Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I made the air dried camembert, my first air dried cheese.
Was underwhelmed.
I'll try another air dried cheese to see if I like it better but if it is anything like the camembert I'll go back to the aged cheeses. Those are wonderful.
Have yet to try a meltable cheese.

Mixed up the sharp cheddar and started fermenting today!

Try parmesan!

Has anyone tried drying the cheeses in a dehydrator? I dried the basic cashew cheese in a dehydrator for 24 hours to develop a rind.. After I put it in the fridge for a almost a week. It was really good and firm.

I just ordered the carrageenan so i will be trying more recipes.

Yeah, i have done the parmesan and air dried camembert in a dehydrator, and lots of other odds and ends over the summer here as i thought it would be too humid to air dry, as well as there being too many insects around this time of year. It works great, the parmesan is one of my favourites. When cooler weather comes i'll try it the proper way and see how it compares.
Definitely works well to firm things up a bit.

This book has been so fun to work with. The last cheese I made was the meltable mozzarella--I made a double batch and froze a lot of it in ice cube trays in the freezer.

When you thaw it out, extra liquid can be poured right off and you can use the cheese to make a really thick and rich alfredo or white sauce. I just blended about 6 thawed and drained cubes of the cheese with some roasted garlic, lemon juice, pepper and some unsweetened almond milk in the vitamix and boom instant smooth creamy sauce for pizza, pasta, etc. We used the sauce on pizza and then also over a bowl of brown rice, beans and roasted veggies for another meal. yum!

I've got mold on everything lately. I think I'll give this book a rest until I've deep-cleaned the kitchen! So, after we move next year...

My cheese was fine this morning and molded by the time I got home to cook it. I was going for 72 hours and ended up just over that... like 74-75 or something.

I just scraped off the top inch or so and cooked it anyway. Am I going to die?

Eventually, yes.

Still having mold issues and getting discouraged. I finally got my rejuvelac to work but half my cheese have gone moldy during the ferment. I'm blaming Texas.



Online (I ordered from Herbivore). There's none in UNFI so it doesn't look good for anyone being able to special order it from a natural foods store.

I started a batch of hard gruyere with roasted jalapeño and carrot this afternoon. I am looking forward to seeing how this one goes over!

I tried two batches of smoked provolone that didn't get firm and didn't taste good, barely edible. I think I'll wait till I have a better blender before I try another cheese. Though I have to say I still have to succeed at anything with agar powder. I tried strawberry kanten and it didn't jell, either. Either my agar's bad (but I'm not sure that's possible) or more probably I haven't got the hang of using it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this cheddar. I like it fine, but it's not that close to what I remember cheddar tasting like. Maybe it needs to age longer? How much change happens after cooking it and putting it in the fridge?

I just made another batch of brie!
Except I forgot to culture the cashews with rejuvelac before I added every other ingredient and blended it up!
Any chance it will be okay if I just leave it out to culture as usual? or did I just throw away a bunch of money for no reason?

oops! my starter went bad and i bought sweetened soy yogurt by mistake. has anyone made cheese with this. is it awful?

Maybe use it for cream cheese and if it comes out sweet you could use it for desserty things?
Or use some as a starter for homemade yoghurt? I used a very sweet vanilla yoghurt to start mine, because it's the nearest thing to plain i can get.

I think you can still culture it! Other recipes seem to take that route vs. started with a cultured cashew cheese.

Get ready for a long post, as here's what I've made so far! I'm obsessed with this book!

Cream cheese: It was good, I think I overcultured my yogurt so it was a little sour for using as a plain spread but I put it in to make pasta casseroles (with sweet potato and caramelized onion) and it was amazing that way!

Chevre: I loved it! It had that nice almost sour flavor that real goat cheese has. It formed into a nice log for me and I made some delicious bruschetta with it!

Fresh mozzarella: I used the vegnews recipe with cashews and yogurt, the balls came out well, but didn't quite melt onto pizza. I didn't really eat it cold and on pizza the texture was maybe a little bit like ricotta? whatever it was it was really popular. I served it to omni friends.



