No Freakin' Whey

As an English teacher, few things delight me more than reading. Unfortunately, between To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Othello, et cetera, I am left with little time to read for fun. Starting in April I began making my list of books to read this summer. After spending hours poring over Amazon.com reviews, I made my decisions, placing Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at the top of my list. I picked the book up at the cute bookstore across the street and packed it up in anticipation of our month-long June Journey. The book arrived at my parent's house before I did so, of course, both of my parents have read it and I still haven't. The book inspired my parents to do all kinds of crazy things (buy local meat, shop at farmer's markets, bake bread), but the most interesting thing they wanted to try was making cheese.
Truthfully, until last week, I had no idea that you could just "make cheese". I thought it was something that came from a factory with mysterious ingredients and expensive equipment. Wrong. It's basically milk with a few chemicals and you can easily make it in your own kitchen. Mom ordered some basic cheesemaking supplies and on Saturday we began our first project, mozzarella.
We began by heating a gallon of non-ultra pasteurized milk and a bit of citric acid to precisely 88 degrees. At that point we added the tiniest sliver of rennet, an enzyme that causes the milk to coagulate and let the mixture sit for 8 long minutes. Then it was time to cut the curd into a grid and then scoop out the curds. Mom mentioned in the previous post that she had the ideal hands for squeezing out the excess whey, so I scooped the curds into a bowl and mom squeezed them out. We later upgraded our technology and scooped the curds onto a splatter screen and pressed the curds into it, causing the excess whey to drip into a bowl. Unfortunately, curds and whey looks an awful lot like baby vomit. Fortunately, it doesn't smell that way and we were soon to the next step, heating and pulling.
To make mozzarella, you heat the curds in the microwave at 35 second increments, and between each heating, you knead and stretch the cheese. It's pretty amazing watching a blob of curds turn into a smooth, shiny ball of delicious mozzarella. During the last kneading you add plenty of salt and then pull the mozzarella like taffy one final time.
The cheese was fantastic. It tasted so fresh and, as with anything you make yourself, we thought it was truly awesome.
Hard cheeses like parmesean take months to age, while the soft cheeses like cream cheese, manchego, and mozzarella can be ready to eat in a matter of hours or days. I probably won't become a full time cheese maker, only eating my own cheese, as I would need a cheese-aging humidor and several hundred dollars' worth of cheese presses. I will, however, definitely be making more mozzarella.