Cheese & Dairy: River Cottage Handbook No.16 Steven Lamb Hugh, Fearnley-Whittingstall

1323 Pages·2018·11.351 MB·English

by  Cheese & Dairy: River Cottage Handbook No.16 Steven Lamb Hugh, Fearnley-Whittingstall

For Jean, Jean and Jeanie-Ray
Contents
Milk & Dairying
Fresh Dairy Products
Making Cheese
Cheese-making Ingredients
Equipment
Fresh Cheeses
Matured Cheeses
Serving Cheese
Recipes with Cheese
Useful ings
Food is always
about more than the �nished dish. Every ingredient
is the culmination of a journey, of a series of happenings, decisions and
interventions. While that’s true of pretty much everything we eat, there are
certain foods that illustrate the principle particularly well, demonstrating how
environment, terroir and technique can all alter the �nal result. ose foods
include bread, wine, charcuterie and dairy products – especially cheese.
ese are foods few of us make for ourselves any more. Simple in terms of
raw materials they may be, but they also demand a certain level of skill and
patience. Perhaps that is why brewing, baking, curing, smoking and cheese-
making – crafts that were once practised in ordinary households – are now so
far from the domestic sphere that they seem mysterious and arcane. Mostly we
leave the making to distant manufacturers, to the detriment of quality and
diversity. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We have the option of trying our
hand at these culinary arts. And if we do, the rewards can be immense, not to
mention delicious.
I’m delighted to be introducing this latest River Cottage handbook on
cheese and dairy. Not only is it full of fantastic and achievable recipes, it
reinforces some of the key tenets on which River Cottage was established: not
least that making your own ingredients is empowering, ful�lling, and a whole
lot of fun. Producing some of the food you eat, even if only a little, also
encourages you to think much more deeply about all the rest. A cheese-maker
or bacon-curer will always be a better cheese- or bacon-shopper!
If there’s one person who knows that to be true, it’s Steven Lamb. Steven has
been working with me at River Cottage since 2005 as a teacher, writer and
events host. His broad knowledge, deep-rooted integrity and un�agging
enthusiasm are legendary. And his attitude of endeavour, coupled with an
almost geeky fascination with food science, made him the perfect person to
write this book.
After all, dairy is not to be messed with: it’s serious stuff. Milk is fragile, a
little unpredictable; it demands respect. e subtleties of temperature and
timing that can lead to such great differences in a �nished product are not
difficult to grasp – but they do require your attention. is is exactly the kind
of detail that Steven �nds so compelling. Once you’ve begun your dairying
journey, with his careful guidance, you’ll gain con�dence – an ingredient as
vital as any other in the process.
e wet and windswept islands of Britain produce some of the best milk
and cream in the world. Much of this is swallowed up by the industrial dairy
machine, but it’s also capitalised upon by some exceptional artisan cheese-
makers who produce deliciously complex cheeses. And we are blessed with
small-scale dairies, often using milk from their own herds, turning out
wonderful butter, yoghurt and clotted cream. Why shouldn’t this great dairy
tradition be expressed again in ordinary home kitchens? Making your own
dairy products, at the simpler end of the spectrum at least, is surprisingly
straightforward. You need very little specialist equipment and the ingredients
are inexpensive and easy to �nd. Take the plunge into dairy, as it were, and
you’ll experience huge satisfaction. If your �rst batch of home-made labneh
doesn’t please you mightily, I’ll eat my hat. And I can tell you from experience
that a freshly baked pizza topped with home-made mozzarella is the apex of
‘all-my-own-work’ kitchen joy.
But the pleasures here are as much in the doing as the eating: cheese-making
is – or at least should be – a craft: an enriching, creative process. is is a point
that I know Steven feels particularly strongly about. He is a passionate
supporter of our excellent native cheese-makers and the renaissance they have
brought about in British cheese-making over the last 30 years or so. And he
sees no reason why we can’t all be part of it. If you like eating dairy, he asks,
why not reclaim this wonderful skill from the factory farms and the mass-
producers? Why not be part of the movement of bold dairy artisans
encroaching on that bland, characterless territory? Making your own cheese,
and choosing cheese made by passionate artisans, is the kind of food activism
we can all get involved with.
How you source your raw materials makes a statement too. Milk production
in dairy cows has increased outlandishly in recent decades, more than doubling
in the last 40 years as the industry �nds new ways to squeeze more out of each
animal. is must give us pause. To take milk from an animal is always
exploitative to some degree but those of us who want to enjoy dairy products
have a responsibility to reduce that exploitation to the minimum. e home-
dairy enthusiast is well placed to do this. If you want to make your own butter
or cheese, you have to source milk of foremost quality and freshness. You’re
compelled to ask questions, to think about where the milk comes from and
how it has been produced. As Steven explains, you have the option of choosing
the very best kind of milk, from a local herd, organic or higher-welfare,
perhaps even unpasteurised. You can set the bar as high as you like, and you’ll
never look at those ranks of cartoned milk in the supermarket in the same way
again.
Few would argue with the point that butter, cream and cheese are foods we
should enjoy in moderation. But I, for one, want the dairy I do eat to be the
best possible. Sometimes that means buying the �nest local, organic products,
sometimes it means making my own and, these days, it might also mean
pinching some of Steven’s recipes…
So peruse these pages and see if you don’t �nd your own interest piqued by
the dairy delights within. I’m sure you will. You’ll see that you can probably
begin your adventures in cheese-making right away – today even – with
ingredients you already have to hand. You will discover that no cheese is quite
as special as your cheese. And who knows where the journey might lead you?
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, East Devon, December 2017