"I'm all alone;
I smoke my friends down to the filter"
- Tom Waits
it's terrible to part with a cheese which has so benevolently occupied a small corner of the bookcase for three and a half months. but damn it tastes good.
this cows milk romano developed quite fast due to the warmth in the apartment and its relatively small size. made with just 6 litres of milk, it was pressed into a 12cm diameter mould.the rind is slightly chewy and strangely bland, though not unpleasant. this is because the dry conditions caused it to harden rather than ripen as in a more humid environment, however it was rubbed with olive oil during the early stages to prevent cracking as the internal structure of the cheese settled into shape and this has naturally contributed to the flavour. rinding romano really is quite a difficult art, and I would've been more frustrated by my result if I had not discovered a strange fact at the cheese show: Andy, the cheesemaker at Shaw River is also unable to create the right environment to rind his buffalo milk romano, called Annie Baxter, only available for a short time each year and a beautiful cheese to be hunted down and greedily coveted. instead, Annie Baxter is matured for nine months vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag to prevent any rind forming at all, resulting in a moist, creamy, uniformly soft texture.
romano, as with parmesan, another lipase-type cheese, develops a white grain throughout the body, almost like tiny, crunchy shards of salt. these calcium lactate crystals are a desirable part of maturation for these cheeses and greatly add to the texture and flavour. in Italian they are referred to as grana, or grainy cheeses. In the US, quel surprise, cheesemakers can buy a commercial food additive which inhibits this crystal formation. I'm rather pleased that although this kind of cheese usually matures for longer, (nine to twelve months) my mini-romano already had quite good crystal formation, and the overall effect is that of a ripe, fruity cheddar or a soft, milder parmesan.
this was a surprisingly good result for my first hard cheese, and has encouraged a plan to make a whole collection of the little rounds and dot them around the apartment like so many demented flowers... and so fragrant, too.
