bedroom apartment with only this stylish glass top table & it's 4-chair set plus a bed. Years of birthday and Christmas gifts were lovingly wrapped on that table.  I was at this table while living in Denver when I saw the Challenger space shuttle explode.  I drafted my business plan after I got laid off for the 3rd time while sitting around this table.  My kids were conceived and born on this table.  Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush sat at this table and asked me my thoughts on energy policy and world peace.  I had some of the greatest cheeseburgers ever created right off the backyard grill at this table.

In the breakfast nook sat the table.  On the table sat the cheese with some dazzling pyrite mineral samples piled high and pressing down upon it.  The cheese stands alone, nobody watching it as it began to compress differentially.  It settle at an odd angle and the precarious and perilous pyrite pagoda shifted much like the tower at Pisa.  The weighty pyrite, resplendent with pointy crystal faces jutting out at all angles began, unbeknownst to us, to tip.  The crash was resounding, the dog knew enough to wake up and look awful worried, the crack of the glass table top was heart-rending and the shattering sound of large shards of plate glass hitting the floor was devastatingly loud.

It was a heavy moment when Sue came into the living room to tell me what I already knew, "I broke your table".  She dejectedly when to grab a dust pan and a broom to clear away the devastation.  I observed that I was unaware that this was how one made 'shatter cheese'.  Searching for a pun on cheddar. 
   Without looking up, she crouched on the floor picking up pieces of glass and corrected me, "this is cheddar cheese not 'shatter cheese'". 
   Oh really?  What variety of cheddar? I inquired. 
   As she tossed some wickedly jagged pieces of glass into the waste basket, she replied, it is "sharp" cheddar - no it is "very sharp cheddar".