Dairy Day

The goat's milk has been accumulating in the fridge again so this afternoon was spent in the kitchen. The first thing I did was to pasteurize all the milk and then cool it down to 86F so I could start working with it in several recipes.

I have been hearing lots of good things about goat's milk ice cream and up till now have not made any. I took a liter of milk added a cup of sugar and a tablespoon of real vanilla. The mix then went into the fridge to cool completely and be used later on.

I then needed to decide what to make with the remaining 4 liters of milk. I have been enjoying the Chevre cheese I have been making but I have a small hoard of it in the freezer now so I wanted to make something different. I opted for a Feta cheese.

I have made Feta once in the past and it wasn't really a success. I have been doing some reading and I think I might know were my problems came from so I am game to try again. Into the milk went the culture and then it had to sit for an hour. Then in went the rennet and then sat for another hour. It was now time to cut the curds into 1/2" blocks and let set for 10 minutes. All this time a temp of 86F has been maintained. The curds are then "cooked" at this low temp and gently stirred every ten minutes for 40-50 minutes. Finally, the curds got strained through butter muslin and hung to drain for 3 hours. After the 3 hours I removed the forming cheese and turned it over and hung it back up for the night.

During my three hour wait for the cheese to drain I made the goat's milk ice cream. I happen to have a Krups electric ice cream maker (haven't used it in years though). I got the machine setup and poured in the cold mix I made earlier and the kids and I watched it go round. After about 45 minutes it didn't seem to be getting any thicker so I stopped the machine and scooped the soft ice cream into a bowl and popped it into the freezer. The kids quickly consumed the remnants from the beater, the bowl and the spoon. Evan declared, "This is the best ice cream I have ever eaten!"