Jami and Jason's Part II: Making Cheese

So one of the things that we got to do while we stayed with Jami and Jason was to make some cheese. Jason had gotten a cheesemaking kit from Jami for his 40th birthday, and Jason kindly shared the experience with us. Everything that we needed to make the mozzarella that we decided to make (apart from the milk and the pots) was in this handy little kit. By the way, most of these photos were taken by Leah, who very diligently documented the process.

First there was the pouring of the milk.

Then after adding the cultures and the rennet we had to monitor the temperature of the milk carefully...

...until the curds separated from the whey. This is Eric modelling the curds. Cheese making is serious business.

Then it required some stretching of the molten curds, which Jason did with some rather fetching rubber gloves. He said that it was HOT!

Then it was just a matter of Jason putting his own artistic touch to the cheese.

And hey presto, the finished product - some very tasty, as you can tell from Eric's expression below, mozzarella cheese. We ate this happily with some of Jason's homemade ciabatta bread.