I have been dying to make some cheese for ages…years even, and yesterday I thought I’d have a go. I’ve got some cheese making stuff, but having just got hold of a very big pan it all became possible.

Anyway, this is attempt number 1. I haven’t followed all the golden rules of cheese making about extreme hygiene – I ran out of Milton, so the spoons I used were just ‘clean’ like humans think of the meaning of the word clean rather than CLEAN, in the way dairy people think of the word.

Oh, and I also made errors with the ingredients – the (american) recipe list of ingredients said ‘skim’ milk so I bought regular skimmed milk, but in the instructions it said ‘add the whole milk’. Anyway, scoured the internet and found that skimmed milk isn’t the end of the world. So I carried on.

Inexperience made me take the curds of of the whey before they had become firm enough, and so the cheese isn’t as firm as it should be. It looks OK on the picture – here I am supposed to be turning the cheese and putting it back into the mould upside down – something I am supposed to be able to do after an hour – this is 12 hours on and while I got it out of the mould OK (and caught the moment here) (clean work surface, not CLEAN, but that may not matter anymore) the cheese disintegrated as I put it back in the mould, so I am unsure about what I will end up with. However, I think the is the way with cheese – it’s about practice, you can’t just knock it up.

The disintegration gave me an excuse to try some – this was a curious moment.

Up until now cheese has been cheese. Trying home made cheese is different – there are the expectations of fabulousness, the years of ‘excitement build up’ and just that niggly thing in the back of your mind that you made this from separated milk…

It tastes like mozzarella – very mild. It will hopefully taste of cheddar in 3 months, but I’m not sure – I stuffed it back in the mould, but I don’t know if it will reform or just be crumbly. I’ll look in a few days and make a judgement call about whether to continue or start again.