Cheese Making!

Since good cheese is awfully hard to come by in
Korea, I decided to take matters into my own
hands while I'm here in the land of dairy plenty.
I took a one-day home cheese-making class at
the Langdale Vineyard outside of Christchurch!
That's our teacher there on the right - Catherine
Mowbray. She was so much fun! In this picture
she's putting the screws to a new gouda. We also
learned to make camembert, liptour, and cottage
cheese (my farm grandma will either be delighted
or incredulous, since I believe she used to make
that all the time when my mom was a kid), and
to fry up a beautiful halloumi. Yum! With that
introduction and a very helpful book of recipes
that I took away (not to mention the necessary
cheese culture), I am all ready to start creating a
little milky comfort at home.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.


The display table, all set up for our variety of
cheeses. West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.


Hungarian Liptour cheese - which seems to be
basically a cheese ball rolled into a log shape.
Delish! West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.


Fresh butter (with a glass of the resulting
buttermilk just visible above). This is going to
sound silly, since obviously butter is just really
agitated cream, but it was a revelation to see how
incredibly easy it is to make butter (and, by extension,
buttermilk) and to taste how much better it is than
storebought. Definitely something I will be doing
for myself from now on.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.