Sharp cheddar: the flavor was great but I think I didn't cook the agar long enough because it didn't quite firm up properly. I air dried it for awhile and in the end it was soft: sliceable but also spreadable.

Meltable cheddar: okay this one I really didn't cook long enough. It didn't set at all! But I've been eating it as mac and cheese, and it's really good that way!

Monterery Jack: It's amazing! It's a mild cheese, next time I'll add some diced peppers for pepperjack. Here it is melted into a quesadilla with upton's naturals chorizo seitan (topped with refried black beans/salsa)


Smoked provolone: This was amazing! Possibly one of my favorites so far! It came out so well. Along with the monterery jack it's one of the firmest cheeses I've made so far. Here is a picture of it melted onto a piece of toast.


Fondue: I don't think anyone could tell the difference between this and real cheese fondue! I really loved it and want to make it again (all the time??)


Overall impressions of the book/recipes: This stuff really has a learning curve. Some of these I think might be hard to get right every time or the first time, but even when some part is messed up it still comes out with a yummy cheesy thing to make into a sauce. Some of the cheeses I think are pretty much indistinguishable from dairy cheese.

I currently have the pub cheddar firming in the fridge and taste tests along the way tell me it's going to be awesome.

Thanks for the photos. It's nice to see what the cheeses look like.

Thats such a great post!

My air dried parmesan didn't work at all. I used the so delicious plain almond yoghurt and thought it would be thick enough. I still let it drain for a day but almost no liquid came out. I had to spread it onto the parchment paper, it wasn't thick enough to be molded into a ball. It's drying for 2 days now but is still very soft, I don't think it'll ever dry. I don't care much for the smell or taste either. I think the combination of yoghurt and miso I used just doesn't do it for me. Different brands of miso have different tastes and for the life of me I can't find the one I really liked anymore, bummer.
Back to the aged cheeses.

So I've lost the emmental to mold. The air-dried cheddar is okay after scraping off some mold, but needs to age longer as the taste isn't quite there yet.

I'm finding that all the cheese kinda tastes the same to me and the taste is pretty distinct. Could it be my rejuvalac? You guys encouraged me to be brave and taste it, and it tastes fine / lemony.

I think I need to shut down the cheese experimentation since I went back to work. It's quite the time commitment, and a few busy nights = forgetting to flip/salt/mix and losing a batch :(

I have 3 cheeses in the fridge now; the brie and cheddar I made back in November, and the air dried camembert I made 3 weeks ago. They all taste totally different. The cheddar has gotten "cheddary" as it aged and both it and the brie got "harder". Really awesome, but after all this time they have taken on a bit of a "refrigerator" taste I just noticed. I need to use them up now. I didn't keep them in a closed container and that is probably the reason but I thought that they would more likely grow mold in a closed container. The camembert is definitely softer & milder and doesn't have the deep taste the aged cheeses do. Still good though. Also, I used quinoa rejuvelac for this and it definitely is milder than the rye rejuvelac which I used for the aged cheeses. I won't make quinoa again, I didn't like it as much. I do think it alters the taste of the cheese

I had to chuck the parmesan though, no luck there.

Darn it! Amazon has pulled the Kindle version from sales...just as I had mustered up enough courage to buy.

I did manage to get a kindle sample just before it was pulled though. I'll use those recipes (the rejuvelac, basic cashew, chevre, gruyere and bousin. Not a bad range really) until then and hope amazon sells the kindle version again soon.

So I did it! I made cheese! I managed to troubleshoot my mold issues and made a bunch of cheese for a get-together I held. I did the lemon peppercorn chevre, boursin, cheddar, gruyere, and air-dried gouda, and I'm working on air-dried cheddar right now. Everyone at the party was omni and everyone loved them. I'm pretty proud of the result. Sure wish I'd thought to take pictures!