Beginners cheese making kit

[Stravaig]

I bought this kit on impluse. It cost less than a tenner and once I've bought the milk it seems inexpensive to make the cheese. I fancy giving it a go anyway.

With the kit I can make mozzarella, ricotta, burrata, goat or mascarpone. What I'm really after is making labneh - maybe later.

Has anyone else dabbled in cheese making? Or better still, are you an expert?

[Geoff]

My wife spent best part of a year making excellent hard cheeses after being given a kit. We had a farming friend who said he was getting so little for his milk he might as well give it away in return for the odd cheese so she was using full fat raw milk. It wasn't a dramatically cheap process by the time we had bought the other constituents, particularly the wax for coating. We ended up with a lot of ricotta from the whey. In the end he got so fed up with the price of milk he went out of dairy so the source dried up and we didn't think it was worth buying supermarket milk to carry on.

[Stravaig]

That's interesting, Geoff. Thanks. Mine is just a soft cheese kit. There's no great need for me to be making cheese, especially now we live next door (literally!) to a major supermarket. I just like trying new things as well as cooking in general.

[robo]

It’s always been something I fancy having a go at but never seem to have time ,I presume I would need full fat unpasteurised milk that in its self is getting impossible

[Stravaig]

Not impossible Robo, but perhaps not as easy as one might like.
See:
https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/ ... nking-milk
I'm OK for drinking this until August. After that I'll be 65 and too old for it. LOL!

Several of the major supermarkets eg Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury's, etc, etc, do unhomogenised full fat milk. So I shall probably go for that if it's not easy to find unpateurised near us. My kit simply calls for "fresh whole milk", ie not UHT.

I expect unpasteurised would taste better, just like stinky Brie de Meaux tastes much better than most other brie.

[Stravaig]

I see Waitrose is selling butter made from unpasteurised cream. I'm keen to try it - assuming we can get a mortgage to buy it. Blimey! It's at least twice the price of our usual butter.

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/ ... 247-215248

[Stravaig]

Sainsbury's has the same thing - 20p cheaper. Tesco has it as well, I know because we bought it from Tesco but now I can't find it on their website.

It's very nice. I like it. But in most instances it's not really worth spending a lot extra on butter. Is it?

I would probably use this where the butter is a key element of the dish, but not for a bog standard sarnie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_meuni%C3%A8re
Our fishmonger sells small Dover soles. Too small for restaurants to want, especially with their huge prices. But the fish are lovely and one is perfect as a portion for one person. We buy a lot of them. People are often impressed by getting these at a dinner. They don't realise that they're not expensive. You just have to mention Dover sole to have people swooning. (Actually I don't think they are all Dover soles anyway - more probably sand soles, but they look very similar to the untrained eye. And there's really no difference in the taste.)

I'm trying to be a bit more careful with money because the minimum let period for most properties (including this one) is one year so we have this place until October, but we get our own place back at the beginning of August. So, we'll have two properties to pay for including council tax - that's a crippler - and utilities, etc. I've offered all my cousins free holiday accommodation - within commuting distance of London - between the start of August and the end of October.

It's just how things work out sometimes and you have to do the best you can with the hand you're dealt.

[Stravaig]

Did you know that flat fish are either left-handed or right-handed? Yeah, OK I know that fish don't have hands.

Seriously, you know that flat fish have both their eyes on the same side, yes? Well, some have them this way and some have them that way, so jokingly we call them left or right handed. (I'm qualified to NVQ level 3 on fishmongery.)

One of our fishmongers made an error. I said I wanted THIS fish and he said it's just the same as THAT fish. I'm saying NO it's not the same. One is left-handed, one is right handed. Not the same fish at all. It wouldn't make any difference to the taste but the point is that it's not the same fish.

Gee. If I worked in a shop I would rather not have a customer like me. But they generally seem pleased enough to see me.

I fell out of bed and landed on my head. It really hurts.

[robo]

We went fishing yesterday 3 on board ,we primarily went for cod but no sign of any we did get some big skate and Whiting my mate had a nice plump plaice which he gave to me as he won’t eat them ,I had it for my tea last night it was first class

[Westi]

Hi Robo,

I never see Whiting for sale in the UK, not even at the fish stall on the quay, but it was one of my favourite fish in OZ & well easy to catch in the warmer water. I know UK waters aren't warm so would this a) be the actual same fish or just a local name as it cooks nice & white, or b) do they migrate, or now throwing in a c) know any supermarket that sells it?

[Stravaig]

From CJ Jackson's "Fish Cookbook": "Whiting is the name used to describe several species from a variety of unrelated groups of fish..."

This is a terrific book! But sadly it seems to be currently unavailable from Amazon. Dunno where else one might find it. Second hand bookshops? Charity shops? If you have any interest at all in fish, keep your eyes peeled for it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fish-Cookbook- ... 00QCHG6IK/
(AbeBooks.co.uk apparently has some used copies of it.)

I seem to remember, in the UK anyway, whiting was considered to be inferior to cod, haddock, etc and so it was cheaper. These days it's sometimes used in fish pies and other commercially processed foods, eg coquilles st-jaques. I guess it makes sense to bulk out the dish with the cheaper fish.

There was a Kiwi (NZ) fish and chip shop in Bangkok. Excellent food. They used orange roughy in place of cod. But these days roughy is endangered after having been widely marketed as an alternative to cod before it was discovered that the fish takes a long time to mature.