Thursday, 15 March, 2018
Today was the day I took my cheesemaking workshop. it seemed so far away when I got it as a gift from Krish over Christmas but suddenly it was time.
Lisa’s husband, Richard, had taken a cheesemaking workshop before and even showed me how he made goat’s cheese one day. So I had a bit of a clue. I knew I would be on my feet, working, in a cold environment so I was somewhat prepared.
Wildes Cheese is a small artisan cheesemaking business in Tottenham, North London – not so many miles from here. It was founded by two men, who I assumed were a couple – Philip (the kooky, extrovert one) and Keith (the quieter, gentle one). Keith was the original hobby cheesemaker and now they have a small business, operating out of a little space on an industrial estate in what’s basically a residential area.
That morning I travelled by train to White Hart Lane and began my journey to cheese.
I’d say it was uneventful but first the station had lost power for the Oyster machine so I have to call Transport for London to claim a refund – they charge the maximum when you can’t ‘tap out’ on the Oyster machine. The second thing was taking a wrong turning (or not taking the turning) to go up to the dairy. Smooth journey, not so much.
The industrial estate was just a yard, not the sprawling expanse I expected from my Canadian experience. The space was small. An ante room where we had talks and food, Two larger rooms used for making cheese, and two small rooms that were cold rooms for cheese storage. It amazed me that they were producing such quantities of cheese from there but produce it they do!
Philip is hysterical, ribald, warmer than he likes to pretend (I’m dead inside, he said, more than once.) After tea, biscuits and an overview of the day, we went into the cheesemaking room and were put into pairs. My partner was a quiet man, whose name I didn’t know. We barely spoke a word but it worked out OK. In front of each work station were three basins, a collander, a J-cloth, a wooden spoon, a thermometer and a blue straining cloth. It looked practical and basic! 
We separated out the basins and waited for our milk. The milk used here is delivered from the cow to the farmer to Wildes each morning. It’s pasteurised but unhomogenised. We got to taste the milk alongside some supermarket milk and you can bet there’s a difference!
We ended up with three buckets of milk each, placed into its own basin of warm water to raise the temperature. The first two buckets had ten litres of milk, the third only three or four.
The apprentice, Xavier, was weighing and packing cheese over in the corner. The little jars you see contain the bacterial culture (‘the mother’) that determines the type of cheese that will be produced. The granulated cultures we used were for a hard white cheese, a blue cheese, and a French-type cheese. These granules were added into the milk and much stirring and checking milk temperature followed – it can’t go below 30C.
In the other room we looked at a soft cheese that was developing for us to use later. And we saw some of the harder cheeses sitting for us to check out. There was also a large heated vat where Philip told me they stored the milk that was delivered. No need for other storage.
Before lunch, we added diluted rennet to each bucket. Wildes uses vegetarian rennet and apparently it does as good a job as animal rennet. The rennet causes the milk to solidify. Then we took a little tour of the cold rooms where many cheeses are stored before shipping. One room is dehumidified for the harder cheeses and one is humid for the softer cheeses. Both smell of ammonia, a natural forming gas while cheese is maturing.
Once the cheese is solidified we took large chef knives and cut down to the bottom in two centimetre strips, then across in the other direction. The whey starts to run out from the mass pretty quickly. Our job for the next couple of hours was to keep checking the temperature of the mix and to stir up and break down the curds from the whey.
We had a very delicious lunch. I have to say I wasn’t looking forward to the lunch. It was described as a light vegetarian lunch with cheese (of course!). We had been given samples of cheese all morning and I thought I was pretty much done as far as cheese goes. However, the lunch looked amazing! There were three large salads – a rocket and spinach, a delicious cheesy, garlicky bean salad (my favourite), and some tomatoes with herbs and dressing. Lots of cheeses, some quince jelly, and a plate of ham.
Stirring went on throughout lunch, then afterwards, the cheese had formed lovely curds. We had to drain these as thorough as we could, squeezing them gently inside the blue cloths and then putting them into the moulds to take home. I had stopped taking photos since each time I had to wash my hands up to the elbows. Those pictures have to stay inside my memory!
Before we left we took our cream cheese allotment and I made four different blends – garlic and herb, herb with caper, dill and chili, and a citrus blend with lemon curd, lime curd, lime juice and preserved lemon. They’re sitting in my fridge. We’d had an amazing lemon curd cake too for our afternoon break. I was already too full to think about dinner later.
Two short videos of Keith talking about taking our cheeses home:
I pretty much flaked out all evening. I was done! My cheeses are maturing on the draining board so far. I’ve had some cream cheese with the smoked salmon Krish picked up yesterday. I also had a cracker with the surprisingly delicious citrus cream cheese. I have some cheese curds – left over from the white cheese we put into moulds. We were assured we could make poutine with these, a fact I found hilarious and satisfying to my Canadian self.
We watched Babylon 5 and I fell asleep a couple of times. But yes, I did eat again. Krish had made a barley soup. Perfect!
And I’ve finished another doll.
