Sunday, November 22, 2009

Shave-Horse Making

Joe Brien and a lively bunch of 7 wranglers embarked on a wild ride to capture, train and ride a shave-horse.
Joe had a table with the shave-horse parts already cut out and ready for assembly. There were several work stations set up. We all needed do was plane edges, drill mortises, cut tenons, and assemble a jumbled assortment of wooden pieces into something resembling a four legged, very loose necked, slow moving but once its dumb-head gets ahold of something lets go only when asked, wooden creation. In short a shave-horse.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Whey of Cheesemaking


Angela Greco, an experienced kitchen cheese maker, led the whey through the process of making "Meso Fresco".The first step was to warm up the milk. The pot of choice was selected by Angela for each table to use. A good place to get stuff http://www.cheesemaking.com/ Warm the milk to 90 degrees F through indirect heating in a water bath of 110 degrees F. Then sprinkle the culture on top of the milk and let sit for 30 to 60 seconds. Stir GENTLY!!!!Dissolve 1/4 rennet tablet in 1/4 cup water.
The correct whey to add rennet:
The culture bacteria make the milk acidic and rennet likes acid and 110 degree heat but if it's too happy the curd turns out rubbery, so we only give it 90 degrees. It took a group effort to keep the milk at the correct temperature.Then we let the curd set. After getting a clean break in the curd we cut it. A clean break is when you make a small cut in the top of the curd and it breaks cleanly and fills with whey.

Cut the curd into 1 inch cubes and give it a stir.Warm the curd to 95 F ( by adding hot water to the water bath) while stirring.
Then put the curds into a stainer lined with butter muslin or cheese cloth. Let drain for 15 minutes.
Then mix 2 1/2 tsp of salt in with your hand GENTLY.
And then put the mix in a basket mold and let it sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
Cut serve and enjoy!