The Six Million Dollar Cheese

The first cheese I learned to make from the meister was cheddar - but it took me until this past weekend to work up the courage to attempt production in my own kitchen. I wanted, I suppose, to get a few simpler specimens under my belt before tackling one of these bionic bacterial babies, since cheddar is amongst the most voracious of all cheeses and requires copious doses of effort and care at just about every one of its manufacturing stages.

Don't believe me? I've collected the evidence to prove my point.

Curd production. My camembert was soft and moist going into its mold - and had required very little in the way of watchful cooking. And although I thought I had foreworked, stirred, and heated my Wensleydale for as long as was humanly possible, my cheddar demanded even more cauldron-tending. By the time I was done the CurdNuggets® were squeaky, chewy, tough, salty, and pretty darn desiccated, if you want to know the truth. It took hours!

Pressing. My Swiss cheese required fifteen pounds of pressure for the better part of a day. My cheddar required a whopping fifty pounds of pressure for even longer, until every one of its curds was smushed to smithereens. The loading apparatus consisted of a hunk of steel bar stock liberated from my lab's extensive inventory of metallic knick-knacks and two of Sir's workout weights, the larger of which weighed thirty-five pounds. I kept the jury-rigged press on the floor, fearing that if it fell off the counter, disastrous damage to the house's foundation would result.

Waxing. This dramatic compaction resulted in a cheese only about half as tall as my previous two, requiring the closer proximity of my tender digits to the blisteringly hot (and, I can confirm, very combustible) Scarlet Solution of Death. Nonetheless, by applying the lessons learned during my previous perilous paraffin project, I was able to dip myself a fine-looking result, if I say so myself.

Affinage. My cheddar won't be ready for ages and ages - three months at least and more if we have the patience. All my other kinder will have been enjoyed (hopefully) long before that.

See what I mean? Drier, hotter, heavier, and older than all the cheeses that have gone before.

But that's OK.

I have the technology.