impressive, if only in size so far, this vacchino romano is the biggest cheese I've made yet. when it had finished draining it weighed in at just over 1.8kg, although it's almost two weeks old now and spent a bit of time in front of a gentle fan for the all important drying period so it's probably lost a bit of moisture weight since then. (this doesn't work for humans, although I think it may have been a weightloss technique used by some of my former patients in an affluent, taste-devoid area south-east of the city, however my cheese is far better looking than those tandoori coloured old hags with their 16DDDD built-in chin rests and crusty décolletage.)
vacchino refers to this being a cow milk romano, common in Australia and the U.S. Italian romano would more commonly be pecorino, sheep milk, and occasionally you can find caprino romano, made with goat milk.
it's a very low yield affair, as the curd is formed with quite a lot of rennet, and then at the cutting stage the curd is cut into very small pieces, almost like fat rice grains. this gives the curd much more surface area through which to expel moisture (whey), causing the curd texture to become hard and tight. additionally, the curd gets heated up to about 45°c, which forces even more whey expulsion. this kind of process requires a different bacterial starter to other cheeses- mesophilic bacteria used for brie, crottin and softer cheeses would die at about 38°c. romano and any "cooked curd" cheese requires thermophilic (or heat-loving) bactieria. when the curd mass is drained and put into the shaping form it gets pressed with about 10kg of, well, books and baking dishes in my case, because I don't have a cheese press. the funny shape of this round happened because the curd tried to escape out the bottom of the ring under the weight. swearing at the cheese clearly did not correct this problem. anyway what you end up with after drying is less than 10% of your original milk volume. the lack of moisture content, incidentally and not that I care in the slightest, is why this kind of cheese is higher in fat per volume than other cheeses.
apart from the fact that I like cooking with, and just eating, romano and parmesan type cheese, I decided that this would be my first hard cheese attempt primarily because of the way the rind is formed. romano is not waxed or wrapped, as with other hard cheese, which prevents them from drying out over the long maturation period (anywhere from four months to two years). I'm a bit dubious about waxing cheese, I feel that putting a sealed barrier around the cheese when it's a month old really stops it from maturing with all the flavour characteristics it could achieve from rinding naturally in the ambient environment. additionally, waxed cheeses are usually covered in an edible plastic first to help the wax stick. given that I don't even like cling-film coming near my food I'm unlikely to be dipping my cheese in hot molten plastic... cloth-bound cheddar makers such as Pyengana in Tasmania also follow the same philosophy. cloth rinding allows the cheese to mature more naturally and take influences from the outside as well as what's going on inside (the conversion of lactose into lactic acid- the tasty stuff).
but it requires a bit more work. my romano needs to be rubbed with olive oil when the rind gets dry and threatens to crack, and the oil becomes part of the flavour profile. but it's only 1.8kg, and there's only one. commercial cheese makers have a considerably harder job:
'A cloth-wrapped cheese is turned four times a week for the rest of its life – for maturing reasons, but also to stop it “becoming part of the board it sits on”, and it is wiped and rubbed with olive oil.
“There is a lot of work in cloth-rinding, and that’s why people put cheese in all these other barriers, because then you don’t have to touch it,” says Jon (Healey, cheese maker at Pyengana).' (LeatherwoodOnline 2004)
some of Pyengana's cheddar rounds weigh up to 18kg. the pecorino romano being salted in this picture probably weighs close to that.
the particular flavour of romano and parmesan comes from the addition of lipase. vegetarians, turn away now. lipase comes from animals.
on a small scale, vegetable derived rennet is cheaper than animal rennet, so thus far my cheeses have been essentially vegetarian (post-teenage-vegetarianism, I now consider the lines that vegetarians draw between what they will and won't eat rather arbitrary, although veganism obviously is very different. but if you're eating the putrified ejections of a cow's mammery system designed to sustain its young are you really going to give a shit about the origin of the setting agent?) for setting large quantites of milk, as in supermarket-scale cheese production, animal rennet would cost less. but lipase, an enzyme which breaks down fats, can only be derived in sufficient quantities from animals (including humans- there's a horror/crime fiction piece in there somewhere: maladjusted cheese maker performing midnight ritual sacrifices on groups of urban skaters and harvesting the enzyme from their panreases and digestive tract mucosas.)
but be assured that this is human-free cheese, that was merely a shot at fictional humour.
that aside, if you want to see a cheese maturing (in this case, a cheddar), you can view the live feed from this cheddarvision.tv camera (I kid you not, see for yourself). the star of cheddarvision, Weginald (yes, really) also has his own mySpace site (of course). and he receives a lot of love letters, which apparently upset the cheese maker ("What's 'e do? Nuffing. Just sits there").
If JG reads this post his worst causality theories about curds and madness will be confirmed. I'd better start working on a new front-page, post-haste...
